Front Lines Archives - Legion Magazine

The Hunters become the hunted, Part 2: The 1838 U.S. invasion of Canada

Russell Hillier — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:29:12 +0000

Continued from “Front lines,” Jan. 14, 2026. During my visit, the sky had now cleared of rain clouds and the sun was out. I walked a trail leading to the water’s edge where some of the fugitives sought shelter in the trees and bushes. Nils von Schoultz, the Hunter’s captain during the raid, was captured somewhere …

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The Hunters become the hunted, Part 1: The 1838 U.S. invasion of Canada

Russell Hillier — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 15:31:11 +0000

It’s not that I doubted whether visiting the battlefield at Windmill Point was a good idea, but more a case of if it was a good idea on this day. An iron-grey sky had produced a drizzling rain that the forecast assured would get worse. So, I packed hastily, hoping to outrun a darkening sky. The Battle of the Windmill National Historic Site is located …

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The seizing of Europe’s bells

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 13:21:13 +0000

The bells that rang out across allied nations after the First World War ended what for many had been a four-year silence enforced by regulation in some places and imposed by confiscation in others. In Germany and across Europe, tens of thousands of bronze bells—some imparting “the songs of the angels” since the 12th century—had been …

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Undying love, Part 2: A grieving mother secrets her Great War soldier son’s remains home to Canada

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:08:31 +0000

Continued from “Front lines,” Sept. 24, 2025. Three years later to the day of Captain William Arthur Peel Durie’s death, a soldier wrote Durie’s mother Anna to tell her details of how “Bill” died as he made his way along the communication trench a half-hour into the attack. “In December we were ordered to the …

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Undying love, Part 1: A grieving mother secrets her Great War soldier son’s remains home to Canada

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:42:49 +0000

In the dark of a summer’s night in 1925, four shadowy figures—two women and two men—stole into the Loos British Cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, dug up grave no. 19 in plot 20, row G, broke open one end of the coffin, dragged out the remains therein, and made off with them in a sack. The …

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High fliers: The legacy of Malcom McBean Bell-Irving and other Great War pilots

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:36:20 +0000

Mention parasol and one might think of Mary Poppins floating among the chimneys of London or Impressionistic images of dainty Victorian-era ladies at refined picnics and garden parties hiding their coiffed heads from the English sun. A “light umbrella,” the Oxford English Dictionary calls it. Delicate. Fringed with lace. In First World War Europe, however, …

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Remembering Mynarski: A marker and a broken treeline at VR-A’s crash site

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:10:23 +0000

Nestled in a nondescript corner at the intersection of two pathways in the commune of Gaudiempré, southwest of Arras in northern France, there lies a stone marker commemorating the night in June 1944 that a Lancaster crashed in what is now the tree-lined cornfield behind it. There were 7,377 Avro Lancasters built during the Second …

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Vimy today: A photoessay

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 14:22:06 +0000

As far as war monuments go, the Canadian National Vimy Memorial is widely regarded to be among the most magnificent, if not the most. It is set on the ridge where all four Canadian divisions—100,000 troops—fought together for the first time, won a great victory, and thus staked their country’s place at the table and …

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60 pictures: Battle sites, cemeteries and monuments of WW I

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 13:32:28 +0000

Time has softened the First World War battlefields of France and Belgium. The grey-brown mud and deep red blood have surrendered to shades of green and gold, the fields of battle now verdant forests, placid pastures, and crops of corn and grain. The trenches and craters of 1914-1918 have long since turned to undulating, grass-covered …

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Up! 100 images of the Legion National Youth Track & Field Championships (Part 2)

Stephen J. Thorne — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 17:14:02 +0000

More than 1,000 athletes were up, down and everywhere in between at the 2025 Legion National Youth Track & Field Championships in Calgary Aug. 8-10, 2025. Here is the second instalment of the Top 100 photographs of the competition. (See the first here.)

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