Horses, Howitzers, and Hymns
The Story of Lieut. Skey, MC, and His Father in the Great War
by Marianne S. Goodfellow

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Upon his arrival in France in February of 1917, twenty-one-year-old Lieut. Warren Skey purchased a small Au Jour le Jour to record his day-to-day experiences as a gunner, who packed ammunition, loaded on horses, to the guns at the front. He was serving with the 48th Howitzer Battery of the 2nd Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery during World War One. Almost a hundred years later author Marianne Goodfellow would discover her great-uncle Warren's wartime diary forgotten among some family memorabilia—and so she set out to read it. Exhaustively researched, richly supplemented with visual documentation, and sensitively written, Horses, Howitzers, and Hymns tells of the courage and the suffering of the men and horses of an artillery brigade. But it is also the remarkable personal story of one young man and his family—Warren’s father, the Reverend Skey, served in France as a military chaplain during the last year of the war—and their abiding ties to St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Toronto. And it is, above all, the story of the author’s deeply felt connection to the great-uncle she never knew: I like to think of him now, not with his fellow lieutenant or signaller shot dead beside him, but rather, riding his horse over the French countryside in springtime or hearing those hymns on church parades that reminded him of home. Lieut. Skey was awarded the Military Cross for his rescue of wounded men and horses at Passchendaele. Both Warren and his father returned home safely after the war.

www.authormariannesgoodfellow.ca

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"The service and experiences of Warren Skey, a First World War gunner, are revealed in this fine book, with his inner voice revealed for current and future generations. Goodfellow has researched deeply to draw out the intimate history of Skey’s time in uniform, contextualizing Skey’s words as captured in his secret diary that illuminates how he coped and endured the hardship and horror along the Western Front." —Tim Cook, Vimy: The Battle and the Legend

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Marianne S. Goodfellow has an academic background in research in the Humanities, in library reference and archives, and manuscripts, and has previously published articles on the Latin poet, Vergil. She taught for a long time in the Greek and Roman Studies department at Carleton University and is an honorary adjunct professor there. Horses, Howitzers, and Hymns: The Story of Lieut. Skey, MC, and his Father in the Great War is her first book. Marianne and her husband divide their time between Ottawa, Ontario, and South Esk, New Brunswick, and visit their children and grandchildren in Toronto.

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Marianne S. Goodfellow