3,000 applicants were recruited within eight days from which 1098 were selected - 96% of them having served in the Boer War or in the British Army. Named after Princess Patricia, the daughter of Canada’s Governor General, the Duke of Connaught, the PPCLI was Canada’s first in the field —the first Canadian unit to go overseas in 1914 and, in early January 1915 days, the first on active service in the Great War - the first of many. On Jan. 6, 1915, the PPCLI took over 1,150 yards of the front line near Voormezele, southwest of Ypres, Belgium. The conditions were appalling, the trenches resembling muddy ditches, really. Recently occupied by the French, they were found in a miserable state — “filled with water and conditions trying,” according to the unit diary. Then, on the morning of Jan. 8, the diary records “the enemy shelled trenches with shrapnel and HE (high explosives)… casualties slight.” This was just the beginning. Few of those originals would see summer, let alone the next New Year. Among those original PPCLI men were 35-year-old L/Cpl. Henry Bellinger of Brantford, Ont. and 27-year-old L/Cpl. Norman Fry of Ottawa. These men were typical of the early war makeup of the battalion. Both were British-born with a decade each of previous military experience in the British army. Both had come to Canada to start a new life but quickly answered the call when Gault raised the PPCLI. Sadly, they would share one more thing in common. Those “slight casualties” noted on Jan. 8 included two killed; while we do not know who was killed first, “the enemy shelled trenches with shrapnel and he (high explosives)… casualties slight.” war diary, jan. 6th
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