Arthur Courtenay Williams
My task for this assignment was to take a look into a soldiers life and take snapshot of his story by writing a fictional diary about his life during the First World War. This was a creative project as I had to pull on primary sources about my soldier for theoutline of my story and fill in the gaps with interesting fictional depictions of the war.
My soldier was Arthur Courtenay Williams he was a Canadian pilot who died before he even reached the front line. Arthur was apart of the Royal Flying Corps which is a British unit but they enlisted many Canadian pilots such as Arthur. The website www.veterans.gc.ca provided me with some primary sources. The three primary sources I had to use was two news reports and a in memory plaque at Toronto University. In the news reports it describes the death of Arthur and Another pilot as they crashed into each other. I try to foreshadow the death of my character by talking about his friend and how he died. I added the part about his friends death because there was many pilots that died in training more than just Arthur. I also try to hint to the primitive nature of ariel combat talking about the faulty aircraft. I also talk about the Lewis gun a british machine gun mounted on many WWI British aircraft. Arthur was also an instructor in aerial gunnery thats why I added the scene about him training the newbie.
This diary will be different then most of my other classmates because my character never actually made it to the war. You can compare my story with the ones of Nash and Cash’s soldier diary’s.
Writing about Arthur was a challenge because he didn’t participate in the front lines, but I liked the challenge. I choose to focus on the aviator aspect of his life and talk about the mental thoughts that would go through his head as a WWI pilot. Without further a due the fictional story of Arthur Courtenay Williams.
