Two dollars in my pocket

At 14 years of age, I stood with the men, the hired men, and pitched hay to the thatching machine and done a man’s work. At 14 years of age and I worked hard. At 16 years of age, the war broke out in August 4th, 1914 and my boy friends on the other farms around had gone to war and enlisted so I decided I was going to go too. So I run away from home to Corbin, Ontario, 12 miles away and got on the 11:22 midnight train and went to Kingston, Ontario, with two dollars in my pocket. That’s all I had, two dollars in my pocket. The next morning, a recruiting sergeant at a recruiting office took me down to be sworn in. The recruiting officer looked at me, “That boy’s not 18 years of age, you can’t give me that nonsense. He’s still got his bloomer pants on.” Which I did. I had my best suit on which I wore on Sundays. They wouldn’t take me. So the recruiting sergeant took me out to his home and had his wife cut his trousers to fit me. I put on these extra trousers and an overcoat and he took me to another recruiting station and he got a dollar for every recruit, you know, in those days they got a dollar. So I’m sworn in, and I’m in the 21st Overseas Canadian Battalion, Infantry Battalion, and I’m with the friends who had enlisted all around my town and my district - about 35, 40 miles around.