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Paschenndaele screens at Capitol Theatre tonight at 6:45 p.m. -photo courtesy of Alliance Films

Late in the First World War, British commander Sir Douglas Haig ordered the Canadian Corps under the command of Gen. Arthur Currie to battle for Passchendaele in 1917. Currie advised against the operation, predicting 16,000 Canadian casualties. The order stood and 15,654 Canadians were killed or wounded. Approximately 1,000 Canadian men and boys were never retrieved from the mud.

None of the Canadian survivors of the Battle of Paschendaele remain to share their stories.

A new Canadian film, Paschendaele, is screening in Yellowknife this week. The movie depicts a highly fictionalized account of the battle and the homefront.

Passchendaele screens at the Capitol Theatre tonight and tomorrow at 6:45 p.m.

In 1997, my Grandma and I recorded stories about her long life for a 70-page history titled Past Memories, Hopes for the Future and Respect for the Young. What follows is an excerpt about Passchendaele from Grandma's book:

"So many lost men. I knew quite a few.

There was lots of battles that they went into where they hoped they'd get killed. Some of the men who came back said that they would forgive some of the battles that they had gone through but they could never forget Passchendaele. Because there was little chance of them getting out of it.

There wasn't many of the soldiers expected to be there when it was over. Two officers tried to talk the head officer out of Passchendaele. He was responsible for it. The officers advised against it but they didn't have the authority. It wasn't much value to them, but they took Passchendaele, anyhow. And then the Germans took it back.

In that fight the Canadians were unprepared. On the other side they had cement dugouts – and even a piano in one of them.

It was just like a muskeg, I think. There was no protection. One guy who was there that I knew told me about it. He said: "The mud was so deep we couldn't dig trenches. An officer came along and told us we were doing good – we were safe from our knees down."

The trenches would fill in as they dug. He told me that if a boy was wounded in such a way that he couldn't stand up and look after himself he would have just drowned in mud. Drowning in mud. That would be horrible.

And yet, the men didn't hate each other. They thought they were doing right. They gave everything they had. There was lots of families gave all they had and lost their children. They gave their life for democracy and what did it mean? The wars weren't a step in progress.

I think the bravest guy I've read about was a boy from the United States. He was in a helicopter bombing villages in Vietnam. I guess shooting down buildings and that sort of thing. They told him to do it again and he said "no."

That was an example for the other soldiers to balk, too. He did the right thing. I think he should have had a monument to him.

Pity there wasn't more of the soldiers balked at things like bombing a village. They were killing kids and their parents.

Don't you think that if a country tried to start a war there'd be many countries against them? Somehow they'd stop them right away.

And the young people wouldn't enlist. They'd attack the rulers. And they'd be entitled to. Learn from the past. Don't be too bent on your own ways. Be pliable. Claim yourselves as equal but not superior. Think well of the future."