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[Written by Private David Aikin. In 1901, at age eight, Aikin had come to Canada as one of Bernardo’s British Home Children. Prior to his enlistment in WWI he was a married father of two, living in Wheatley, Ontario. The excerpt below is from a letter written between March 22 and April 8 in which Aikin chronicled his deployment journey from Canada to England. It describes his experience aboard the S.S. Lapland, which struck a mine just prior to its arrival at Liverpool. The letter begins without a salutation; the recipient is unknown. Aikin was later killed in action on August 21, 1917.]

. . . apr. 8.
Well we have reached camp at Bramshott we are now under canvas. well we had quite an experiance coming up to Liverpool when we were about 15 miles from there it was about 10 oclock a.m. we had just got our Pilot aboard and everything looked lovely and we were feeling quite safe so most of us went down below for a little while till we would get close to the dock. I had Just laid down on a bench by the table and was covering my eyes with my cap when there was a crash and a rattle everything that was loose and glass came down the ship seemed to rise right out of the water then it seemed as if it was going away down into the bottom of the ocean. on realizing that something had happened I found myself on my hands an knees hollering grab your lifebelts boys but somebody had already grabbed mine I had laid it on the floor beside me when I laid down but I soon got another. We got up on deck and to our boats as soon as possible there was men pouring out of the gangways there was no excitement everyone seemed to be saying take your time and they did so no one got hurt going up. there was two men of the 244 Batt killed and a couple of men of the 149. and one of our men got hurt a little by the explosion of the mine it will take a long time to forget the sound and the gas that came from it

we got to our boats and the roll called all men on board answered except two which was killed one of these it is said was seen to fall through the hole that was torn in the ship. after Roll call we stood too our boats the ship began to settle it looked as if we would have to use the lifeboats but the pumps were got to work and we travelled at half speed. we stayed on deck by our boats and sung songs till we got to liverpool at about five oclock then we went below and got what we could of our equipment we then disembarked and had to wait a couple of hours for a train. at last it [came?] and they were curious looking articles with their little engines and coaches that are divided in to compartments ten persons in each part. We had an interesting trip from Liverpool to Liphook our nearest Station to the camp we were quite tired but things were new to us so we took in all the sights along the way. There were some very large cities and they all seemed to be very busy. When going through the large cities the Railways are generally overhead up about two stories above the street. they run underground quite a bit. also in the cities they have and under ground railway that will take you to about any part of the city the same as the street cars do in the Canadian cities . . .