Lieutenant Owen William Steele volunteered for the famed Newfoundland Regiment in late summer 1914. His war diary, begun as he embarked for England, relates the experiences of his regiment; training on Salisbury Plain and in Scotland, baptism of fire at Gallipoli, recuperation in Egypt, and, finally the battlefields of France. Along the way his sense of adventure turns to a growing weariness with war, a desire to return home, and an underlying hope that he will survive. His diary ends twenty-two months later on the eve of the Battle of Somme at Beaumont Hamel, a few days before his death. Steele and his comrades expected war to be a glorious adventure, their personal intersection with events of historic importance. His diary entries convey the excitement that accompanied the passage of the "First 500" recruits across the Atlantic to England and the boredom that followed as the regiment moved from training camps to garrison towns during the first year of the war.