Like many Quebeckers and other French Canadians, Claudius Corneloup enlisted in 1915 as a volunteer with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He immediately joined the ranks of the only Francophone infantry unit, the 22^nd Battalion, where he experienced the exhausting routine of trench life and the indescribable horror of combat. His prior military service very likely helped him rise through the ranks and no doubt contributed to his survival.

A Frenchman, like a significant number of his fellow soldiers, Corneloup's career was rather unconventional. His prior experience (a five-year campaign in Tunisia) set him apart from the outset. He also appeared before a court martial and was sentenced, but this did not prevent him from moving up through the ranks and being decorated twice. He also suffered three slight injuries.

Corneloup was very different from his fellow soldiers in that he left a written record of his memoirs. One can count on the fingers of one hand the number of veterans from the 22^nd who published their memories of World War I, and there are very few handwritten journals. In 1919, Corneloup published a chronicle of the battalion and, fifteen years later, a novel set in the Somme in 1916. In writing these two publications, the author no doubt drew on his personal diary - the whereabouts of this diary is unknown.

	Chronicler
	Novelist
	Rebel