title: Seeking Courage
author: Smith, Gregory P.
description: LIEUTENANT ROBERT COURTENAY PITMAN IS HONOR BOUND TO GIVE UP HIS CANADIAN LAW STUDIES TO FIGHT FOR THE GREAT WAR CAUSE. By 1916, he leads an infantry platoon in western France, where he is stuck down in a pitiless bombardment. Post-shell-shock life brings about changes: battling self-doubt, risking life in open aircraft, and finding love. As Pitman recovers from injuries sustained at the Somme, he meets the beautiful suffragette and munitionette Miss Cissy Ann Taylor. As Cissy applies her gifted skills on an English factory floor and Bob follows orders from 100 Squadron to undertake increasingly dangerous sorties night bombing over France, their love flourishes. This true-to-life accounting of a young man thrust into war describes the horror of mechanized slaughter - the first of its kind, never witnessed in any prior war - and the power of love that drives his courage. This story is a remembrance of all servicemen who fought for the lasting democracy we still enjoy today.