Tag: Legacy Books

Battle of the Somme, Canadian history, Vimy Ridge, western front, ww1, ww1 history

Drumfire: Artillery on the Western Front

A group of eleven soldiers in military uniforms, smiling and posing around a cannon, with a wooden building in the background.
Soldiers operating a field gun in a wartime setting, surrounded by stacks of ammunition shells and a barren landscape.
18 pounders at 3rd Ypres, 1917
Two soldiers operating a cannon in a war-torn landscape. One soldier is loading a shell into the cannon while the other assists.
1917 Canadian Field Artillery using captured German 47 inch Howitzer

Artillery caused roughly six in ten battlefield casualties in the First World War, more than the machine gun, the flamethrower, and the tank combined. That figure comes from the British Army’s own medical and statistical history, published in 1931. It is the weapon that did the most killing in this war, and the one modern audiences can least often name.

Historical black and white photo of soldiers operating large artillery cannons on a battlefield, with smoke and debris in the air.
Illustration comparing World War I era heavy siege artillery, featuring the British BL 60-pounder gun and the German 15 cm Schweres Feldhaubitze 13. The diagram includes details on shell capacity, loading mechanisms, maximum range, and design features of each artillery piece.
A soldier in a military trench preparing to load a mortar with a shell, surrounded by woven branches forming protective walls.
A historical black and white photograph of soldiers in military uniforms pulling a cannon on a cart while carrying rifles and equipment.
Minenwerfer

This episode is built around five Canadian veterans, recorded decades after the war for oral history archives, describing artillery from underneath: Private Harry Routhier and Lieutenant John Percy Copp of the 46th Battalion, Private Donald Stevenson of the 217th and later the 46th, Gunner Thomas Wood of the 1st and 57th Batteries, and Private George Hatch of the 20th Battalion. Copp describes carrying an unexploded eighty pound German shell out of a dugout kitchen by hand. Hatch describes surviving a premature explosion in his own Stokes mortar crew by pure chance of timing. Wood describes the barrage at Vimy Ridge as “out of this world,” twice, from the position of an eighteen pounder crew firing behind it.

A cross-section view of a vintage artillery shell showing internal components and projectiles.
18 Pounder shrapnel shell
A soldier in uniform holding a shell next to a cannon positioned in a trench, surrounded by wooden barricades and ammunition boxes.

The episode also traces the technical history of the war’s deadliest weapon, from the ground up. The 1914 shrapnel doctrine, and why it failed against trenches and barbed wire. The distinction between guns and howitzers that explains why Germany, alone among the major armies, went to war already equipped for trench fighting. The 1915 Shell Crisis, when a single British battery at Neuve Chapelle was allotted thirty two shells to suppress thirty five German batteries, and how it handed Canada the largest industrial project in its history under the Imperial Munitions Board, producing more than half of all British eighteen pounder shrapnel by 1918. And the counter battery science built from 1917 onward under Andrew McNaughton, a McGill trained engineer, using sound ranging, flash spotting, and aerial photography to locate German guns that could not be seen.

A metal badge representing the Imperial Munitions Board in Canada, featuring a central bullet design, the inscription 'WOMAN WORKER', and a banner stating 'SIX MONTHS SERVICE'.
A vintage black and white photograph of a young girl wearing a bonnet and a light-colored dress, smiling softly at the camera.
Mary Mays Campbell
A historical black and white image depicting workers in a munitions factory, assembling artillery shells along a production line.
A comparison of two pieces of shrapnel and a shell fragment, with the shrapnel pieces measured at .62 inches and .5 inches, and the shell fragment displayed to the right.
Diagram of a 155mm shrapnel shell, labeled with components including fuse, head, balls, borelet, matrix, central tube, diaphragm, fiber cup, cloth disk, base charge, and rotating band.

Two Canadian war diaries anchor the comparison at the heart of the episode. In April 1916 at Saint Eloi, a gun brigade recruited across Alberta could not locate a single German battery across six days of fighting, while Canadian infantry died a few thousand yards away. By August 1918 at Amiens, and again in September 1918 at Canal du Nord, the same corps was opening fire at zero hour with no ranging shots at all, laid entirely by survey and mathematical calibration. The cost of that progress is also part of the story: Major Thomas Ringwood, who raised the 60th Battery at Regina in 1916, was killed by German shellfire on the third day of the greatest artillery success the Canadian Corps had ever managed.

Episode 20 of my podcast “Barnbow Lasses” featured author Antony J. Bell, whose great grandmother was a “Canary Girl”; a munitions worker in the ill-fated Barnbow Munitions Factory, outside Yorkshire, England. In December 1916, an explosion took her life, along with 34 other women working in the factory. You can visit his website and order his books at: Antony J Bell Author A Penny a Shell : Heartbreaking Story about Barnbow Secret #1 Shell filling factory

Antony J. Bell

Newspaper article titled 'Major Ringwood Killed in Action' detailing the life and military service of Major T. D. J. Ringwood, including his background, education, and death on August 16.
Portrait of Major T.D.J. Hengwood from the 60th Battery, Canadian PFA, who was killed in action on August 10, 1918. The photograph includes a formal military attire and a brief description surrounding the image.
Major Ringwood
Sir Robert Borden reviewing a brigade of field artillery with 18-pounder field guns and limbers in England, April 1917.
Historical military report detailing troop movements and battery positions from August 6th to 10th, summarizing casualties, advancements, and artillery actions.
A historical document page titled 'Intelligence Summary' from a war diary dating August 1918, featuring notes on troop movements, battery arrangements, and logistical details.

Primary sources: archival

War diary, 14th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, 1–31 August 1918. Library and Archives Canada, RG 9 III-D-3.

War diary, 5th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, April 1916. Library and Archives Canada, RG 9 III-D-3.

War diary, 49th Battalion, Canadian Infantry, August 1918. Library and Archives Canada, RG 9 III-D-3.

Diary of the 61st Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, 1916–1919.

Field Artillery Training, 1914. War Office, General Staff. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1914.

SS139/3 Artillery Notes No. 3: Counter Battery Work. General Headquarters, February 1917.

Veteran interviews

Donald Robert Stevenson, 217th Battalion / 46th Battalion: Oppy Front and Canal du Nord accounts. Veterans Affairs Canada, Heroes Remember collection, veterans.gc.ca.

Thomas Wood, 1st Battery / 57th Battery, 15th Field Artillery Brigade: Vimy Ridge account. Veterans Affairs Canada, Heroes Remember collection, veterans.gc.ca.

Harry Routhier, 46th Battalion: whizz-bang account. Veterans Affairs Canada, Heroes Remember collection, veterans.gc.ca.

John Percy Copp, 46th Battalion: Minenwerfer account. Veterans Affairs Canada, Heroes Remember collection, veterans.gc.ca.

George Frederick Hatch, 20th Battalion: Stokes gun account. Veterans Affairs Canada, Heroes Remember collection, veterans.gc.ca.

[Individual video URLs and interview dates to be added once pulled per the RIGHTS note above.]

Published sources

G.W.L. Nicholson, Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War: Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1962.

G.W.L. Nicholson, The Gunners of Canada: The History of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery, Volume I, 1534–1919. Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1967.

Tim Cook, “The Battle of the St. Eloi Craters.” Canadian Military History, Volume 5, Number 2, Autumn 1996.

Tim Cook, “Fighting Words: Canadian Soldiers’ Slang and Swearing in the Great War.” War in History, Volume 20, Number 3, 2013.

Tim Cook, “The Gunners at Vimy,” in Geoffrey Hayes, Andrew Iarocci and Mike Bechthold, eds., Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007.

Tim Cook, At the Sharp End (2007), Shock Troops (2008), and The Secret History of Soldiers (2018).

T.J. Mitchell and G.M. Smith, History of the Great War: Medical Services, Casualties and Medical Statistics of the Great War. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1931.

William Van der Kloot, “Lawrence Bragg’s Role in the Development of Sound-Ranging in World War I.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society, Volume 59, Number 3, September 2005.

Brendan Alexander Vincent Patrick Hogan, “Operational Research and the Canadian Corps, 1915–1918.” MA thesis, Royal Military College of Canada, August 2021.

John Swettenham, McNaughton, Volume 1, 1887–1939. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1968. Cited as the apparent origin of the 83 per cent Vimy claim.

Peter Chasseaud, Artillery’s Astrologers: A History of British Survey and Mapping on the Western Front, 1914–1918. Lewes: Mapbooks, 1999.

Reginald H. Roy, ed., The Journal of Private Fraser, 1914–1918, Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Online resources

Canadian War Museum, “Generals: A.G.L. McNaughton” and “The Battle of Vimy Ridge, April 9 to 12, 1917,” warmuseum.ca.

Parks Canada, national historic person designation for A.G.L. McNaughton, parks.canada.ca.

Library and Archives Canada, “Canal-du-Nord and Cambrai,” bac-lac.gc.ca.

Australian War Memorial, “8 August 1918: The Black Day of the German Army,” awm.gov.au.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission, “The Iron Harvest: a warning from history,” cwgc.org.

warhistory.org, biographical entry for Georg Bruchmüller.

Veterans Affairs Canada, Heroes Remember / Video Gallery, veterans.gc.ca.

The Royal Canadian Artillery Museum, rcamuseum.com; Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery roll of honour, rca-arc.org.

Loyal Edmonton Regiment Military Museum chronology, lermuseum.org.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission, cwgc.org.

A note on Dr. Tim Cook

Dr. Tim Cook died in October 2025. This episode rests on his work more heavily than most this show has produced: his book chapters, his journal articles, and above all a piece he wrote in 1996, at twenty-five, arguing that the Canadians at Saint Eloi deserved better than the sterile account the official history had given them.

Canadian history, Edmonton History, ww1, ww1 history

“We’re Not Going To Siberia”: Canada’s Forgotten was 1918-1919

The Great War ended on the eleventh of November, 1918. Canada was still fighting in Russia the following June.

The 19th Alberta Dragoons (est. 1908) was the first regiment to leave Edmonton, enroute to becoming the first to see active service in France. Pictured here at Victoria Armoury (10523-100 Ave.) with Arlington Apts. in the background. C. 1913. *Second Row – kneeling – 5th from the left : Griesbach, 6th from left: Jamieson*
A group of eight soldiers dressed in historic military uniforms, standing and sitting on grass with a flag in the background.

Between October 1918 and June 1919, this country deployed almost five thousand soldiers into a nation it was not at war with, to fight an enemy it had never declared war on, for reasons its own Cabinet could not agree on and its own military command had warned against in writing before a single ship sailed.

Emblem of the Alberta 19 Dragoons featuring a golden horse standing on a patch of grass with a decorative ribbon below it.
Cover of the book titled 'Hands Off Russia: An Analysis of the Economics of Allied Intervention in Russia' by WM. Paul, featuring a circular emblem and text on a worn, brown background.
Map of Siberia, Russia, highlighting key locations of Canadian military involvement during the First World War with labeled regions including Murmansk, Archangel, Baku, and Vladivostok, and their respective Canadian troop numbers.

Two forces went, and they had almost opposite wars.

Four thousand two hundred went to Vladivostok, roughly forty per cent of them conscripts; some marched to the docks at bayonet point. They arrived to find orders forbidding them to fight, and spent fourteen weeks in a Pacific port doing nothing on purpose.

Black and white portrait of Lt. Col. E.C. Jamieson, wearing a military uniform and cap, with an insignia featuring a horse below the image.
A portrait of a soldier in uniform, standing upright with a serious expression, in a historical black and white photograph.
Historical photograph of the SS Protesilaus about to leave Victoria on 26 December 1918, with a caption noting the ship's involvement in a maritime incident in the north Pacific.
Historic photo of Canadian chaplains Harold McClausland and Jacques Oliviere, along with other officers, at the dedication of the Canadian Memorial in Marine Cemetery, Vladivostok, Russia, on June 1, 1919.
Historic image depicting the inspection of the 259th Battalion at the Willows Camp in Victoria, December 1918, highlighting wet conditions and mud.

Fewer than five hundred went to Archangel, on the Arctic coast. Every one of them a volunteer, most already veterans of the Western Front. They fought on frozen rivers against artillery that outranged them, and one of the worst days they had was the eleventh of November, 1918.

This episode is the story of both.

A memorial stone honoring Mike Sokolowski, known as 'The Forgotten Immigrant,' who died during the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. The stone includes his name, date of death, and an inscription about his life and contributions to Canadian history.
Historical map of Russia depicting troop concentrations and areas of partisan strength, circa 1918.
Historic scene of a streetcar incident, with a damaged streetcar and a group of people gathered around, smoke rising in the air, in an urban setting.
Historical black and white photo of a large crowd gathered around a derailed streetcar in an urban setting.
Black and white image of a bustling street scene with a large crowd of people, vintage cars, and several horses running down the street.

In this episode:

Siberia – the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force. Based at Vladivostok. Roughly 4,200 men and one woman. About forty per cent conscripts. Commanded by Major-General James Elmsley. Essentially no combat. Twenty-one dead.

North Russia – the 16th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. Based at Archangel. Around five hundred gunners. All volunteers, most of them Western Front veterans. Commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Sharman. Action at Tulgas, Kadish, Ust Padenga and Shenkursk. Eight killed, sixteen wounded.

Front page of the Manitoba Free Press newspaper from June 23, 1919, featuring bold headlines about a riot resulting in one death and multiple injuries, details about the riot, and other news updates.
A historical newspaper article titled 'Bloody Saturday' reporting on a violent incident involving a peaceful parade, mentioning casualties and military control of the city.
Gravestone of Frederick Charles Jamieson, inscribed with his name, rank (1st COT), and years of life (1926-2008), located in a grassy area.
A large historical group photo of military personnel, arranged in rows, standing and sitting in front of a building. The soldiers are wearing uniforms and hats, showcasing a sense of camaraderie.

A note on the numbers:

Sources disagree about how many Canadians went to Siberia and how many died there. Where they conflict, this episode says so rather than choosing the tidier figure.

The monument raised on the first of June, 1919, counts nineteen dead. The true total is twenty-one. Men were still dying when the stone was carved. Private Richard Massey died at William Head on the thirtieth of May. Rifleman Peter McMillan died there on the sixth of June, five days after the stone was unveiled in Russia.

Sources:

Primary anchors:

G.W.L. Nicholson, Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914–1919 (Queen’s Printer, 1962), “Intervention in Siberia,” pp. 517–523

Benjamin Isitt, From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917–19 (UBC Press, 2010)

Benjamin Isitt, “Mutiny from Victoria to Vladivostok, December 1918,” Canadian Historical Review 87:2

Benjamin Isitt, “Court-Martial at Vladivostok: Mutiny and Military Justice during the First World War,” in Canadian State Trials, Vol. IV

Canadian Army Historical Section, Report No. 82, “Operations in North Russia, 1918–1919”

Supporting

Mark Osborne Humphries, The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada (2012)

Mark Osborne Humphries, “The Horror at Home: The Canadian Military and the ‘Great’ Influenza Pandemic of 1918,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 16:1

J.L. Granatstein, “Gunners on Ice,” Legion Magazine

Patrick Brennan, “‘Completely Worn Out by Service in France’: Combat Stress and Breakdown among Senior Officers in the Canadian Corps,” Canadian Military History 18:2

Gaddis Smith, “Canada and the Siberian Intervention, 1918–1919,” American Historical Review 64:4

Ian Edwards, Our Quarrel with the Foe: Edmonton’s Soldiers, 1914–1918 (Friesen Press, 2020)

John Ward, With the “Die-Hards” in Siberia (Cassell, 1920)

Dawn Fraser, The Mud-Red Volunteers: Songs of Siberia and Rhymes of the Road (Eastern Publishing, c. 1919)

Archival:

Library and Archives Canada — Borden Papers, MG 26, ser. H1(a), vol. 103; RG 24, ser. C-1-A, vols. 1992–1993 and 2557; RG 18 RCMP Collection, vol. 3179; RG 150 service files

Canada, Report of Debates of the House of Commons, 10 June 1919, p. 3298

University of Victoria Special Collections — Military Oral History Collection, SC 141

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Loyal Edmonton Regiment Military Museum

City of Edmonton Archives

Digital archive

Benjamin Isitt’s Siberian Expedition Virtual Exhibition and Digital Archive: siberianexpedition.ca holds more than two thousand photographs, war diary appendices, court martial material and veteran audio, in English, French and Russian. It is free, and it is the reason this episode was possible.

Support this work

Research for this episode meant archival fees, and those come out of pocket. If it was worth your time, a coffee goes straight back into the next one.

Support the show!

Memory and Valour also offers:

Tribute Books: the story of one veteran, researched and written properly, for the family who will keep it.

Legacy Books: multi-generational family histories.

Custom genealogical and archival research.

Canadian history, ww2

Escape From Siam: Burma Bombers of 358 Squadron, 1945

The Last Mission of Flying Officer Harry V. Smith

On the 29th of May, 1945, twelve days after his 21st birthday, Flying Officer Harry Vincent Smith of Winnipeg lifted a stripped-down B-24 Liberator off a runway in Bengal for the 25th and final mission of his tour. He was carrying four American OSS agents into occupied Siam. He never reached the drop zone.

In this episode, I tell the story of my first cousin twice removed: a prairie kid who enlisted the day after his 18th birthday, earned his wings on the Saskatchewan prairie, and flew some of the longest and loneliest sorties of the Second World War with No. 358 Squadron RAF; the secret special-duties unit that lost 24 of its 28 original crews in six months and never made the newspapers.

Shot down by nine Japanese fighters over the Siamese jungle, Harry crash-landed his burning Liberator using a Canadian bush pilot’s trick, stayed behind with a dying man while his survivors escaped. Harry was then passed hand to hand across 400 kilometres of occupied country by the Free Thai underground; villagers, policemen, doctors, a bus driver with nerves of steel, and a Regent who hid Allied airmen in his own palace.

F/O Harry V. Smith

Drawing on Harry’s 388-page RCAF service file, his co-written memoir Escape From Siam, and the family history that carried the story down to my own kitchen table, this episode follows one telegram from Winnipeg’s Furby Street into the jungle and back, and asks what it means that a family can receive two “missing” telegrams, twenty-nine years apart, with two very different endings.

 Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC)

Period:Second World War (1939-1945)Rank:Flying OfficerUnit:No. 358 Squadron, Royal Air ForceAwarded on:August 14th, 1945

““Flying Officer Smith completed much operational flying. He has displayed a high degree of skill and courage qualities which were well illustrated on one occasion in May 1945, when during a sortie his aircraft was attacked by nine enemy fighters. Although the aircraft was severely damaged and one engine put out of action in the first attack this captain and his crew fought with great resolution. The enemy pressed home further attacks with great persistence and Flying Officer Smith’s aircraft sustained further damage. Two more engines were put out of action and three members of his crew were killed. Even so Flying Officer Smith though wounded, successfully crash landed the crippled aircraft thus saving the lives of the remaining members of his crew. In the face of great odds this officer set a fine example of coolness and bravery.”

Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC)

 Croix de Guerre (1939-1945)

Period:Second World War (1939-1945)Rank:Flying OfficerUnit:No. 358 Squadron, Royal Air ForceAwarded on:November 2nd, 1945

Croix de Guerre (1939-1945)

Citation:
“For exceptional services rendered in war time in the course of operations leading to the liberation of France.”

With silver star. For Operation Mouche.

 Pilot’s Flying Badge

Period:Second World War (1939-1945)

Pilot's Flying Badge

The episode also features archival interview audio from two other Canadian Burma veterans, Frederick Sproule and Charles “Dick” Sharpe, whose own voices frame the wider air war Harry served in.

A Consolidated B-24 Liberator from Maxwell Field, Alabama, four engine pilot school, glistens in the sun as it makes a turn at high altitude in the clouds. Heavy Bombers

Sources & further reading:

Harry V. Smith et al., Escape From Siam (family memoir); RCAF service file of F/O H.V. Smith, DFC (Library and Archives Canada); Greenhous, Harris, Johnston & Rawling, The Crucible of War 1939–1945 (RCAF official history, Vol. III); Tim Cook, The Necessary War and Fight to the Finish; Richard Aldrich, The Faraway War. Veteran interview audio courtesy of Veterans Affairs Canada. The four crew members lost on 29 May 1945 rest at Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, Thailand.

Dedicated to Harry V. Smith and the crew of “P” for Peter: Bob Poole, “Lofty” Brenchley, Jack Draper, Bill Pinckney, Cyril “Curly” Copley, “Timber” Woods, “Ramsay” Roe, and Bill Pugh; and to Cpl. Naparolski, USAAF/OSS, who did not come home.

Support the show: www.buymeacoffee.com/memoryandvalour · Full episode archive and photographs: memoryandvalour.ca

Escape From SiamDownload
Canadian history, Uncategorized, Vimy Ridge, ww1, ww1 history

BIG NEWS!

I’m excited to announce that all 7 of my books are now available through the official Memory and Valour bookstore!

Check out my bookstore at http://www.payhip.com/memoryandvalour


Years of research, storytelling, and remembrance are now gathered in one place; covering the First World War, Canadian history, and the extraordinary people whose stories deserve to be remembered.


This is a huge milestone for me, and I can’t wait to share these works with even more readers.

Keep history alive, because where memory endures valour lives on.

-Samantha L.G. McCrea

MemoryAndValour

#CanadianHistory #WW1 #MilitaryHistory #HistoryAuthor #MemoryandValour

Canadian history, ww1, ww1 history

The Last Charge: Canada’s Cavalry in the Great War

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3q4DW7sibOlfhecpxCnNmg?si=87pB4mDdRc6CI1HB4aaOqw

The Canadian Cavalry Brigade in the First World War
In the early months of the First World War, when the world still imagined the conflict would be fast and mobile, Canada sent a cavalry brigade overseas—horsemen trained for a kind of war that was already slipping into the past. By the time the Canadian Cavalry Brigade reached the Western Front in 1915, the trenches had carved the landscape into a static maze of mud and wire. The brigade’s troopers, drawn from regiments like the Royal Canadian Dragoons and Lord Strathcona’s Horse, found themselves fighting dismounted, rifles in hand, learning the grim arithmetic of trench warfare alongside the infantry.

Yet the cavalry never disappeared. They waited. They trained. They kept their horses ready for the moment the front might break open again. And when those rare opportunities came—during the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, or in the final months of 1918—the brigade moved with a speed and violence that seemed almost anachronistic amid the industrial slaughter. Their charge at Moreuil Wood in March 1918, often described as one of the last great cavalry charges in history, was a desperate, close-quarters fight that helped blunt a major German offensive. It was the kind of action that felt ripped from another century, yet it unfolded in the shadow of machine guns and poison gas.

As the war shifted in its final hundred days, the brigade finally found the kind of battlefield it had been built for. The front began to move, villages were liberated in rapid succession, and the Canadians captured prisoners, guns, and ground at a pace that would have been unthinkable earlier in the war. They scouted ahead of advancing infantry, exploited breakthroughs, and—when needed—dismounted to fight on foot with the same determination they had shown in the trenches.

The Canadian Cavalry Brigade’s story is one of adaptation in a war that punished tradition. They were relics of an older military age, yet they carved out a place for themselves in the most modern conflict the world had ever seen. Their legacy lives on not only in regimental histories but in the vivid paintings of artists like Alfred Munnings, who captured the grit, exhaustion, and strange beauty of mounted soldiers fighting a mechanized war.

ww1, ww1 history

New Podcast Episode available TONIGHT!

“They didn’t die in a blaze of glory. They drowned—on dry land.”


This episode of Memory and Valour exposes the gas attacks of the First World War: chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, and what it did to the men who had no masks, no warning, and no escape.


Stream and follow on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and iHeart Radio!


#WW1 #GasWarfare #MemoryAndValour #ForgottenHistory ##lestweforget