This is a story of a young man who volunteered to be a cavalryman in September 1914. The development of the "Western Front" with its trenches, barbed wire entanglements and mud changed the way in which war was waged. With the cavalryman's job becoming wellnigh impossible, thousands were transferred to the infantry and Willie found himself in the 2nd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, spending the war in the trenches and becoming a Lewis Gun specialist. He used "The Grey Argyll" as his pen name for an article he wrote for the Stirling Journal circa 1962. This story is included together with some written but unpublished work and stories told to his two sons. Battalion war diaries gratefully received from the National Archives together with Willie's diary and letters home are welded together. Footnotes and chapter end notes are provided to present a wider view to that seen by the men in the trenches.