Wil Andruschak

You participated in the four-hour film, The Great War, what exactly did you do?

A production company decided to do a documentary about Canada’s involvement in the Great War, a re-enactment. They did it with a twist: rather than hiring on a bunch of extras, they recruited descendants of soldiers. They selected people with interesting stories to go stand in for their relatives.

Who is your war ancestor?

He was my great-great-uncle, William Mundell, born in Scotland, fought in the Boer Wars in the 1800s, emigrated to Canada with his sister and brothers and had a ranch near Brooks, Alta. When they were recruiting for the First World War, he was 34 and one of the first wave of men to volunteer. He was a sergeant in the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry. He died a couple of weeks before the big battle at Ypres in Belguim.

What did you do on the set?

Basically, they re-enacted boot camp for us, so we went through boot camp: slept in tents on the grass in stinking hot weather. Basically, I’m in a lot of group scenes, with no dialogue. The star of this thing was Justin Trudeau, who played Talbot Mercer Papineau, a Canadian war hero. We were in his unit. We talked about mustaches, mostly.

Why was it so important that they had you relive the war?

They turned it into this reality-TV kind of thing and went out of their way to sort of abuse us and treat us like soldier recruits, to capture that reality component, to create what life was like for these soldiers.

How did they abuse you?

It was very rigorous. You’d have to march if you made a mistake, your sergeant would holler at you for a while. The first night we were there, they put about 20 of us in four or five little pup tents for the night, like sausages.

Strange, huh?

Oh, a totally surreal experience. For the vast majority of the time we were in the trenches, you’re just in the barracks or in the tent, waiting for your turn to come around and following rules all the time and eating bad food, not getting enough sleep, living in bad conditions, having to do patrol. Someone would have to guard the camp to make sure Germans wouldn’t attack the camp.

Did you eat the same food as in 1915?

Yeah, somewhat. There were some problems with the production company. In the end there were food shortages; not on purpose, through lack of organization. There was a lot of bread and cheese and once in a while, canned corned beef.

That does sound like the war.

Yeah. There were equipment shortages, too. They meant to get cots for us but we were sleeping on grass and it would rain and your bed would get wet and you’d be sleeping in your uniform half the time. When it wasn’t pouring rain, it was 35 C and humid.

And you weren’t allowed to take off your coat for most of the time.

So, you went all the way to St. Bruno, Que. to be abused and do that?

Yeah, we spent a lot of time in trenches, and were trained by Canadian military people and this company in England that create the scenes for war movies.

Again, why would you do that?

We didn’t necessarily know what we were getting into (laughs). They were either careful or careless about not telling us exactly what the experience was going to be like. Most people who were there are military enthusiasts and for them it was an incredible experience. I’m not; I just thought it would be an interesting experience to be on a movie set.

Did you have guns? Were you in trenches?

Yeah. They had taken backhoes and dug these trenches. They were really mucky from the pouring rain. The trenches were quite short, and I’m really tall — about six foot five inches — so it was an uncomfortable place because I had to be hunched over all the time because if you put your head up you would get short or yelled at by your sergeant. The real hardship is that we spent a full night in the trenches and staying awake that long with nothing going on.

What kind of weapon did you have?

A rifle. We had intensive rifle training, which was interesting. They are stiff weapons, so you need a certain amount of strength to fire them. For some things, they gave us blanks to shoot.

Did you get paid to do it?

No, our expenses were paid.

In the end, was it worth it?

Yeah. It was a really interesting experience.

Would you do it again?

No. It’s not an experience I would like again. I think it was pretty authentic in terms of the boot camp that they put us through.

What’s the first thing you did when you left?

I changed my socks. I had a sock shortage there. I didn’t bring enough socks and they were always wet, in my leather boots, which were a size too small.