James Robert Johnston (1898-1976) grew up on a farm at Notre Dame, near Moncton, New Brunswick. He enlisted in the army in April 1916, when he was eighteen, and was posted to the transport section of the Canadian Machine Gun Corps in March 1917. Johnston served at Vimy, Hill 70, Passchendaele, Amiens, Valenciennes, and other places. By chance, he was en route to London on leave on November 11, 1918.
After the war, Johnston worked for a time in the Boston shipyards and then returned permanently to Moncton, where he worked for Canadian National Railway. In 1964, he toured the battlefields he remembered so vividly. The memoir he wrote afterwards has become Riding into War, his unique tribute to the bond of respect and affection between men and horses, heroic partners in the Great War.