Private Soldier is a work of fiction, but it is based on a factual narrative of an infantry battalion in the 4th Canadian Armoured Division in World War II.

Private Soldier attempts to convey the experience of the Northwest Europe campaign of 1944-45 from the point of view of a soldier in a rifle company. Howie Richards is fictional. Some of the other Algonquins are actual people, and I have tried to keep their words and action consistent with the historical record.

The narrative is not strictly sequential. terry has tried, through a series of vignettes, to follow Howie Richards through training in Canada, then Newfoundland and England and then in some of the battles fought by the battalion in France, Holland and Germany. What Howie saw and what he did are consistent with the historical record. What he said and what he felt is the author's invention, but is true to the experience of an infantry soldier in a very brutal war. Terry's qualification for writing this is his experience as an infantry officer in the Regular Force, 1957 to 1961. Fortunately for him and his fellow soldiers, their war was the Cold War.