Blackmoor, Hampshire, near Camp Borden

This precious watercolour, almost a miniature, shows a rural foreground with a cluster of houses in the distance. It is quite reasonable that Robert Pilot was looking toward Blackmoor Village while somewhere on or near the Bordon military camp. This rare watercolour is likely 1916 when his unit arrived in England. The small size of the paper underlines the challenge of recording the scene and conserving the image in camp conditions. One might reasonably speculate that he subsequently mailed it back to Canada. Pilot had enlisted in March of 1916 and served overseas with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, ultimately with the 5th Divisional Artillery.

Bordon Camp in Hampshire, southwest of London, was an established British Army training base during the First World War. For Canadian troops, Bordon functioned principally as a staging and training camp. Newly arrived CEF units could be sent there after landing in England, undergo further training and organization, and subsequently move to another camp or eventually to France.