Dr. Charles James McNeil Willoughby was born in Cookstown, Ontario, in 1894. Willoughby joined the British Royal Medical Corp in 1916 after graduating from the University of Toronto medical school. He was posted first to Mesopotamia, and then later served in England, France, and Belgium. After the war he returned to Canada where he practiced medicine in Kamloops, British Columbia. Willoughby died in 1995. The collection consists of nearly two hundred letters as well as photographs.