Canada & the great war



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CANADA & THE GREAT WAR
Canada made no separate declaration of war in August 1914 but automatically followed Britain into the Great War. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the former Liberal Prime Minister, declared that there was in Canada but one mind and one heart, supportive of Britain. This was not strictly true because French-Canadians exhibited very little enthusiasm for the war but Laurier’s observation was a perfectly fair commentary the on mood of English-speaking Canada.
Today Canada has a population of thirty-two million but in 1914 Canada had a population of only eight million people. Nevertheless Canada's contribution to the war effort was truly remarkable. A total of 619,636 men and women served in the Canadian forces in the First World War, and of these 66,655 were killed and another 172,950 were wounded.
At the outbreak of the war Canada had a regular army of 3,110 men and a much larger Canadian militia. Robert Borden, Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister ordered Sam Hughes, the minister of militia, to raise and train an army for overseas service, the Canadian Expeditionary Force. His father was Irish (possibly from Ulster) and his mother of Scotch-Irish and Huguenot descent. From the age of 13 he belonged to the Canadian volunteer militia, with which he had seen service in 1870 at the time of the Fenian raids. He had served with the Canadian armed forces during the Boer War of 1899-1902 and had earned a reputation - among British commanders if rather less so among his own colleagues - of being a first rate leader of irregular forces. The ‘ferociously energetic’ Hughes was an Orangeman, and although not very popular with French Canadians, created an army of over 32,000 men within two months.
Hughes claimed that 80,000 Canadian Orangemen served in the Great War. The Orange Order in Canada puts the figure at 60,000 plus. At least one Canadian Orangemen won the Victoria Cross: Robert Hill Hanna, originally from Kilkeel.
In less than two months after the outbreak of the war the First Contingent, Canadian Expeditionary Force, was on its way to England in what was then the largest convoy to cross the Atlantic. The troops arrived in Britain on 14 October 1914 and were stationed on Salisbury Plain prior to being sent to France. Hughes’ achievement was impressive by any standard.
However, Hughes was a man of strong opinions and his opinions were not always soundly based. For example, he insisted on equipping Canadian troops with the Canadian-made Ross rifle, the rifle Hughes preferred for target shooting. The Ross, developed in 1903, proved to be an unsuitable weapon in trench warfare conditions because when fired rapidly it was prone to malfunction. The rifle also became easily jammed with mud and its bayonet fell off easily. Canadian soldiers would often take British Lee-Enfield rifles off fallen British soldiers. Hughes and Sir Charles Ross, the inventor of the rifle, remained loyal to their weapon, but Robert Borden authorized its replacement by the Lee-Enfield rifle.
Despite his genuine achievements, a man of Hughes’ stamp could be an exasperating political colleague and so it proved. In Robert Borden dismissed him from his post on 9 November 1916. However, he was replaced by another Orangeman, Albert Edward Kemp.

Canada raised five divisions. The 1st Canadian Division arrived in continental Europe in February 1915. The Canadian Army Corps was formed when the 2nd Canadian Division arrived in September 1915. The 3rd Canadian Division arrived in early 1916 and the 4th Canadian Division arrived on the second anniversary of the British declaration of war. A 5th Division was formed in February 1917 but was broken up a year later to reinforce the others.


It was often alleged that that the Germans kept a list of the 50 most reliable British divisions, and that this list always included the Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and the Guards, together with other well-regarded formations and the speakers own division. There is no evidence that such a list ever existed, but if there had have been, the Canadians would have been on it. The Canadians were ‘Consistently high achievers’.
In the later stages of the war, the Canadian Corps was regarded as among the most effective units on the Western Front; Canadian divisions were larger than British divisions by 1917 due to manpower shortages (though manpower problems would cause Canada to scrap plans for a second Canadian Corps and two additional divisions as well as institute conscription for overseas service). Indeed, in the aftermath of the Battle of the Somme, the Canadian Corps developed a reputation as shock troops which were feared by the Germans. The Germans came to regard the presence of Canadians as a reliable indicator of an imminent offensive. The Canadian army even had its own nick-name les durs à cuire (hard to cook; kill) meaning the Canadians were very hard to demoralize and defeat.
Canadian troops first saw action at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915. Although an interesting battle, the Canadian contribution to that particular battle was comparatively modest.1
In the first week of April 1915, the soldiers of the 1st Canadian Division were moved to reinforce the Ypres salient. On 22 April the Germans sought to eliminate this salient by using poison gas. Following an intensive artillery bombardment, they released 160 tons of chlorine gas from cylinders dug into the forward edge of their trenches into a light northeast wind. As thick clouds of yellow-green chlorine drifted over their trenches French colonial troops (from Algeria) fled, leaving a huge four-mile gap in the Allied line. A soldier in the Canadian lines discovered the neutrilisation of the chlorine gas was possible by pressing urine soaked rags over their noses and mouths. Canadians plugged the gap and held the line.

The courage and heroism of the Canadian troops who held the line is strikingly commemorated by the ‘Brooding Soldier’ memorial situated near St. Juliaan village at Vancouver Corner. The memorial, carved from a single shaft of granite, is 35ft-high and depicts a Canadian soldier with bowed head and hands resting on arms reversed. The plaque at the base of the memorial reads: ‘This column marks the battlefield where 18,000 Canadians on the British left withstood the first German gas attacks [from] the 22-25 April 1915. 2,000 fell and lie buried nearby.’


Richard Holmes has observed: ‘The stand made by the Canadian Division … was a remarkable feat of arms and an early indication of the quality of Canadian troops.’

Many readers of Ulster Voice will be familiar with the great bronze Caribou in the Newfoundland Memorial Park near Thiepval and the sacrifice of the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel on 1 July 1916, the opening day of the Somme offensive. Of the 801 Newfoundlanders who went into battle that morning, only 68 were able to answer the roll call the next day, with 255 dead, 386 wounded and 91 missing. Every officer became a casualty. The dead included 14 sets of brothers, including four lieutenants from the Ayers family of St. John’s.


Of their action, the battalion’s English commanding officer, observed: ‘It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valour, and its assault only failed ... because dead men can advance no further’.
Canadian troops distinguished themselves in the latter stages of the Battle of the Somme. On 15 September the Canadian Corps, attacked along a 2,200 yard front west of the village of Courcelette. By 11 November the 4th Canadian Division took most of the German trenches in and around Courcelette.
The Courcelette Memorial, located on the road between Amiens and Bapaume, sums up the Canadian achievement: ‘THE CANADIAN CORPS BORE A VALIANT PART IN FORCING BACK THE GERMANS ON THESE SLOPES DURING THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME SEPT. 3RD - NOV. 18TH 1916’.
The greatest feat of Canadian arms in the Great War was the capture of Vimy Ridge on Easter Tuesday (9 April 1917) by the all four Divisions of the Canadian Corps, fighting together for the first and last time. By 12 April, the Canadians controlled the entire ridge, at a cost of 3,598 men killed and a further 7,004 wounded, 10,602 casualties in total.
Four Victoria Crosses were awarded to members of the Canadian Corps for this battle: Private William Johnstone Milne (16 Bn CEF); Lance-Sergeant Ellis Welwood Sifton (18 Bn CEF); Private John George Pattison (50 Bn CEF); and Captain Thain Wendell MacDowell (38 Bn CEF).
The Canadian casualties at Vimy Ridge were not insignificant but they must be compared with the 200,000 Canadian, British, French and German dead who lie buried on the ridge from earlier, unsuccessful attacks. The French alone had lost 150,000 men in 1915, including about half of the elite Moroccan Division and two-thirds of a full regiment (3,000 men) of the French Foreign Legion, trying to capture Vimy. Many of them lie buried in the huge nearby French National Cemetery of Notre Dame de Lorette. The French briefly captured the ridge but before the French could consolidate their hard-won gains the Germans won it back in a ferocious counter-attack.
It is said that upon learning of the capture of Vimy Ridge, a French soldier exclaimed, ‘C'est impossible!’ (‘It's impossible!’), and upon learning it was the Canadians who had done so, replied ‘Ah! les Canadiens! C'est possible!’ (‘Ah! The Canadians! It is possible!’).
For Canada, the attack on Vimy Ridge marked a turning-point in the country’s march towards distinct nationhood. All nine provinces were represented in the order of battle of the Canadian Corps. In the words of Brigadier-General Alexander Ross, DSO, who commanded the 28th (North West) Canadian Battalion at Vimy: ‘It was Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific on parade. I thought then that in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.’

This heightened sense of nationhood resulted in Canada sending its own delegation to Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and in Canada joining the League of Nations in its own right in 1921. In 1939 the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3 September; Canada declared war on 4 September, further evidence of Canada’s increasing sense of nationhood.


It often said that the Canadians completed operations where others had failed. No where has this observation greater force than at Passchendaele, the culmination of the Battle of Third Ypres. Sir Arthur William Currie, who commanded the Canadian Corps at Passchendaele, correctly predicted that the Canadians would incur between 16,000 and 20,000 casualties to take their objective. The Canadians began their assault on the village, if that is the appropriate word for a heap of rubble, on 26 October 1917 and took the village on 6 November 1917. The capture of Passchendaele cost the 3rd and 4th Canadian divisions 80% casualties.
Between 8 August and 11 August 1918, the Canadian Corps spearheaded the offensive during the Battle of Amiens. Here a significant defeat was inflicted on the Germans which compelled the German commander-in-chief, General Erich Ludendorff, to call August 8 ‘the black day of the German army’. This battle marked the start of the period of the war referred to as Canada's Hundred Days. After Amiens, the Canadian Corps continued to lead the vanguard of an Allied push that ultimately ended on 11 November 1918 at Mons where the British Empire had first collided with German forces in August 1914.
[Between 8 August and 11 November it is claimed the Canadian Corps' four over-strength Divisions of 100 000 men, defeated and/or put to flight 34 German Divisions, roughly one quarter of the German forces fighting on the Western Front. In contrast, the American Expeditionary Force of 1.2 million men is credited with defeating 46 German Divisions in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.]

The last British soldier to be killed during the Great War was a Canadian: George Lawrence Price. He was born in Nova Scotia on 15 December 1892 and was living in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, when he was conscripted in late 1917. Price was killed by a German sniper at 10:58 am on 11 November 1918, just two minutes before the armistice. Price is buried in St. Symphorien Military Cemetery, just southwest of Mons. The first British soldier to be killed during the Great War was Private John Parr, of 4/Middlesex Regiment. The Finchley man was killed on patrol on 21 August 1914. Private Parr is buried in the same cemetery as George Lawrence Price. Chronologically more than four years separate these two deaths but spatially the distance between the two graves can be measured in yards. This graphically illustrates that for the British Army, and by extension the armies of the British Empire, that the Great War began and ended in the environs of the Belgian mining town of Mons. It may also be a commentary on the futility of war but such speculation may be left to others.


Canadian sacrifices are commemorated at eight memorials in France and Belgium. Two of the eight are unique in design: the giant white Vimy Memorial and the distinctive Brooding Soldier at the Saint Julien Memorial. The other six follow a standard pattern of granite monuments surrounded by a circular path. They are the Hill 62 Memorial and Passchendaele Memorial in Belgium, and the Bourlon Wood Memorial, Courcelette Memorial, Dury Memorial, and Le Quesnel Memorial in France. There are also separate war memorials to commemorate the actions of the soldiers of Newfoundland in the Great War. The largest are the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial and the National War Memorial in St. John's.


1 The Battle of Neuve Chapelle (10–13 March 1915) took place in the First World War. It was a British offensive in the Artoisregion of France and broke through at Neuve-Chapelle but the success could not be exploited. More troops had arrived from Britain and relieved some French troops in Flanders, which enabled a continuous British line to be formed, from Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée north to Langemarck. The battle was intended to cause a rupture in the German lines, which would then be exploited with a rush to the Aubers Ridge and possibly Lille. A French assault at Vimy Ridge on the Artois plateau was also planned, to threaten the road, rail and canal junctions at La Bassée from the south, as the British attacked from the north.If the French Tenth Army captured Vimy Ridge and the north end of the Artois plateau, from Lens to La Bassée, as the British First Army took Aubers Ridge from La Bassée to Lille, a further advance of 10–15 miles (16–24 km) would cut the roads and railways used by the Germans, to supply the troops in the Noyon Salient from Arras south to Rheims. The French part of the offensive was cancelled, when the British were unable to relieve the French IX Corps north of Ypres, which had been intended to move south for the French attack and the Tenth Army contribution was reduced to support from its heavy artillery.

The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) carried out aerial photography despite poor weather, which enabled the attack front to be mapped to a depth of 1,500 yards (1,400 m) for the first time and for 1,500 copies of 1:5,000 scale maps to be distributed to each corps. The battle was the first deliberately planned British offensive and showed the form which position warfare took for the rest of the war on the Western Front. Tactical surprise and a break-through were achieved, after the First Army prepared the attack with great attention to detail. After the first set-piece attack, unexpected delays slowed the tempo of operations, command was undermined by communication failures and infantry-artillery co-operation broke down, when the telephone system failed and the Germans had time to receive reinforcements and dig a new line.



The British attempted to renew the advance, by attacking where the original assault had failed, instead of reinforcing success and a fresh attack with the same detailed preparation as that on the first day became necessary. A big German counter-attack by twenty infantry battalions (c. 16,000 men) early on 12 March, was a costly failure. Sir Douglas Haig, the First Army commander, cancelled further attacks and ordered the captured ground to be consolidated, preparatory to a new attack further north. An acute shortage of artillery ammunition made a new attack impossible, apart from a local effort by the 7th Division, which was another costly failure. The Germans strengthened the defences opposite the British and increasing the number of troops in the area; the French became cautiously optimistic that British forces could be reliable in offensive operations





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