wwi legion magazine

A soldier works his way across the muddy and shell-torn battlefield at Passchendaele, where wounded men disappeared beneath the slime, November 1917.

ContributorTim Cook is the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum, and an adjunct research professor at Carleton University. He has published five books, including the two-volume history of Canadians fighting in the Great War, At the Sharp End, which won the 2007 J.W. Dafoe Prize and 2008 Ottawa Book Award, and Shock Troops, which earned the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. His newest book, The Madman and the Butcher: The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie, was published in September.

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Aftermath of the April 1915 Canadian attack at Kitcheners Wood near Ypres, Belgium.

CONTENTS

4 Timeline To Victory

6 Introduction: Canada And The First World War

28 Chapter 1: Answering The Call

36 Chapter 2: Into The Trenches

44 Map: Major Canadian Operations: Part 1

46 Chapter 3: Battling On

54 Chapter 4: Shock Troops

62 Map: Major Canadian Operations: Part 2

64 Chapter 5: Doctors And Angels Of Mercy

72 Chapter 6: Service On The Sea

80 Chapter 7: Above The Battlefields

88 Chapter 8: Remembrance

96 Credits

Cover Photo:A Canadian checks his rifle while in the front line, February 1918.

4 WWI | C a n a d a ’ s U l t i m a t e S t o r y

JANUARY 17, 1917: Canadians launch a highly successful raid against German lines northeast of the Lens-Bethune Railway near Calonne, France. In less than an hour, the Canadians blow up more than 40 dugouts, three ammunition dumps, capture enemy guns and take 100 prisoners. Canadian casualties are approximately 40 killed, 135 wounded.

MARCH 3, 1915: First Canadian Division is responsible for a 6,000-metre section of the front at Fleurbaix, south of Armentières.

APRIL 1, 1915: First Canadian Division is ordered north to join 5th British Corps in defending the Ypres Salient. The division will defend a 4,000-metre front in the northeast corner of the salient, as well as a strip of land running between the front and the outskirts of Ypres.

MAY 3, 1917: Canadians attack and defeat the enemy at Fresnoy east of Vimy Ridge. Close to 500 Germans are captured.

MAY 18, 1915: Canadians launch their first attacks at Festubert. While crossing no man’s land members of the 14th and 16th battalions are devastated by machine-gun fire and shrapnel. Both battalions dig in for the night.

MAY 25, 1915: The 2nd Canadian Division is formed in Canada, under Major-General Sam Steele. It is soon moved to England and then on to France under the command of Richard Turner. Plans are made to form the Canadian Corps.

APRIL 9, 1917: At 5:30 a.m. sharp, the Canadian Corps launches its attack against Vimy Ridge. Fighting together for the first time are all four Canadian divisions. Within four days, the ridge is in Canadian hands, but it is one of the costliest battles in Canadian history. More than 10,600 Canadians are killed or wounded.

APRIL 24, 1915: During the Battle of St. Julien, the Germans release chlorine gas into no man’s land opposite the 15th (48th Highlanders) and 8th (Winnipeg Rifles) battalions. The German infantry attacks behind the cloud. Wetted cotton masks and urine-soaked handkerchiefs offer little protection from the deadly gas. Many fall and many more are blinded as the Canadians valiantly—and at great cost—try to stop the attackers.

APRIL 22, 1915: The German army opens the valves on 5,700 cylinders of chlorine gas opposite the French positions in the Ypres Salient. Many of the French troops choke to death. Others flee in terror and a large gap appears in the Allied line, exposing the entire left flank of the Canadian Division.

APRIL 28, 1917: An early morning Canadian assault on the Arleux Loop east of Vimy Ridge ends in success, but casualties from the operation amount to more than 1,000.

MARCH 21, 1918: The entire German army attacks the British front between St. Quentin and Arras. This massive campaign is followed by bloody attacks against Ypres, Soissons and Reims.

MARCH 22, 1916: The Newfoundland Regiment is moved to France where it prepares for battle on the Somme.

JANUARY 1, 1916: In his New Year’s message to the people of Canada, Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden announces that the country’s goal is to place 500,000 men in uniform. Canada’s population was barely 8 million. FEBRUARY 4, 1917: The Germans

begin their withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line.

MARCH 1, 1917: Fourth Division employs poison gas in a poorly conceived and ultimately disastrous raid against Hill 145 on Vimy Ridge.

APRIL 4, 1916: Canadians relieve exhausted British forces in front of St. Eloi. The forward trench, which is no more than a shallow indentation, is in full view of enemy artillery. Days earlier British artillery saturated the ground. In addition, six enormous mines were exploded, resulting in collapsed trenches on both sides. One of the craters is 15 metres deep and more than 55 metres across.

MAY 7, 1915: Approximately 1,195 men, women and children perish when the passenger liner RMS Lusitania is sunk by a German U-boat in the Atlantic south of Ireland.

FEBRUARY 7, 1915: The 1st, 2nd and 3rd brigades of 1st Canadian Division begin departing England for France. Bad weather makes for a very long and nasty crossing. The 4th Brigade remains in England as a training reinforcement unit.

TIMELINE TO VICTORY

APRIL 2, 1917: Royal Flying Corps training commences at Camp Borden, Ont. RFC Canada training had got its start in February at Long Branch on Lake Ontario.

JANUARY

MARCH

APRIL

SEPTEMBER

FEBRUARY

MAY

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

In t roduc t i on | T i m e l i n e T o V i c t o r y 5

JUNE 27, 1915: After a three-day march northward, the 1st Canadian Division takes over a 4,000-metre line at Ploegsteert, which the men quickly dub “Plugstreet.” A period of relative calm follows, but it is clear that trench warfare is here to stay as more and more trenches, dugouts and other strongpoints are added to the landscape.

JUNE 2, 1916: German shellfire hits Canadian positions west of Mount Sorrel in the northern fringe of Sanctuary Wood. The 4th Canadian Mounted Rifle line is obliterated. Mount Sorrel and Hills 61 and 62 fall to the Germans. The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry stop the advancing enemy at Sanctuary Wood, while the 5th CMR makes a stand in Maple Copse. By June 13, the lost ground is regained by the Canadians.

JUNE 28, 1914: During a visit to Sarajevo in Bosnia, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are shot by a Serbian nationalist, setting off a series of events that lead to war.

AUGUST 4, 1914: Canada announces it is at war with Germany. Tens of thousands show their support by taking to the streets.

SEPTEMBER 4, 1914: The Canadian camp at Valcartier, north of Quebec City, swells with 32,000 men and 8,000 horses.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1916: The Canadian Corps takes over a 3,000-metre section of front along Pozières Ridge.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1916: Canadians launch their first major attacks on the Somme at Courcelette. For the first time, tanks are used to support the infantry. Also introduced is the “rolling barrage” which allows infantry to advance behind a curtain of artillery fire.

SEPTEMBER 23, 1915: The Canadian Corps boasts 1,354 officers and 36,522 men. It will continue to grow.

OCTOBER 26, 1917: The Canadian Corps attacks Passchendale Ridge. Fighting into November through deep mud and around water-filled craters, the Canadians succeed at a terrible cost, although the capture of the ridge holds no tactical or strategic purpose. There are 15,654 Canadian casualties, many left buried forever in the mud.

NOVEMBER 11, 1916: Fourth Canadian Infantry Division captures the remainder of Regina Trench and the Battle of the Somme soon comes to a grinding and bloody end. Somme battle casualties for Canada amount to more than 24,000.

NOVEMBER 11, 1918: War comes to an end at the eleventh hour. Nearly 620,000 Canadian men and women served. More than 66,000 gave their lives and close to 175,000 are wounded.

NOVEMBER 20, 1917: Church bells are ringing in Britain following a successful British tank attack at Cambrai. The Canadian Cavalry Brigade and the Newfoundland Regiment fight with distinction with British units. For their role in the defence of Masnières, the Newfoundlanders are granted the title “Royal” to their regimental title.

NOVEMBER 1, 1914: The best of the best from the fledgling Royal Naval College of Canada, Chief Cadet

Captain Arthur Silver, Senior Midshipman W.A. Palmer and two others, Malcolm Cann and Victor Hathaway, are among those who perish when HMS Good Hope and other ships are destroyed by Germany’s Asiatic Squadron off Coronel, Chile.

DECEMBER 20, 1915: Continually pressed by the Turks, the Newfoundland Regiment is evacuated from Suvla Bay, Gallipoli.

DECEMBER 21, 1914: The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry crosses the English Channel to France. By early January it is in the line at St. Eloi.

CANADA’S CONTRIBUTIONS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR WERE VAST. TOGETHER WITH OTHER ALLIED FORCES, CANADIAN SOLDIERS, SAILORS AND AIRMEN SERVED AND SACRIFICED THEIR LIVES DURING FOUR BLOODY YEARS OF WARFARE. BELOW IS A CALENDAR SKETCH OF SOME OF THE MAJOR EVENTS.

AUGUST 15, 1917: Canadians capture Hill 70 and subsequently repel a series of vicious counterattacks involving hand-to-hand battles with knives, bayonets and the butt ends of rifles. For the first time, the Germans unleash mustard gas against the Canadians. The Canadian Corps is victorious, but the cost is 6,000 casualties.

AUGUST 6, 1914: The Canadian government ratifies the purchase of two submarines purchased by the British Columbia premier. The boats are commissioned CC 1 and CC 2.

AUGUST 27, 1916: The Canadian Corps moves south to the Somme.

AUGUST 8, 1918: In conjunction with other allied forces, the Canadian Corps launches a major attack to the east of Amiens, France, beginning a period of operations remembered as the Last 100 Days or Canada’s 100 Days.

OCTOBER 27, 1915: His Majesty the King visits the Canadian Corps on the Western Front. His visit precedes four months of cold, wet weather.

SEPTEMBER 16, 1914: Colonel Sam Hughes approves formation of Canadian Aviation Corps.

OCTOBER 3, 1914: The largest convoy ever to sail from Canada departs with more than 30,000 men of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

OCTOBER 14, 1914: The massive convoy carrying the Canadian Contingent arrives in Plymouth and Devonport. Among those greeting the soldiers is the commander of 1st Canadian Division, Lieutenant-General E.A.H. Alderson. Weeks of foul weather would turn the training area on Salisbury Plain into a quagmire.

OCTOBER 17, 1916: First, 2nd and 3rd Canadian infantry divisions begin to move north from the Somme to a quieter sector of the front between Arras and Lens. They will be positioned in front of Vimy Ridge where they will be joined by 4th Division.

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

JUNE

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

JULY 1, 1916: Just south of the town of Beaumont Hamel, the Newfoundland Regiment, part of the

29th British Division, is decimated on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. Of the 780 men who went forward in the attack, only 110 survived unscathed, and only 68 were able to answer roll call the next day.

JULY


A sergeant leads his mud-spattered men out of the line on the Somme, October 1916.

In t roduc t i on | C a n a d a A n d T h e F i r s t W o r l d W a r 7

INTRODUCTION

CANADA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR BY TIM COOK

We cannot forget the First World War. Even though more than 90 years have passed since the guns fell silent, we are still shocked by the savagery of that conflict. The butcher’s bill worldwide was 10 mil-lion combatants, with countless more millions of civilians perishing through starvation, violence and even genocide. For Canada, a Dominion of the British Empire, with a population of fewer than eight million and not yet 50 years old at the start of the war, the country paid a terrible price. More than 60,000 Canadians were killed in the cataclysm from 1914 to 1918. In terms of today’s population, with Canada more than four times as large, the equivalent ratio of losses would be 250,000 dead.

It is impossible to comprehend death on that scale and the waves of grief that rolled over the nation. Nearly every city, town and village across Canada sent community members overseas. Too many of those Canadians never returned. We can still see the evidence of the war in those same communities, where the stone memorials stand with the engraved names of the fallen. The Great War continues to haunt us, as a people and as a nation.


T he European death spiral towards war had long been coming. Squabbles over colonies had led to friction between the Great Powers of Europe. Germany’s defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 remained an open

wound, especially with the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine annexed by Germany. Since 1906, Britain was engaged in a naval arms race with Germany, and all of the major land powers were rearming for the expected war. Tangled and compli-cated alliances between the European powers seemed to offer protection against inva-sion, but also ensnared all nations should two countries go to war.

Recent conflicts in the Balkans between Serbs, Bosnians and the decaying Austrian Empire created a dangerous powder keg. In June 1914, the assassination of the Austrian archduke set off the conflagration. Diplomacy was cast aside; threats and aggressive posturing dragged Europe down the sinkhole of war.

The armies began to march in early August. The lumbering Russians sought to pro-tect Serbia from Austria and were aligned with the French. The Germans, wary of the Russians and vengeful French, were allied with the Austrians, and known as the Central Powers. Turkey would join them, while Italy went with the Allies after a year of sitting on the sidelines. Britain went to war on August 4, 1914, when Germany overran Belgium to attack France. Belgian territory was protected by an international treaty that Britain had signed and meant to honour, but Britain was also worried about the balance of power in Europe, which would shift if Germany knocked out France.

As a dominion of the British Empire, Canadians had no say over whether they would fight. Canada was automatically at war. But how would its people react? Would it send 1,000 men as it had done at the start of the South African War (1899–1902)? No. Canadians responded with vigour. The armouries across the country, where the militia units were stationed, opened their doors, and immediately young and old men flocked to the colours. The recruiting sergeants could afford to be picky. Men with bad teeth and flat feet were turned away; so too were visible minorities, although First Peoples were generally selected because of their warrior heritage, or so many believed.

The First Contingent, as the initial group of soldiers would be known, consisted of a high number of well-trained professional soldiers and men with militia experience. The majority of the rank and file were of British birth, but that included those who had been living in Canada for two decades and those who had arrived two months earlier. The coveted positions of officers were claimed, for the most part, by Canadian-born militia officers. All expected a short war. And even when the terrible casualties to the European armies found their way into the Canadian newspapers, it was hard to comprehend this new, modern industrial war. But those who witnessed the European battlefields soon found to their horror that rapid-firing rifles, modern artillery and machine-guns left attack-ing forces as long lines of corpses. The slaughter was incomprehensible, with hun-dreds of thousands killed and maimed in the opening months.

Canadian soldiers, equipped with picks and shovels, follow a light rail towards the front, September 1916.


The 33,000-strong First Contingent that went overseas in early October 1914 was the single largest movement of Canadians up to that point in the nation’s history. The soldiers were aching for a fight. They did not get it. The British high command sent them for further training on Salisbury Plain in England. The Canucks grumbled, but accepted that perhaps they had more to learn about this new warfare.

In the mud and misery of the 1914-1915 winter, the Canadians marched and soldiered in nearly constant rain, and somehow morale remained high. Gunners and machine-gun crews practiced their deadly trade; the infantry learned to shoot and use the bayonet, but were also told that the shovel was their best friend.

On the Western Front, the European armies had been shattered by shot and shell, with the survivors digging into the ground to save their lives. Ditches were expanded into trenches, four or five feet deep, with sandbags piled up a few more feet to provide extra cover. By the end of the first year of fighting, the jagged scar of trenches ran from Switzerland to the North Sea, an astonishing 700 kilometres, which ensured that armies had to attack frontally into these underground fortresses.

The Canadian Division arrived at the desolate Western Front in February 1915 and its soldiers were soon serving in the subterranean world of the trenches. Shells roared overhead day and night; snipers lay in wait, eager for another kill as naive soldiers popped their heads up to look at the empty battlefield. It was strange and bewildering, with armies of millions facing off against each other, unable to advance without being chewed up, but fighting to the death to avoid giving up more ground.

Soldiers receive a midday ration near the front, August 1917; wounded Canadians en route to Blighty (England).


The desolation in between the two opposing trench systems was ominously known as no man’s land. It was a devastated landscape of barbed wire, broken ground and unbur-ied bodies. Dominated by fire, it had to be crossed for any attack to be pressed home. In the early battles, the assaulting forces were almost always torn apart while trying to traverse the killing zone; if they succeeded and then held the enemy trenches, a new buffer zone was created, with the Germans simply falling back on their own lines. Each month of the war, thousands of lives were traded for this shell-pocked wasteland.

The Canadian Division moved into the Ypres Salient in April 1915. There had been heavy fighting here in the previous year as British forces held off numerous German assaults in the First Battle of Ypres. The rounded salient, which was about 13 kilometres at its base, was surrounded on three sides by German forces. And it was here that the Germans planned to launch a limited offensive in April using a new and deadly weapon.

On the sunny morning of April 22, the Germans unleashed a thunderous bombardment on the Belgian city of Ypres and the Allied trenches. Four Canadian battalions of infantry were in the front lines, with the rest of the force echeloned to the rear. Around 4 p.m. on the 22nd, the Germans opened thousands of steel canisters. A gentle breeze blew the greenish yellow death cloud of lethal chlorine through the Allied lines. On the Canadian left, two French divisions took the full brunt of the lung-searing gas, with most of the troops fleeing this unknown terror or succumbing to the chemical death.

The Canadians, however, held their lines. They battled day and night for the next four days, where they were outgunned and outnumbered. But the Canadians made the Germans pay heavily as they advanced overland, even as the Canucks faced a second gas attack on the 24th and fought with the Ross rifle that often jammed in battle. Ashen-faced Canadians, wheezing through corrupted lungs, attacked and counterattacked dur-ing the costly battle in order to purchase precious time for British units to shore up the threatened position.

When the Canadians were finally pulled from the line, more than 6,000 had been killed, captured or maimed. Surgeon and poet John McCrae penned his poem, In Flanders Fields, during the battle, and he caught the resilient spirit of the soldiers, who demanded that even should they fall:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.


Clockwise from opposite page: A Canadian soldier dons his gas mask during drill at Shorncliffe, England, 1917; mass is held in the ruins of a church at Cambrai, October 1918; Canadian-built submarines H-3, H-4, H-5 and H-6 alongside in Montreal; light rail under construction in 1918; church parade on board the S.S. Franconia, October 1914.


New recruits from England and Canada were rushed into the broken formations and the Canadians fought a handful of additional battles in the summer. In September 1915, a second division arrived and the Canadian Corps was formed. It would be Canada’s primary fighting force on the Western Front and would eventually expand to four divisions, 100,000 men strong.

The Canadian Corps fought in three major battles in 1916, at St. Eloi in April, at Mount Sorrel in June, and in the titanic struggle on the Somme from September to November 1916. St. Eloi was a debacle as Canadian soldiers were bombarded relentlessly by the Germans who held the higher ground. After the battle, the Canadian Corps com-mander, British Lieutenant-General E.A.H. Alderson, was fired and replaced by Sir Julian Byng. The new general had never even met a Canadian in his entire life, but he guided the dominion force and was much loved by his troops, who even informally called themselves the “Byng boys.”

Byng was a good general, but nothing could prepare the Canadians for the fight-ing at Mount Sorrel and the Somme. Machine-guns swept the front, trenches were guarded by kilometres of barbed wire and the guns pounded the entire sector. Yet the Canadians found new ways to advance in this brutal environment. The trenches were static, but the soldiers were always evolving. They experimented in decentralized tac-tics to avoid advancing in long lines; they moved forward with the new tanks (which were introduced in September); they were armed with more light machine-guns; and they found some protection in the artillery creeping barrage, which was an enormous wall of shells and fire that “crept” over the battlefield, raking through the enemy lines to give the advancing infantry some protection from enemy defenders, who were forced to hide in their dugouts to escape shellfire. But there were always more enemy guns, more soldiers and more trenches. The fighting raged back and forth. At Mount Sorrel and the Somme, the Canadians suffered 35,000 casualties.

Thousands of other Canadians were killed in between the big battles. The lethality of trench warfare never diminished. Soldiers died day and night, one after another, through small arms and shrapnel, mortar fire, underground mines and poison gas. But the Canadians were not just victims. They fought back. Stealth raids and night patrols kept the enemy on the backfoot and ensured aggressiveness among front-line soldiers. The Canadians acquired a reputation for being among the elite raiders of the Allied armies as they broke into the enemy trenches, butchered wildly, and then bolted back to the safety of their own lines.

Smiles, but the mud—and the stench of death—are everywhere.


Above the trenches, fierce air battles raged. The start of the war had seen rickety planes jousting with one another, pilots firing revolvers or shotguns. But the value of aerial observers was immediately apparent, as enemy land movements and concentra-tions could be spotted and relayed to commanders on the ground.

New generations of planes, faster and better armed, zipped across the skies. The fight-er planes sought command of the air, shooting down enemy observation balloons, slow-moving “buses” that were forced to fly at low heights to photograph the front, and the other “knights of the sky.” Enormous dogfights raged over the Somme as the soldiers below struggled through the mud and barbed wire. Many of the “ground pounders” turned eyes upward to the supposed freedom above. The pilots were indeed less constrained, but the air war was just as deadly as that on the ground, with the life expectancy of new pilots measured in weeks.

From top left: Canadian Vickers machine-gun crews prepare to sweep the front at Vimy Ridge, April 1917; mealtime in the trenches, winter 1916.


After the cruel battles of the Somme in late 1916, the Canadians faced fortress Vimy. As part of a larger British and French offensive, the Canadians seemed to have drawn the short straw. The seven-kilometre-long ridge in northern France had been captured by the Germans at the start of the war, and from its heights, and from behind the trenches, the Germans had bloodily repulsed several Allied attacks. Did anyone believe the Canadians could capture the commanding position?

Byng’s boys prepared for the battle with the desperation of the condemned. They dug enormous underground tunnels, practiced new tactics, perfected the creeping bar-rage and studied countless maps supplied by aerial photographs. When the Canadians finally attacked on April 9, 1917, in a blinding snowstorm on Easter Monday, the four Canadian divisions drove up the ridge bayonet first. In harsh fighting the Germans were killed, forced to surrender or flee. But it was no cakewalk. The Canadians lost 10,602 killed or wounded in four days, making Vimy one of the costliest battles in Canadian history. Yet the corps had succeeded where all others had failed. It was a proud moment for the young dominion, and it remains so to this day.

But the war did not end on Vimy Ridge. The Canadians fought throughout the sum-mer, achieving several victories in limited engagements at Arleux and Fresnoy. Indeed, the emerging Canadian attack doctrine was called “bite and hold,” and these set-piece battles involved massive artillery bombardments to clear barbed wire and devastate fortifications, creeping barrages to keep the enemy in his deep dugouts and counter-battery fire to suppress artillery gun crews. The infantry would “bite” into the enemy position, but were also prepared to “hold” it against enemy counterattacks. By setting up a screen of machine-gun, rifle, mortar and shellfire, the Canadians could unleash a storm of steel on their attackers which often resulted in a bloodbath.

From left: A Frenchwomen sells oranges to Canadian soldiers returning to camp, 1918; animals and men pay the ultimate price on the Western Front.


The British were trying the same tactics, but they were applied unevenly in their 60 divisions. The Canadians, with only four divisions, could better implement changes. In June 1917, Byng was promoted to command one of the five British armies and he was replaced by Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, the most gifted of the divi-sional commanders.

Canadian-born, Currie was a militiaman from Victoria, B.C. After the Somme, he had studied the successes and failures of battle, and he had a keen mind for dissecting problems and finding solutions. Currie would reveal himself to be one of the finest generals of the war.

His first battle was at Hill 70. The Germans held the mining town of Lens, north-east of Vimy Ridge. Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief, ordered that it be captured. He needed a diversion to draw German reserves away from his pri-mary battlefield in the Flanders region, which would soon be known as the Battle of Passchendaele. Currie had been ordered to launch a frontal assault into the heavily defended urban centre. He doubted his soldiers could deliver victory in the urban fighting and knew it would be costly in terms of lives, as the Germans were dug in and familiar with the terrain.

After studying the battlefield, the Canadian general courageously confronted his su-periors with a new plan, which the British high command accepted. The Canadians would capture Hill 70 to the north of Lens in a surprise assault, and then hold it against enemy counterattacks. They would “bite,” “hold,” and “destroy.”

After weeks of planning and training, the Canadians attacked and captured the hill on August 15. They held it against relentless German counterattacks over the coming days, chewing up the enemy attackers who were forced to expose themselves as they moved forward over open ground. Front-line soldiers remarked grimly that they had never seen such carnage. Hill 70 remains one of the most successful, but lesser known, Canadian battles of the war.

Clockwise from top left: Night bombers line up after a sortie; assisting the wounded at Vimy Ridge, April 1917; leaving the Somme behind, fall 1916.


There were, however, no bloodless victories. Currie’s corps had close to 10,000 casual-ties in the battle, although they extracted an estimated 25,000 for the Germans. The Canadians were worn out, but the Passchendaele campaign to the north was not going well. Constant rain and artillery bombardments had churned up the ground, reducing it to a quagmire of mud. Twisted guns, rusty barbed wire and decomposing corpses littered the gutted landscape, but the corps was ordered there to deliver victory.

There could be no rapid assault in the glutinous porridge of that battlefield. Currie ordered new roads and rail lines. Gun pits were dug and the infantry trained. In four methodical attacks throughout October and November 1917, the Canadians clawed their way up the ridge. It was savage fighting in nearly unspeakable conditions, but the Canadians finally captured their objectives. Haig ended the campaign on a limited victory, but few could cheer a battle that cost over a quarter million casualties to the British, of which 16,000 were Canadian.

By the end of the fourth year of the war, all of the armies were spent. They had suf-fered collectively millions of dead or maimed. The Italians and Austrians crashed against each other relentlessly, their gains as fruitless as those on the Western Front. The French soldiers had mutinied in the summer of 1917 and British combat units seemed on the verge of a breakdown after Passchendaele. On the Eastern Front, the Germans had crushed the Russians in battle after battle and, with revolution at home, the Russians had sued for peace.

This allowed the Germans to transfer dozens of hardened attack divisions from the Eastern Front to the west, with the hope of knocking France or England out of the war, especially before the full might of the United States could be brought to bear. Although the Americans had been in the war since April 1917, the Doughboys had proven to be of little assistance so far, but they were arriving in larger numbers and improving through fighting.

The massive German offensives of March and April 1918 nearly broke through the British lines, but the Tommies regrouped under the onslaught and slowed the ad-vance. The Allies counterattacked over the summer, pushing back German forces that were weakened from their failed offensives and the influenza epidemic that raged through their malnourished ranks. With the Germans showing signs of collapse, a strategic Allied counterattack was planned for August 8 at the French town of Amiens.

Water-filled craters, twisted metal, broken trees and a smashed tank litter the landscape at Passchendaele, 1917.


This page, clockwise from top left: A soldier comes out of the line, 1916; young and old, and tall and short join the fight, July 1916; German prisoners, taken at Vimy Ridge, are marched through the streets behind the lines; mounted soldiers head into battle. Opposite page, from top: Canadian artillery in action, 1918; soldiers pick their way through the ruins at Cambrai, 1918.


The dominion shock troops, the Canadians and Australians, led the offensive. With a mailed fist of tanks and armoured cars, with aircraft shooting up enemy positions on the ground in a tactical support role, and behind a creeping barrage, the infantry over-ran the German front on the first day of battle. But the challenge of bringing up the Allied guns, transporting hundreds of thousands of shells to the front, and keeping the momentum of the attack going in the face of enemy fire and mounting casualties, left the Allied forces vulnerable, especially when the Germans responded by desperately throwing reinforcements into the breach. There would be no breakthrough.

The Amiens offensive, however, revealed that the German forces were rotting away. Morale was low and combat units were below half strength. The Germans were simply trying to hold on until the winter, when the fighting season ended. The Allies renewed their assaults, launching offensive after offensive along the front. And the Canadian Corps was thrown into the most difficult parts of the line.

At the Battle of Arras at the end of August, the Hindenburg Line in late September and in a subsequent series of battles, the Canadian shock troops crashed through doz-ens of kilometres of enemy positions. Dominating the enemy with shell, bullet and bayonet, the Canadians employed sophisticated fire and movement tactics within their creeping barrages. Yet there were no easy victories. The Germans deluged the front with poison gas and rushed forward machine-gun formations. There were incredible acts of courage and self-sacrifice on all sides of the line, but the costs were appalling. The Canadians lost more than 45,000 killed or wounded from August 8 to the end of the war, a period known as the Hundred Days campaign. Even more than Vimy or Passchendaele, the Hundred Days was the dominion’s greatest contribution to win-ning the war on the Western Front.

The Great War lurched to an end on November 11, 1918, leaving combatants and civil-ians reeling, and wondering how they could ever recover from the terrible carnage.


A wounded Canadian and his buddies warm up with some soup near Hill 70, August 1917.


CHAPTER 1

ANSWERING THE CALL

“…they came in droves, from across the country and from all walks of life.”

Canadians waited in anticipation for the declaration of war by Britain for Canada on August 4, 1914. When war was announced a little after 9 p.m., Canadians in the major urban centres sang and cheered. The Union Jack, Canada and

Britain’s flag, fluttered from countless houses, storefronts and hands. In smaller rural communities, it took longer for news to spread, but even the farmers soon looked up from their back-breaking work to take notice.

Canadians flocked to serve King and country. With a professional army of less than 3,000, it would be citizen-soldiers who filled the ranks, and they came in droves, from across the country and from all walks of life. The age stipulations were 18 to 45, but many underage and overage men lied about their birthdays. If they were caught or turned back, they tried again another day, or with another unit. Thousands eventually served in the armed forces.

A prewar economic depression drove some unemployed men into uniform, but more seemed genuinely outraged by Germany’s invasion of neutral Belgium. The press, pulpit and politicians called this a just war in defence of liberal ideas. British-born Canadians felt a strong pull back to the homeland, and many took the opportunity of a free trip to see loved ones left behind years earlier. Other Canadians enlisted for the adventure, were caught up in the fervour or simply went with their chums on a lark.

The nation was led forward by the warlike, unstable and slightly mad Sam Hughes, Canada’s minister of militia and defence. The minister treated the war like a crusade, and soon Canadians were converging on a new training camp at Valcartier, Quebec. It was chaotic, but exciting. There were shortages of everything, but Hughes ensured there were enough Canadian-made Ross rifles on hand for the infantry to begin target practice. It would prove a good rifle for that, but not robust enough to withstand the hard campaigning on the Western Front, where it often jammed.

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Thirty-three thousand boisterous Canadians went overseas in October 1914, with most of them hoping to go straight into battle. They did not, as the British sent them to Salisbury Plain for several months of training. Most of that time was spent slopping in the mud as it rained nearly every day, but the Canadians were lucky to escape the Western Front’s killing battles.

Few had expected Britain, a naval power, to be fighting in Europe, but France had needed the assistance as its opening offensives in August 1914 had been destroyed in a hail of bullets and shells. The Germans, in turn, had swept through Belgium and crashed southward into France. They had nearly ended the war by capturing Paris, but had been thrown back in desperate fighting.

Soldiers dug for their lives. Soon the ditches were expanded into trenches. Barbed wire was unrolled to slow down enemy attacks and to channel the assault forces into killing grounds that were swept with gunfire. Millions of sandbags were filled to shore up the crumbling trenches and to protect against shrapnel and small arms fire. Deeper holes were excavated to create dugouts, usually to 20 feet deep, which were increasingly important as both sides turned heavily to firing higher calibre high explosive shells. It was not lost on the soldiers that they seemed to be digging their own graves. And here they waited, living in underground cities, watching their friends killed day after day.

From left: Canadian artillery train in England at Camp Witley; soldiers move toward the front line, October 1917.


Clockwise from left: The Minister of Militia and Defence, Colonel Sam Hughes (right) at Valcartier, Que.; members of the 1st Canadian Division line up prior to drill on the Salisbury Plain, England; trenches dug in Winnipeg attract attention to the nationwide recruiting drive, 1916.


From top left: Three young men from Metcalfe, Ont., (from left), Duff Crerar, Elmo A. Sully and Ross Campbell, who enlisted shortly after the outbreak of war; popular recruiting posters aimed at younger and older men. Opposite page, from top: the Newfoundland Regiment at Aldershot, England, prior to sailing for Gallipoli; the scene at Valcartier, Que., 1914.


CHAPTER 2

INTO THE TRENCHES

“…they stank of eye-watering body odour, scratched at hundreds of lice… and kicked at the sea of rats that lived everywhere.”

T he Western Front trenches were stitched across Europe from Switzerland to the North Sea, but they extended back kilometres from the front, with communication trenches to the rear connecting different lines of the enor-

mous system in a labyrinth of mazes. The front-line trenches were the most danger-ous place in the trench system, so soldiers dug them deep, to four or five feet into the ground and deeper depending on the water table. To offer more protection against shrapnel and sniper fire, they built up the parapet with sandbags. Funk holes were built into the front of the trenches to create seats, and fire steps were constructed from wood to allow sentries to stand above the trenches under cover of darkness, in order to survey enemy lines. During the day, no one moved above ground, although periscopes offered a view into no man’s land.

The soldiers lived in squalor. Most of their time was spent waiting for something to happen. They smoked cigarettes non-stop and growled for their daily shot of over-proof rum. The drudgery of bland food kept bellies full, if unsatisfied. Care packages from home containing treats, tobacco, magazines and socks showed the soldiers that their loved ones cared about them.

The infantry spent most of their day standing sentry, engaging in work to shore up the crumbling trenches or in bringing up supplies from the rear. At night, they ventured into no man’s land to lay wire or dig new trenches. They usually lost a few men to stray fire each time they ventured beyond their protective lines. All the while, they stank of eye-watering body odour, scratched at the hundreds of lice that infested their clothes, and kicked at the sea of rats that lived everywhere, growing fat from feeding on the unburied corpses.

It was a grim existence, but most soldiers coped, turning to dark humour, raunchy songs and re-reading letters from home. Soldiers found solace in that they usually had only a four- to six-day trip in the front lines before they were cycled to a rear area. But always they returned to the front.

Cold, muddied and tested by battle, Canadian soldiers take a breather, 1917.

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While the soldiers’ trench experience was often banal, there were periods of intense terror. The quiet of a day with birds flying above could be shattered by a crash of artil-lery bombardment. Shrapnel shells cast deadly metal ballbearings in a hail of death, while the blast force from high explosives could collapse internal organs, leaving sol-diers dead with barely a scratch. Shells caved in trenches and buried men alive. After the bombardment ended, there was the frantic search to dig survivors out of collapsed dugouts and funk holes. It was a race against time as lack of oxygen led to suffocation. There were many other ways to die. Trained killers lurked out in no man’s land or in the safety of their own trench systems, looking for careless soldiers. High-explosive bombardments often knocked down the sandbags, which left dazed soldiers vulner-able to accurate fire. Experienced snipers fired through old sandbags when they saw work parties moving along trenches, as the soldiers there were often given away by noise or the stir of flies.

Polluting the battlefield was a witches’ brew of gasses, with chlorine and the deadlier phosgene attacking the lungs. Even with the introduction of respirators, terrified sol-diers struggled to get them on in time to avoid the gas, which was often masked in artillery bombardments or let loose at night. By 1916, all sides were employing chemi-cal shells to strike behind the lines and with less warning.

Soldiers hated the gas masks as they could barely function in them, but they were better than the alternative of an agonizing death. Mustard gas was unleashed by the Germans in the summer of 1917. It burned the lungs when breathed, but it also at-tacked the eyes and skin. It was a hideous way to die.

Top left: A high water table or hard ground spelled shallow trenches on the Western Front. These Canadian soldiers occupy a support trench, May 1917. Above: a soldier scrambles down a communications trench as a shell bursts only a few feet away, August 1916.


Clockwise from top left: Enjoying a smoke in a trench opposite Vimy Ridge; lunchtime in the trenches, June 1916; locating the enemy by peeking over the parapet was risky business; steel helmets had not yet come into use during this attack. The soldier in the middle has just tossed a bomb toward an enemy trench.


Clockwise from opposite page, top: Members of the 22nd Infantry Battalion relax during a break in the action, July 1916; soldiers make themselves as comfortable as they can in holes carved into the walls of trenches, 1917; wounded men are evacuated from the front, 1916; a soldier picks lice from the seams of his shirt, 1918; first aid is rendered to a wounded soldier, August 1916; men hunker down as shells burst over a reserve trench on the Somme, September 1916; Captain Christopher Patrick John O’Kelly after he earned the Victoria Cross at Passchendaele.


CHAPTER 3

BATTLING ON

“Even when you were winning on the Western Front, you were always losing.”

While soldiers at the front spent most of their time holding the line or harassing the enemy, it was the periodic and enormously costly battles and campaigns that would be remembered as the war’s signposts. On the

Western Front, the Germans had the luxury of fortifying the best ground: they were occupying France and Belgium. The Allies had to attack and, with the trench lines running continuously, these were frontal assaults.

The first major Canadian engagement of the war was, ironically, a defensive battle. The Germans launched an attack east of Ypres, Belgium, against the Allied-held salient that jutted into their lines. The raw and untried Canadian Division held its ground in the face of chlorine gas and overwhelming German forces, and while the Canadians were cut up badly here, they established their reputation as tough, resilient troops.

The Battle of Festubert, which followed less than a month later in May 1915, was a far more chaotic affair and revealed the difficulty of planning and executing offen-sive operations. As part of a larger Allied offensive, Canadians attacked blindly into the enemy lines, with weak supporting bombardments. Bravery and self-sacrifice took the Canadians into the enemy guns, but they were caught in no man’s land and gunned down.

If they wanted to succeed they needed to study the lessons of their failures. The two battles cost the Canadians a shocking 8,500 casualties from the 18,000-strong Canadian Division.

The next year saw massive changes in warfare on the Western Front. The war ma-chines of all nations were in high gear and pumping out millions of high-explosive shells and thousands of new artillery pieces. The battles of 1915 had failed because the gunners had not been able to suppress the enemy defenders with enough shells or to clear the resilient barbed wire. Now, massive artillery bombardments would precede each battle.

Canadian pioneers lay trench mats over the mud at Passchendaele, November 1917.

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In the first half of 1916, the Germans still had bite in them. They attacked disorga-nized Canadian forces that had been ordered into a sea of mud at St. Eloi just south of the Ypres Salient. The Canadians took over ruined trenches on April 4, 1916, and on April 6 the Germans drove them out of the line with artillery fire. The Canadians counterattacked, but were not able to wade through the mud, and the troops got lost in the confusion. It was a debacle and proved that front-line soldiers needed better intelligence, maps and artillery support.

Two months later, at the beginning of June, the Germans attacked the Canadians again in the Ypres Salient, in what became known as the Battle of Mount Sorrel. The Canadians were pushed back with heavy casualties, and the new corps command-er, Lieutenant-General Julian Byng, turned to his most gifted divisional commander, Canadian-born Major-General Arthur Currie. Together they devised a plan to recap-ture the lost ground. Driving forward behind a heavy artillery barrage, the Canadians pushed the enemy back. The Canadians were learning how to fight more effectively.

But nothing could save them on the Somme. Formations were thrown into the line and were chewed up in hours. The casualties were staggering, and by the time the Canadians arrived in September, the British, French and Germans had already lost sev-eral hundred thousand men. The sights and smells of the rotting dead were shocking, even to hardened troops.

From top left: Canadian gunners turn a captured gun on their foe, 1918; an aerial view of the shell-pocked landscape surrounding Regina and Kenora trenches on the Somme, fall 1916.


The Canadians fought in a series of battles here, but the see-saw operations of attack and counterattack, and all the while under the fall of the killing shells, left little room for innovation or success. Even the introduction of the tank, new machine-gun units, more lethal poison gas and larger artillery barrages left soldiers floundering in the wasteland. There were over a million casualties from July 1 to mid-November 1916, when the campaign was called off.

The next year would see the Canadians put many of the hard-learned lessons together into an effective attack doctrine. The infantry and artillery were welded together in a war-winning combination. There were no easy victories, but with thorough training, decentralized tactics, increased firepower, and the grit and bravery of front-line troops, success followed success. The Canadian victory at Vimy in April, with additional mi-nor battles later that month and in early May, solidified their reputation as effective shock troops.

The Battle of Hill 70 in August 1917 was a masterpiece and revealed that the new corps commander, Sir Arthur Currie, understood the goal on the Western Front was to destroy the enemy rather than simply inch eastward across France. He ordered the capture of the high point of Hill 70 which overlooked the German-held city of Lens, and forced the enemy to counterattack into his forces, who were dug in, protected, and had set up a merciless killing ground. The Germans were cut down. These lessons were applied to the miserable battlefield of Passchendaele in October 1917, but it was the soldiers’ bravery, endurance and grit that delivered victory there. It had been a harsh year for the Canadians, with more than 40,000 casualties suffered in the victories.

The last year of the war—1918—saw the weary titans crashing into each other. All sides seemed on their last legs. The Germans attacked wildly in March and nearly broke through the Allied lines, but they were defeated after a series of costly battles. The Allies counterattacked later that summer, first in July at the Second Battle of the Marne and then at Amiens.

The Canadians and Australians were the spearhead force at Amiens and, with their combined-arms tactics of artillery and infantry and supported by tanks, chemical weap-ons, tactical airpower and even armoured cars, they smashed through the German lines. The series of battles that followed were known as the Hundred Days, as the German armies crumbled under the onslaught. The Canadian Corps played a key role in these hard-pounding victories, but it paid a terrible price of more than 45,000 casualties. Even when you were winning on the Western Front, you were always losing.

Clockwise from top left: A Canadian armoured car with a machine-gun crew heads into action, March 1918; massive guns pound Vimy Ridge, April 1917; shells are recovered from former enemy strongpoints; tanks were introduced for the first time in late 1916 on the Somme.


Opposite page from top: Walking wounded return from battle wearing gas masks, August 1918; an infantry battalion advances over no man’s land toward Vimy Ridge, April 1917. Clockwise from top: Dead soldiers cover the ground following an attack, October 1916; Canadians load up with ammunition near the front, 1918; anti-aircraft gunners leap into action after spotting a German plane.


CHAPTER 4

SHOCK TROOPS

“In the chaos of battle, coping and endurance were subsumed. It was about survival.”

F ront-line soldiers were always learning. The common perception of the infantry in battle was similar to that of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, when long lines of British infantry arose from their trenches and

marched forward, bent over from the crushing weight of their packs, into the mouth of the guns. Close to 60,000 were killed or wounded. But the 1st of July was an aberra-tion. The tactic of advancing in lines was devised by officers who felt the privates had to be controlled, and this was exacerbated by the fear that the citizen-soldier armies would disintegrate on the battlefield, with scared men finding cover in a shell hole and refusing to rise.

These tactics had to change, and they did, if only because the officers were killed at shockingly high rates, leaving the infantry leaderless. After the terrible battles of 1915 and 1916, the infantry were taught to advance on their own, moving in rushes, in clas-sic “fire and movement” tactics. By 1917, this is how the infantry would fight, and they could engage and pin down the enemy and destroy strongpoints with sufficient firepower from their light Lewis machine-guns and rifle grenades.

All of these lessons had to be processed on the battlefield and paid for in blood. After each battle the surviving officers wrote up the reports, offering insight into what succeeded and what failed. These reports were sent up the chain of command, read, processed and studied. Infantry tactics changed, but so too did the gunners. Even with more and more guns and shells, they needed to hone their ability to target and de-stroy. Complex scientific principles were employed to locate hidden enemy guns. By 1917, sound-ranging and firing blind from map co-ordinates allowed for the Canadians to dominate the enemy. There were changes all over the battlefield, from front-line medical care to evolving machine-gun fire patterns. The Germans, too, were forced to adapt and modify their defences and tactics to meet the overwhelming firepower of the Allies. This meant, by 1917, a spreading out of defenders, trenches in depth, and dragging field guns closer to the front.

Canadians storm into Valenciennes, France, November 1918.

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Canadians storm into Valenciennes, France, November 1918.


All of these changes to leadership, tactics and weapons still meant that those at the sharp end had to claw their way forward. Battle still pitted flesh and bone against fire and steel. Soldiers relied on their comrades to help them cope with the strain. Even the bravest of men could break down, but the successful armies found ways to bolster morale. Small rewards like rum and cigarettes were prized. Rotation out of the line was essential, and smart officers in the rear tried to give their men time to unwind, have a bath and turn their minds towards something other than killing. Gallantry medals were rare and not always awarded fairly, but they were a motivator for some men. Other soldiers wrote off their lives. They summed it up in the noncha-lant phrase, you’ll get it “when your number’s up.” Fate would decide if you survived and made it home; in the meantime, quit whining and get on with doing your job. Such an outlook was never so cut and dried, but it helped soldiers cope.

In the chaos of battle, coping and endurance were subsumed. It was about survival. With adrenaline pumping and heart racing, soldiers remarked about the curious lack of fear. Muscle memory took over, as men advanced, fired, went to ground, and rushed again. The sights and sounds could be crystal clear or blurred, confused and distorted, much like a dream. Perhaps nightmare was closer to the truth, as friends that one trained and lived with for months were dismembered and butchered by whirling metal. On the battlefield, it was kill or be killed.

Left: As artillery shells rain down, soldiers fall and stumble across an uneven and muddy battlefield. Above: With fixed bayonets, infantry prepare to clear an enemy dugout.


Opposite page, clockwise from top left: Infantry watch as a Whippet tank advances toward a German machine-gun nest; a Canadian gun mired in mud at Passchendaele, November 1917; infantry follow a tank across deadly ground at Vimy Ridge, April 1917. Below: Men of a Canadian machine-gun company huddle in shell holes at Passchendaele, November 1917.


Opposite page, clockwise from top: German prisoners are brought in near Amiens, France, 1918; a Canadian returns from his time in the line, July 1917; a narrow-gauge train delivers ammunition to the front, 1918. Clockwise from top left: A dead German soldier who remained with his gun, 1918; sitting amongst artillery shells, gunners take time for a mid-day meal; wet and mud-spattered men head behind the lines after being relieved, November 1916; heavy guns advance to new positions, October 1916.


CHAPTER 5

DOCTORS AND ANGELS OF MERCY

“Doctors raced between the pale and nearly lifeless, seeking those men who could be saved and those who had to be triaged.”

Canadian soldiers were lucky to have an efficient and effective medical system. The common perception of the Great War is that of butchering doctors lop-ping off limbs. There were certainly cases of battlefield amputations, but the

level of medical care was high, with proficient doctors and nurses saving lives and caring for the wounded.

The challenge was in getting from the battlefield to the front line of the medical system. A soldier wounded in no man’s land or in an enemy trench could be 1,000 metres from an aid post. Bullet riddled and bleeding out, even the slightest move-ment brought on agony. Stretcher-bearers raced across the battlefield delivering first aid, a shot of rum, an injection of morphine (if any was left) and a comforting word, but there were too many broken men, and not enough carriers. German prisoners were often recruited at the point of a gun barrel to carry in the wounded. But most often it was the bleeding soldier who limped or pulled himself across the devastated battlefield, refusing to give up.

During and immediately after a battle the front line medical aid posts were always overrun with the grisly wounded. Doctors raced between the pale and nearly lifeless, seeking those men who could be saved and those who had to be triaged. Often it was a selection that saved or ended a life, but the difficult decision meant that more men could be treated more quickly, and therefore larger numbers could be saved. These were the agonizing choices in battle.

New bandages were applied and all but the most grievously wounded were kept mov-ing through the medical chain, from field ambulances to casualty clearing stations and finally, for the most severely wounded, to hospitals in England.

Nurses were not stationed in the front lines, but they were often in the second or third tier of the medical chain. They offered invaluable care as they changed bandages, assisted surgeons and soothed the anguished. The Canadian blue-uniformed nurses, of which about 3,000 served overseas during the war, were described by many as “angels of mercy.”

Wounded Canadians en route to a field dressing station via light railway, September 1916.

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The doctors and nurses dealt with the most ghastly of wounds. Modern weapons tore chunks from flesh, liquefied muscle and pulverized bone. Mustard-gassed soldiers had to be stripped of their clothes as the fumes could burn and blind the medical practitio-ners. Surgeons introduced new medical procedures to treat the multitude of wounds. Blood transfusion increasingly kept victims from slipping into shock. Secondary in-fection remained a problem throughout the war, as the feces-enriched soil almost always led to the infection of open wounds. In an age before penicillin, doctors experimented with radical treatments, including cutting away large portions of flesh in order to allow oxygen to kill the anaerobic microbes. Such actions helped control the spread of disease, but they were agonizing for the patient, requiring constant bandage changes. Meanwhile, new techniques in facial reconstruction restored bone, flesh and a soldier’s dignity.

Perhaps the most traumatizing of wounds were the psychiatric ones. The unending pressure wore away at all men. Twitches appeared in faces, hands shook and sleep was filled with nightmares. The medical officers struggled to classify the men, as these heroes seemed to be on the verge of cowardice. The wounded were initially labelled shell-shocked, as the ailment was thought to be a physical one caused by exploding shells. When the doctors later realized it was brought on more often by accumulated stress, the term stuck, even though the army tried to outlaw it. In the end, the labels were immaterial, especially as the machine of war ground out more and more victims.

Over half of all Canadian doctors served overseas, and when they returned to Canada they brought with them new skills and treatments. They had done well in incredibly trying times. Statistics show that a little over 90 per cent of the patients cared for by doctors survived their wounds. Lives had been saved, but many of the 138,000 battle-field wounded were left crippled for life, both physically and mentally.

Top left: Wounded, but smiling soldiers enjoy a cup of soup after being treated. Above: A Canadian officer is loaded onto a hospital train, October 1916.

Above: Medical staff tend to a young private wounded minutes before the Armistice was declared, November 1918. Opposite page, from top: While under guard, German prisoners evacuate a wounded fellow soldier; Canadian ambulances are ready to roll, July 1916.



Opposite page, from top: After being treated for wounds, soldiers present a nurse with a dog they found in the trenches, October 1916; the horrific effects of mustard gas. Clockwise from top: a wounded Canadian, assisted by two German prisoners, journeys through a scene of destruction; a stretcher-bearer gives water to a wounded man, October 1918; light rail is used to transport battle casualties to a dressing station near Vimy Ridge, April 1917.


CHAPTER 6

SERVICE ON THE SEA

“The U-boats were sawing away at the all-important lifeline from North America to Britain.”

The first Canadian service personnel to die in battle were four Canadian sailors serving on His Majesty’s Ship Good Hope, a light cruiser sunk at the Battle of Coronel on November 1, 1914. Canada’s navy never fought in a major sea battle

during the war, and that was a good thing, as Canada had a pathetically weak naval service at the start of hostilities.

Since the navy’s establishment in 1910, it had been a political football, kicked back and forth, and then out by the Liberals and Conservatives who could not decide on its function or how it would operate with the Royal Navy. It was sneeringly called a “tin-pot navy” at its birth when it had only two obsolete cruisers. Four years later, at the start of the war, Canada had the same obsolete warships. A dominion that stretched ocean to ocean to ocean had almost no ability to protect itself at sea.

Panic swept through British Columbia in early August 1914 when rumours that a pow-erful German naval squadron in South America was steaming north to the west coast, where it would presumably bombard Vancouver. British Columbia’s premier, Richard McBride, acted decisively, sending agents to neutral United States to purchase two sub-marines. The dully-named CC 1 and CC 2 doubled the Canadian navy overnight. While the action quelled fears, the submarines proved useless during the war.

Such was not the case with the German submarines, known as U-boats. They were an enormous threat as they pursued throughout much of the war a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, whereby they targeted all ships, military and civilian. With more than 400,000 Canadians sailing across the Atlantic in troopships, there was a constant fear that one of them might be torpedoed. None of these vessels were ever hit, al-though many civilian ships were sunk, including the Lusitania in May 1915. Its sinking caused outrage around the world as almost 1,200 civilians were killed, with the savage war in Europe now opening the floodgates to the slaughter of civilians.

The proud crew of His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Niobe.

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When the first U-boat crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 1916, Canadians felt threatened. The primary threat was on the east coast and once the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, German submarines prowled all along the coast sinking hundreds of ves-sels. The U-boats were sawing away at the all-important lifeline from North America to Britain, and when that line snapped, Britain would be starved into submission. By the end of 1917, the Germans were close to achieving their goal, with the sinking of 3,170 Allied and neutral ships, totalling nearly six million tons.

The Royal Navy responded with a desperate tactic of sailing the merchant ships in convoys, grouping them together with warships for protection. It was hideously com-plicated to organize and unglamorous to carry out for warships that preferred stand-up naval battles, but this evasion of the U-boats eventually reduced the threat.

By the summer of 1918, U-boats were sailing off Halifax, sinking merchant ships. While Canada’s small navy had expanded to over 100 ships at this point in the war, many of which were yachts donated by patriotic citizens, no vessel was strong enough to take on a U-boat with their fearsome gun. In one sad case, a Canadian ship was forced to flee a U-boat when it was encountered, which led to the navy being derided and condemned.

The Royal Canadian Navy never had the same pride of place for Canadians as the corps on the Western Front, but the navy had worked hard to keep the essential ports of Quebec, Halifax and Sydney, N.S., open, and to assist in the protection of Canadian land and sovereignty.

The RCN expanded from a mere 350 sailors to over 5,000 from 1914 to 1918, and over 150 died during the course of the war.


Opposite page, from top: The crew of Canadian submarine CC 1; submarines CC 1 and CC 2 alongside. Above: HMCS Niobe in dry dock at Halifax prior to the war.


Clockwise from top left: Rear-Admiral Charles Kingsmill, director of the Naval Service of Canada, 1910; students study at the Royal Naval College of Canada, Halifax, 1914; motor launches at Quebec City await shipment to Britain, August 1916.

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Opposite page, clockwise from top: The crew of HMCS Niobe—with their sign of optimism—after loading coal into the ship at Halifax; submarines under construction in Montreal, August 1916; a proud sailor shows off his uniform. Above: Royal Naval College of Canada students prepare to race at Halifax; the Royal Naval College, 1913; Captain Walter Hose on deck HMCS Rainbow, 1914.


CHAPTER 7

ABOVE THE BATTLEFIELDS

“New pilots were easy victims for experienced killers flying out of the sun or manoeuvring unseen from below.”

Airpower was born above the shattered battlefields of the Western Front. With flight in its infancy, the first rickety planes seemed closer to flying coffins of wood, glue and tarp than fighting machines. But almost immediately the

plane had distinguished itself in gathering intelligence. With a view of hundreds of kilometres, aircraft replaced the cavalry as the primary means of understanding where the enemy was, and where he was going.

Young men were drawn to the flying services. The thrill of flight captured the imagi-nation, and planes were much faster than even the swiftest race car. Canada had no air force until the last months of the war, but hundreds and then thousands of Canadians went into the British flying services.

In the first two years of the war, most of these Canadians paid exorbitant fees to receive flying lessons in Canada, but by 1917 the British had established a recruiting mission in the dominion. Overseas, the soldiers in the trenches, mired in the mud and with only the open skies upon which to peer for hope, watched the freedom of the pilots above them. Many young Canadians with good education, breeding and contacts applied successfully for a transfer.

While the soldiers on the ground might have wished to be in the air to escape their muddy horror, aerial combat was just as merciless. New pilots were easy victims for experienced killers flying out of the sun or manoeuvring unseen from below. The best pilots were soon labelled aces, after scoring five or 10 kills, depending on the air force. Along with the dashing title, they were recognized with medals and feted in society. These “knights of the sky” seemed to bring honour back to the battlefield, although many of the wartime celebrities did not survive the relentless air battles.

Canadians soon distinguished themselves in the air. W. A. (Billy) Bishop of Owen Sound, Ont., was an aggressive warrior, and one with a deadly eye for bringing down his opponents. William Barker, Raymond Collishaw and a host of other Canadians were soon destroying enemy aircraft, or driving them into the ground. Of the Empire’s top 30 aces by war’s end, a full third were Canadian.

Airmen listen to a lecture on rigging at the University of Toronto, 1917.

Chap t e r 7 | A b o v e T h e B a t t l e f i e l d s 81


The Germans, French and Americans also had their aces, with the best known being Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. The Red Baron had 80 aerial victories to his credit when, on the morning of April 21, 1918, he set upon a Canadian flyer, Wop May, who dove to escape the German hunter. But Richthofen was too good, and he closed for the kill. With May twisting and turning for his life, another Canadian—Roy Brown—dove on Richthofen, guns blazing. He forced Richthofen down into the spray of machine-gun bullets coming from Australian soldiers on the ground, with one of them ultimately leading to a lethal wound.

In the end, the Bishops and Richthofens had the glory, but the most important airmen were those who flew reconnaissance flights. It was they who had a profound im-pact on warfighting, as they flew the slow-moving “buses,” photographing the front. Forced to fly at low and predictable heights to get their images, they were easy targets for the high-flying fighters, although later versions of planes were well-armed, and the rear machine-gunners shot down many fighters who were surprised to find that their prey was not quite so vulnerable. The “eyes in the sky” photographed enemy co-ordinates, ammunition stockpiles, troop formations and camouflaged artillery pieces for the high command below, and this in turn saved lives in the infantry.

Some 22,812 Canadians flew or served as ground crew with the British air services, which were combined to form the Royal Air Force in early 1918. But attesting to the deadly nature of air battles, 1,388 Canadians were among the 6,166 British Empire air service fatalities. An additional 1,130 Canadians flyers were wounded or injured.

Airpower changed the nature of warfighting. From the terror-bombing attacks of Zeppelins and then fixed-wing aircraft against London, warfare would never be the same as civilians were now targeted and killed with the goal of damaging a nation’s war effort. Over the battlefield, aircraft would increasingly offer real-time intelligence, and the fighter planes, which would only get faster, were involved in attacking ground targets. Canadian flyers were among the best at all of these missions, and when the fly-ers returned home after the war, Canadians remained fascinated with air flight and its possibility of conquering the vast expanse of the second largest country in the world.

Left: Royal Flying Corps machines in France, summer of 1918. Below: RFC training in Canada, 1918.


Opposite page, from top: Victoria Cross recipient William Barker and the Sopwith Camel he used to destroy part of his total of approximately 50 enemy aircraft; Canadian pilots and their machines in France. Above: W.A. (Billy) Bishop VC ranked third among all air aces of the war, with 72 victories.


Opposite page, from top: The aircraft repair section at Camp Borden, Ont., 1917; airmen attend class in a hangar, presumably somewhere in Canada. Clockwise from above: A half dozen flying boats and their pilots are put to the test; a balloon pilot and observer prepare for a dangerous mission above the battlefield, September 1916; the wreckage of a downed German plane.


CHAPTER 8

REMEMBRANCE“The Great War remains a hinge point in our nation’s history. It is remembered as both a terrible slaughter and the war where Canada came of age.”

T he Great War was the most traumatic event in Canadian history. A nation of less than eight million suffered more than 60,000 dead. Those losses left gaping holes across society. Another 172,000 soldiers were wounded while

in service. Some of these men and women suffered minor injuries, broken bones or flesh wounds. For the less lucky, however, there were amputations of limbs, jaws shot away and blindness. Gas victims wheezed through corrupted lungs, hacking as they struggled through a shortened life. Countless veterans were afflicted with psychiatric wounds, for the most part undiagnosed. A shocking 6,000 veterans died between 1919 and 1921, many of them victims of old wounds. When one adds in those killed from Newfoundland, which was not part of Canada during the war, the total wartime dead is a mind-numbing 68,000.

Those who survived returned to Canada, with most of the Canadian Expeditionary Force demobilized by late summer of 1919. Canada’s shock troops returned to their civilian lives. Many of them had used the dream of returning home to sustain them-selves on the Western Front, but now they reunited with loved ones who had carried on without them for up to five years. Children did not recognize their fathers; wives stared warily at a new man who smoked and swore too much, and seemed ill at ease in his own home. How was a war veteran to go from leading men in battle or saving his comrades’ lives to working in a garment factory or toiling away on a farm? It was a difficult transition, from soldier to civilian, but most succeeded. Too much was at stake. Too much had been sacrificed. Veterans were set to build, following the slogan of the day, “a land fit for heroes.” That dream was soon shattered as the purse strings of the nation closed, as Canada laboured under a crippling war debt.

Within a few years, veterans banded together in regimental associations, and then built meeting halls. There were a number of competing veterans’ organizations, but most were amalgamated in 1925 to form what is now known as The Royal Canadian Legion. The veterans would remain a voice in society, with many parliamentarians for the next four decades coming from their ranks, including two prime ministers (Lester B. Pearson and John Diefenbaker), but also in rising through business, finance and education. Veterans got on with their lives, but they did not forget the war.

A Canadian veteran revisits France, 50 years after the war.

Chap t e r 8 | R e m e m b r a n c e 89


And neither did Canadians. Across the country, communities erected memorials to the fallen. Most often these were stone monuments in a prominent spot, usually near city hall or in a public park. Many were marked with the engraved names of those who never returned. But the commemoration was wide and deep across society. Churches erected stained glass windows. Special books were published to honour those who had enlisted from a particular business or school. Memorial gardens and buildings were erected as functional memorials. All served to remember those who had served in the “war to end all wars.”

In Ottawa, the federal government commissioned several national monuments, in-cluding the Peace Tower and the National War Memorial. But the most impressive Canadian memorial was not built in Canada. Walter Allward’s Canadian National Vimy Memorial, which was unveiled in 1936 to more than 6,000 Canadian veterans who had made an overseas pilgrimage to the ridge, remains a site of memory and mourning. Many of those present hoped never to see another war. They would be let down.

The war against Hitler from 1939 to 1945 involved more Canadians in uniform, but was less costly overall. After the terrible sacrifice and toil required to defeat Germany again, the nation emerged from that war a more prosperous and influential country. It had both economic and military might. This next generation of veterans got on with their lives, and had an easier time due to a series of forward-thinking legislation like the Veterans Charter.

But the Great War did not fade away. It returned to public consciousness in the 1960s, with new history books, documentaries, radio programs and plays shedding light on the war. While many of these cultural products took their tone from the disillusion-ment writing of the late 1920s, veterans in the 1960s also highlighted how the Great War had transformed Canada, moving its citizens from a colonial mindset and leverag-ing political reforms from Britain.

Now, more than 90 years on, the First World War remains a hinge point in our nation’s history. It is remembered as both a terrible slaughter and the war where Canada came of age. Remembrance Day, two minutes of silence, the poppy, In Flanders Fields; these and oth-er symbols all come from the Great War. In 2007, several thousand Canadians went back to Vimy, as a new generation of pilgrims rededicated the memorial. Even as the last Great War veteran, 109-year-old John Babcock, passed away in early 2010, the war continues to resonate. We can’t forget it, because it is ingrained in who we were, and who we are.


Opposite page, from top: A crowd greets Canadian soldiers as they march through Mons, Belgium, on November 11, 1918; General Arthur Currie shakes hands with some of the soldiers he had led during the long and costly war. Above: Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, November 1965.


Clockwise from left: A brass band welcomes home veterans arriving in Halifax; German officers decorate their car with a white flag after surrendering near Mons, Belgium, November 1918; the commander of the Canadian Corps, General Arthur Currie, salutes Canadian formations marching through Mons, November 11, 1918.


Opposite page, clockwise from top: Some of the Byng Boys return from action at Vimy Ridge, April 1917; the National War Memorial’s tribute to Canadian service and sacrifice in the First World War; a Canadian heads home aboard a troopship. Clockwise from top: Belgians and their Allied liberators meet in Mons, November 1918; Canadians and citizens of Mons commemorate the victory; officers prepare to depart for the Channel coast and Dear Old Blighty.

CoverGEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19930013-789

MastheadPage 1: WILLIAM RIDER-RIDER, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002165

ContentsPage 2: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA004564

Timeline To VictoryPage 4-5: NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-9-12; PERCY E. MACDONALD, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA030883; DONALD S. MACPHERSON, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA200224; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA004394; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA211345; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001717; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA022739; WILLIAM RIDER-RIDER, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002084

Introduction: Canada And The First World WarPage 6-7: WILLIAM IVOR CASTLE, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000832Page 8-9: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000682Page 10-11: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001570; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-10-7Page 12-13: CLIFFORD M. JOHNSTON, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA056171; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-10-39; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—C-032228; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-9-35; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA022742Page 14-15: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001149Page 16-17: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVESPage 18-19: ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-9-49; IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM—Q5773Page 20-21: DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001439; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA207187Page 22-23: ARCHIVES OF ONTARIOPage 24-25: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000387; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-10-37Page 26-27: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001596

Chapter 1: Answering The CallPage 28-29: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVESPage 30-31: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA005642; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001994 Page 32-33: HORACE BROWN, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA107281; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA107236; MANITOBA ARCHIVES—N2971Page 34-35: JEAN-BAPTISTE DORION, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA122937; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA127034; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—C036116

Chapter 2: Into The TrenchesPage 36-37: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVESPage 38-39: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001168; HENRY KNOBEL, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000742Page 40-41: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000157; WILLIAM IVOR CASTLE, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000568; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000204Page 42-43: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000262; WILLIAM IVOR CASTLE, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001326; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—F4436-0-0-0-209; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-9-48; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19920044-507; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19920044-705; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19930013-631

Map: Major Canadian Operations: Part 1Page 44-45: WILLIAM RIDER-RIDER, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002140; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001096; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE—PL144982; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000314

Chapter 3: Battling OnPage 46-47: WILLIAM RIDER-RIDER, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002156Page 48-49: DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—C014151

Page 50-51: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001182Page 52-53: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002951; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001020; WILLIAM IVOR CASTLE, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000868; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-9-45; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE

Chapter 4: Shock TroopsPage 54-55: WILLIAM RIDER-RIDER, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA003377Page 56-57: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMPage 58-59: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002137; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA004388; WILLIAM RIDER-RIDER, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002162Page 60-61: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19920085-611; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO— C224-0-0-10-12; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO—C224-0-0-10-26; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19920085-006; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19920044-797

Map: Major Canadian Operations: Part 2Page 62-63: DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA002860; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19930012-649; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19930012-924

Chapter 5: Doctors And Angels Of MercyPage 64-65: WILLIAM IVOR CASTLE, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000912Page 66-67: DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000820Page 68-69: WILLIAM RIDER-RIDER, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA003535; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000397Page 70-71: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000931; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—C080027; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; GEORGE METCALF COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19930012-766; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001024

Chapter 6: Service On The SeaPage 72-73: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA139190Page 74-75: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA171522; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA113255; NOTMAN STUDIO, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA028497Page 76-77: WILLIAM JAMES TOPLEY, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA042541; NOTMAN STUDIO, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA028512; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA143243Page 78-79: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA190758; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—C032270; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; NOTMAN STUDIO, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA028499; NOTMAN STUDIO, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA028503; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA141880

Chapter 7: Above The BattlefieldsPage 80-81: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—C020396Page 82-83: GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19930012-307; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE Page 84-85: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA172313; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCEPage 86-87: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA22857; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000677; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE

Chapter 8: RemembrancePage 88-89: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVESPage 90-91: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA003522; GEORGE METCALF ARCHIVAL COLLECTION, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM—19680113-001; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCEPage 92-93: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA214115; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVESPage 94-95: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA001270; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—C27660; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA003572; DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE

CreditsPage 96: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA000809

PHOTO CREDITS

Canadian soldiers celebrate while wearing souvenirs, including German helmets, collected from the battlefield near Courcelette, France, September 1916.

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