Canada's Great War, 1914-1918

by Brian Douglas Tennyson

  1. Diary, April 1915, quoted in English, Borden, 109.

  2. Cook, At the Sharp End, 191, 189.

  3. Cook, At the Sharp End, 212.

  4. Quoted in Cook, At the Sharp End, 214.

  5. Cook, At the Sharp End, 185.

  6. Sam Steele (1849–1919) had not only served many years with the North West Mounted Police but had seen military service in the Red River expedition of 1870–71 and the North West Rebellion of 1885. During the South African war, he had raised and commanded Lord Strathcona’s Regiment. He subsequently commanded Military Districts 10 and 13 and served as Inspector General for western Canada before being given command of the Second Division in 1915. On his remarkable career, see S. B. Steele, Forty Years in Canada (New York: Dodd Mead, 1915; reprinted Toronto, 2000).

  7. Public Archives of Nova Scotia [PANS], MG 100, f116, #9. J. P. Dwyer letter to editor, Halifax Chronicle, June, 1964.

  8. Letter to Sydney Daily Post, May 28, 1915, reprinted in Halifax Morning Chronicle, June 18, 1915.

  9. R. Lewis, Over the Top with the 25th: Chronicle of Events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette [sic] (Halifax, NS: H. H. Marshall, 1918), 7. This was not always the case. J. Logan, who sailed with the 54th Battalion on the Saxonia a year later, described the food aboard ship as “hell. They damn near starved us and what we did get they gave to us like hogs. They had three stores for selling stuff—eatables—so a bunch of the 54th got together and raided them. We broke into a hatch and got lots to eat. They have the 54th Battalion charged up with six thousand dollars. We certainly played Hell. The men were starving and had to do something. Our own officers would not stop us, so you can guess how bad it was.” J. Logan, quoted in William D. Mathieson, My Grandfather’s War: Canadians Remember the First World War (Toronto: Macmillan, 1981), 27.

  10. Letter to Middleton [Nova Scotia] Outlook, reprinted in Halifax Morning Chronicle, July 21, 1915. John Addy Sponagle was a medical doctor from Middleton who joined the 25th in November 1914.

  11. Letter to Sydney Daily Post, May 28, 1915, reprinted in Halifax Morning Chronicle, June 18, 1915.

  12. Report from unidentified 25th Battalion officer. Halifax Morning Chronicle, July 15, 1915.

  13. Vanier diary, May 30, 1915, quoted in Georges Philias Vanier, Georges Vanier, Soldier: The Wartime Letters and Diaries, 1915–1919, ed. Deborah Cowley (Toronto: Dundurn, 2000), 38. Born in Montreal, Georges-Philéas Vanier became a lawyer and served in the 22nd Battalion until being wounded in 1918, resulting in the loss of a leg. He earned the Military Cross and bar and the Distinguished Service Order. After the war, he returned to his law practice before serving as aide-de-camp to Governors General Lord Byng and Lord Willingdon. He served as secretary to the Canadian High Commission in London from 1930 to 1939, then was briefly Canadian minister to France. Promoted to major general, he served as Canadian minister to the governments in exile of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia, and Canadian representative to the Free French and later the Conseil National de la Résistance. He served as ambassador to France from 1944 to 1953, then was the first francophone governor general of Canada from 1959 to 1967.

  14. Robert N. Clements, Merry Hell: The Story of the 25th Battalion (Nova Scotia Regiment), Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914–1919, ed. Brian Douglas Tennyson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 49–51.

  15. Clements, 44. Clements adds that the Canadians subsequently “learned to protect their money better and the public became more aware of the hazards of trying to shortchange them.” Clements, 45. Lieutenant Karl Wetherbe of the 6th Battalion Engineers noted on June 5th, 1915, that “A. Cozzie’s fried fish shop . . . has been placed out of bounds for all troops.” Karl Wetherbe, From the Rideau to the Rhine and Back: The 6th Field Company and Battalion Canadian Engineers in the Great War (Toronto: Hunter-Rose, 1928), 25.

  16. Lewis, 7.

  17. Vanier to his mother, September 2, 1915, quoted in Vanier, 52.

  18. R. C. Fetherstonhaugh, The 24th Battalion, C.E.F., Victoria Rifles of Canada, 1914–1919 (Montreal: Gazette Print. Co., 1930), 20.

  19. Vanier to his mother, September 14, 1915, quoted in Vanier, 57.

  20. Clements, 73.

  21. G. W. L. Nicholson, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1962), 110.

  22. Clements, 75.

  23. Clements, 75.

  24. Leopold Greville (1882–1928) was the son of the Earl of Warwick and became the sixth earl in 1924. He served as aide-de-camp to Sir John French until being given command of the Fourth Brigade.

  25. Quoted in Cook, At the Sharp End, 307. On British assistance to the Corps, see Douglas E. Delaney, “Mentoring the Canadian Corps: Imperial Officers and the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918,” The Journal of Military History 77, no. 3 (July 2013): 931–53.

  26. Morton and Granatstein, Marching to Armageddon, 106.

  27. MacGregor, 39; Clements, 78.

  28. MacGregor, 39.

  29. Vanier reported on November 2nd that there was five feet of water in the communications trench. Vanier diary, November 2, 1915, quoted in Vanier, 83.

  30. MacGregor, 40.

  31. MacGregor, 40.

  32. Nicholson, 127. George Nasmith also claimed that “on Christmas day the enemy made numerous efforts to fraternize with the Canadians but without success,” acknowledging only that “there was practically no firing throughout the day and lugubrious German songs were wafted at intervals to our trenches.” George Gallie Nasmith, Canada’s Sons and Great Britain in the World War, Vol. 1 (Toronto: J.C. Winston, 1919), 260. Stanley Weintraub makes no reference to the 1915 “truce” in Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce. New York: Free Press, 2001.

  33. Fetherstonhaugh, 34.

  34. Fetherstonhaugh, 34.

  35. Fetherstonhaugh, 34–35.

  Chapter 7

  Shock Troops of the Empire

  As bad as the later battles of 1917 and 1918 turned out to be, none of them at their worst could fully compare with what happened to the Canadian troops on the Somme in September and October of 1916.

  —Robert Clements[1]

  In a sense it could be argued that 1916, as desperate as that appalling year was in terms of wholesale slaughter on the Western Front, marked the turning point of the war, at least as far as Canada was concerned. Borden was not satisfied with British political leadership generally, but he especially was not satisfied with its management of the war and had become convinced that Canadian troops were being squandered by incompetent British officers. He was not, of course, the only one who was thinking this way, but he was the leader of the senior Dominion, which at that point had some 90,000 men in uniform.

  In January 1916, he told Sir George Perley—the American-born lumber magnate and political colleague whom he had appointed acting high commissioner (equivalent to ambassador) in London following Sir Charles Tupper’s death in 1914—that Canada would not continue to send troops to be wasted and must be given a voice in the formulation of policy.[2] This would become an important issue in 1916, and the fact that the Canadian government was paying the full costs of its growing army strengthened Borden’s hand in demanding some control over its deployment.

  The hated and ineffective Ross rifle was finally replaced by the British Lee-Enfield in the spring, the American-made Colt machine guns were replaced with lighter and more reliable British Lewis machine guns, and as fast as they could be produced, steel helmets were replacing the useless cloth caps that the Canadians had been wearing since 1914.

  Most significantly, in October Borden finally sacked Sam Hughes, the erratic, unstable, albeit energetic Minister of Militia and Defence, replacing him with A. E. Kemp, a competent Toronto financier. At the same time, management of the Canadian army in Britain and France and direct relations with British military leaders was assigned to the equally competent Perley, who became Minister of Overseas Forces with a seat in the Cabinet. Finally, Borden’s
frustration and increasingly vocal criticisms of British military leadership impressed David Lloyd George, the Secretary of State for War—who fully agreed with him—who in December 1916 staged a political coup and replaced the ineffective Herbert Asquith as prime minister.

  It cannot be said that the year began well on the battlefield. In fact, it could not have begun in a more disastrous way. In March, the Canadian Second Division was called upon to support the British Third Division’s attempt to eliminate a small trench salient—which has been described as “a slight knoll or mound in a water-logged area”[3]—at St. Eloi in the Ypres Salient. On the day of the attack, March 27, six enormous mines were exploded, wiping out two German companies, destroying large sections of the German trenches, and creating huge craters. Even so, the Germans mounted a determined defense, supported by an intense artillery bombardment that further churned up the mud. The fighting took place in utter chaos until the night of April 3/4, when the British withdrew and were replaced by the Canadians. The Germans naturally seized the opportunity provided by this transition to counterattack.

  Meanwhile, the weather, which had improved somewhat during March, had reverted to the usual heavy rain so that the fighting was taking place not just in a sea of mud but one in which trenches no longer existed and shell-holes and craters were filled with water. It was, according to Robert Clements, “one big sea of mud and water,” accompanied by fog which “reduced visibility to nil.”[4]

  As the German artillery shelled the Canadians stumbling blindly in the darkness, rain, and fog, many men disappeared in the mud or water-filled shell holes and were drowned. The 31st Battalion’s Donald Fraser reported that the Canadians were led by a guide to one of the craters, “a slimy pool of rotten, stagnant water,” where they were left “with no information regarding the whereabouts of the enemy or our immediate communications.” In the morning, “the sights that met our gaze were so horrible and ghastly that they beggar description. Heads, arms and legs were protruding from the mud at every yard and dear God knows how many bodies the earth swallowed.” At least thirty corpses could be seen lying in the crater “and beneath its clayey waters other victims must be lying killed and drowned.”[5] Meanwhile, communications completely broke down, meaning that divisional headquarters “could give no protective artillery support and indescribable chaos reigned.”[6]

  By noon on the 4th, half of the 27th Battalion had been killed or wounded, and that night the Germans retook most of what the British had captured. The original intention had been for the Fifth Brigade to continue the attack, but common sense finally prevailed, and it was required only to hold off the German counterattacks while building whatever shelter the ground and weather would permit.[7] The 25th Battalion was especially hard hit, Ralph Lewis recalling that “some of our boys were obliged to remain in those mine craters for twenty-four hours with no chance of communication with the rear.” Lieutenant Howard Johnstone and his men beat off “no less than five attacks in four hours.”[8]

  Gerald McElhenny later described the battle of the St. Eloi craters as “beyond a doubt the most trying experience” which the 25th Battalion ever experienced. “The situation may better be imagined than described.”[9] Agar Adamson, a captain in the Princess Pats, wrote to his wife that it was “beyond my powers to describe what has happened in the last 4 days, but I know if I read what I am going to write, I doubt if I would be able to believe it was not written by a liar or [was] the ravings of a lunatic.”[10]

  When it all came to an end on April 19 with both sides exhausted, the few surviving Canadians surrendered. Canadian losses were about 1,400, three times those of the Germans, and as one historian has said, “the slaughter had all been over the ownership of seven holes in the mud.”[11] “None of us ever expected to get out,” Adamson wrote; “our only salvation was that the Germans had no idea how weak we were.”[12] Although Nasmith was undoubtedly correct when he described it “as one of the greatest feats of endurance and stubborn tenacity in the history of Canadian arms, being only rivalled perhaps by the battle of Passchendaele,”[13] he was also right when he said that “there was little glory in it for anybody and a good deal of prestige lost by many.”[14]

  It was, in fact, a total disaster and repercussions were not long in coming. Alderson arrived on the 15th to deliver a stern reprimand to both the officers and men of the Second Division on their initial performance, callously telling the inexperienced troops that it was “the duty of every officer, non-commissioned officer and man to die in the trenches” if necessary to prevent the enemy from breaking through their lines.”[15] He later told the division’s officers not only that “it was their duty to shoot a man who retired in the face of the enemy without orders” but also that “by their determination and force of character, they must get a real grip of their men.”[16]

  To reinforce the point, Alderson sacked the commanders of the 25th and 27th Battalions. Sir Herbert Plumer, commanding officer of the British Second Army, took action as well, firing his Chief of Staff and several British officers. He wanted to fire Turner and Ketchen, the commanders of the 5th and 6th Canadian Brigades, because they clearly had lost touch with what was going on and had provided little or no leadership. Alderson agreed with Plumer, especially bearing in mind Turner’s weak performance at the Second Battle of Ypres.

  Haig, however, after weighing “the danger of a serious feud between the Canadians and the British” against “the retention of a couple of incompetent commanders,” rejected Plumer’s recommendations and Prime Minister Borden concurred. The extraordinary result was that Turner and Ketchen retained their commands and Alderson was fired![17] He was replaced by Sir Julian Byng, a British cavalry officer who had proven to be an effective field commander and had managed the successful British withdrawal from Gallipoli.[18]

  The battle for St. Eloi was a severe embarrassment for the Canadian Corps, but using the inexperienced Second Division troops in what was clearly going to be a difficult operation was obviously unwise, especially when no reconnaissance had been done in advance and the almost immediate breakdown in communications meant that neither Turner nor Ketchen had any real idea of what was going on. More seriously, however, neither had made any real effort to find out what was going on, and their analysis of what information they had was inadequate. The historian of the Canadian Corps, Tim Cook, actually places most of the blame for the fiasco on Plumer because he had sent inexperienced troops into a very difficult if not impossible situation, relying on commanders like Turner and Ketchen, who had not thus far distinguished themselves as field commanders.[19]

  When Byng assumed command of the Corps, he moved quickly to deal with its weak leadership. He removed or transferred fifteen battalion commanders and two Brigadier Generals, including Turner. This proved to be a very wise move because it made available to Borden a highly competent military administrator. Turner was subsequently promoted to the newly created position of Chief of Staff of the Canadian forces in England, responsible for their training and overall management, and did an excellent job of it. Byng also wisely recognized that Arthur Currie, while still learning his job, was fundamentally sound and determined to improve as a commander, and in effect adopted him as his protégé and likely successor.

  While the badly shaken Second Division tried to recover from this disaster, the Third Division arrived from England and joined the First Division on Mount Sorrel and at nearby Observatory Ridge, almost the only high ground remaining in British hands at Ypres. As one historian has described it, Mount Sorrel was “a scarred lump of earth that glowered sullenly over the battlefield”[20] that included Sanctuary Wood, the most easterly projection of the Ypres Salient. If the Germans could take it they would overlook the entire salient and might be able to force the Allies to withdraw from it.

  On June 2, they launched a fierce artillery bombardment on the totally inexperienced Third Division, killing Major General Malcolm Mercer, its commanding officer, who became the highest ranking Canadian officer to
be killed in the war. The 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles lost 90% of their men and the Princess Pats about half. Lieutenant Colonel George Baker of the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles and Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Buller of the Princess Pats were both killed. Baker was also a member of parliament, the only one killed in action in the war.[21] Brigadier General Victor Williams, commander of the Eighth Brigade and formerly commandant of Valcartier at the beginning of the war, was wounded and captured.

  This savage artillery bombardment was followed by an infantry attack that drove the Canadians back, giving the Germans control of Mount Sorrel and leaving the road to Ypres open and undefended. They staged another attack on the 3rd, but the Canadians managed to hold their positions until on the 12th Currie’s First Division was brought in and staged a major assault, which seemed to surprise the Germans, who fell back to their original positions. At this point both sides gave up the struggle. The Canadians had held their ground but at the cost of 8,000 men, while the Germans had lost almost 6,000 trying to take it.