A month later, Haig launched the infamous Somme offensive, the largest British offensive of the entire war. As unbelievable as it may seem in retrospect, given its horrendous cost, this major offensive was undertaken primarily to relieve pressure on the French army which was suffering staggering losses at Verdun. “Put in the most brutal terms,” one historian has said, “the plan was about killing Germans on the Somme so they couldn’t kill Frenchmen elsewhere.”[22] To be fair, though, it was also intended to eliminate a large German salient overlooking the Somme River.
As usual, it began with a massive artillery barrage that fired 1.7 million shells,[23] followed by an attack by eleven British divisions on the morning of July 1, 1916—Dominion Day (Canada’s national birthday). Despite the magnitude of the bombardment, the German trenches had not been badly damaged, and the attacking troops faced the usual barbed wire and hundreds of German machine guns.
It was on this first day of the Somme offensive that the Newfoundland Regiment was virtually wiped out at Beaumont-Hamel. Two previous assaults there by British troops having failed that morning, the Newfoundland Regiment was sent in, sustaining 684 casualties, 310 of them killed. It was a catastrophe that shook Newfoundland badly, and to this day, July 1 is commemorated in Newfoundland—which joined Canada in 1949—not as Canada’s national birthday but as the anniversary of the slaughter of the Newfoundland Regiment.
The Newfoundlanders had plenty of company. On that irrational first day of the Somme offensive, the British suffered 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of them fatal. Morton and Granatstein do not exaggerate when they describe the first day of the Somme offensive as “a military tragedy of epochal dimensions.”[24] Nobody ever called Haig faint-hearted, however, and these losses did not cause him to have second thoughts, so the offensive carried on. But the Germans were as committed to holding this salient as the Allies were to holding the Ypres Salient, so the slaughter continued through July and August into September. Fortunately, the Canadians, who had marched the fifty miles south from Hazebrouck to Albert in August, were held in reserve until early September, by which time Robert Clements said “the oldtimers could fairly smell all the signs of something big rapidly coming along.”[25]
It was indeed. The Canadians were then called upon to assist the British in an attack intended to capture the village of Courcelette and Regina Trench, a major German defensive position which lay beyond it. The attack began with a major artillery barrage on September 15. Arthur Chute, who was in an ammunition column delivering shells to the artillery, described arriving at the front and hearing
the unbroken voice of a thousand guns . . . firing at white heat. For a moment I was dazed by the awful shock of noises. Then the meaning of it all flashed upon me, and I was happy—a creature of the very storm itself. This was England’s answer to the Hun, our voice to the Beast.[26]
The attack on Courcelette marked the first use of tanks, but their impact proved to be insignificant. Haig had been promised 150 tanks for use at the Somme, but only 49 arrived and only 13 actually participated in the battle. Seven of them were allotted to the Canadians, but only one got through. Even so, the tanks did alarm the Germans and helped the men of the Second and Third Divisions to take the town. It was a brutal battle, however, involving house-to-house fighting during which the 22nd and 25th Battalions fought off eleven counterattacks in two days.
Beyond the village lay Kenora Ridge, which was taken after another week of hand-to-hand combat in heavy rain, but the initial assault on Regina Trench failed badly. Of the 580 men of the 43rd (Cameron Highlanders) Battalion who went over the top, only 68 returned.[27] Then the Fourth Division, which had arrived in France during the summer but had just entered the lines, was brought in and succeeded after two weeks of hard fighting. It was “a hollow victory,” however. Once a strong position, Regina Trench “was now smashed and flattened by repeated bombardment—a mass of debris and dead bodies, too many of them Canadian.”[28]
Still, the Canadians had achieved their objective, and Haig was delighted with the results, declaring that the capture of Courcelette had resulted in “a gain more considerable than any which had attended our arms in the course of a single operation since the commencement of the offensive.”[29] Lieutenant Colonel Edward Hilliam, who commanded the 25th Battalion and was himself wounded at Courcelette, declared that “I have the honor of commanding the finest body of men I have ever seen.”[30] Nasmith, ever the cheerleader, waxed poetically over “the magnificent courage and heroism” of the Canadians, concluding breathlessly that “only when some master of language takes up the theme, and with brain aflame with the heroic grandeur of their deeds, will justice be done to the glorious achievements of our Canadian boys during their ‘blood baths of the Somme’.”[31]
The victory came at tremendous cost, however: 7,230 casualties “for half a broken-down small French town and a few acres of muddy clay.”[32] Clements believed that, “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.”[33] Some were beginning to wonder if the cost of supporting the British was not merely high but much higher than necessary. “Call it glory if you like,” said Clements, but “some of those who were there and managed to survive had other words for it and for those higher up who had sent them and their wonderful young friends head-on into that deadly trap.”[34] When the Rev. Charles Gordon, the 43rd Battalion’s chaplain, returned to Canada on leave not long after the battle for Regina Trench and stopped in Ottawa to see Sam Hughes, an old friend, he told him about the battle. Hughes “listened to my story with tears of rage and grief running down his face,” he later recalled. “It would not be fair to give a verbatim report of his comments on the High Command of the British army.”[35]
When Haig finally called an end to the Somme offensive because of the deteriorating weather conditions—and just possibly because of the horrendous losses—in November 1916, the British had lost 419,654 men, more than 24,000 of them Canadians, the French had lost 194,541, and the Germans had lost 465,525. What the Allies had gained was thirty miles of ground, seven miles wide. It was, as Morton and Granatstein have said, “mass butchery ordered by generals who were all-powerful and never seen.”[36]
The Canadians now returned north to trenches in front of Bully Grenay in Artois to prepare for the British spring offensive at Arras. Now recognized by the British to be outstanding “storm troops,” they were henceforth designated to lead the assault in difficult battles. Their assignment in the Arras offensive was to capture Vimy Ridge, the prominent escarpment overlooking the Douai Plain that the Allies had already tried three times and failed to take back from the Germans at a cost to both sides of some 300,000 men.
The British Arras offensive was part of a larger offensive spearheaded by the new French commander-in-chief, Robert Nivelle, intended to destroy German soldiers in a large salient that extended north from Soissons to Arras. Because the Canadians were being asked to take Vimy Ridge without any British support (except for one brigade), all four divisions of the Canadian Corps were brought together to fight as a unit for the first time.
Byng planned the assault in exceptional detail, training the troops on a full-scale mock-up of the battlefield built behind the lines so that all officers and even the men knew the terrain and understood precisely what was expected of them. Instead of attacking in line in successive waves, the usual practice, they would attack in platoons, moving at their own rate. Tramways and plank roads were built to carry ammunition and other supplies and equipment to the front line, and when the day of battle came, the men got to the attack point through underground caves and tunnels instead of having to slog through the mud.[37]
After a two-week barrage of a million shells, an even more intense bombardment by 1,000 guns began at 5:30 a.m. on April 9—Easter Monday. When the troops attacked in sleet and snow, they kept pace with the barrage which was coordinated to cre
ep just ahead of them, a risky new but effective tactic. Within an hour, the First, Second, and Third Divisions had reached their objectives. Only the Fourth Division, which was responsible for taking and holding Hill 145, the highest and most important point on the ridge, encountered problems, but by mid-afternoon on the 10th, it had succeeded as well, thanks largely to an assault by Cape Breton’s 85th Highlanders—a newly arrived battalion that had received limited training and had no battle experience—that courageously charged up the ridge with no artillery support.
British military historian Robin Neillands described Vimy Ridge as “that rare thing, a Great War battle that went according to plan.”[38] It was a good deal more than that. It was the first major Allied victory on the Western Front since the war had begun and the Canadians “had captured more ground, more prisoners, and more guns than any previous operation, all of which had been done against the heaviest of odds.”[39] John Keegan has described the Canadian achievement as “sensational.”[40] Probably equally gratifying to Canadians at home at least was the praise that came from below the border. “Well done, Canada,” wrote the New York Times.[41]
The price, as usual, was high: more than 10,500 casualties, 3,598 of them killed. According to Tim Cook, the fighting at Vimy was “far more intense and costly than the slaughter on the Somme” and April 9 was not only “the single bloodiest day of the entire war for the Canadian Corps” but the “bloodiest in all of Canadian military history.”[42] Four Victoria Crosses were earned that day.
The Canadian triumph at Vimy Ridge was more than just a battlefield victory or a vindication of meticulous organization and planning. It was “the turning point in the war for the Canadian Corps: the point where it moved from an amateur to a professional warfighting force.” From Vimy onward, the Canadians “never lost another set-piece or major engagement, delivering victory after victory, and often against the most formidable of defensive positions. By war’s end, the Canadian Corps had fully earned their [sic] reputation as shock troops.”[43]
But the victory at Vimy Ridge was more important than that. Because all four Canadian divisions fought together for the first time and all regions of Canada participated in the battle, the victory immediately assumed a profound symbolic significance for Canadians. It was seen as signifying the birth of a nation. Percy Willmot, a sergeant in the 25th Battalion, realized this at the time, writing that “as the guns spoke, over the bags they went—men of CB [Cape Breton], sons of NS [Nova Scotia] & NB [New Brunswick]—FC’s [French Canadians] & westerners—all Canucks.”[44] In other words, as Brigadier General A. E. Ross later said, “in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.”[45] Many Canadians would agree with historian D. J. Goodspeed that “no matter what the constitutional historians may say, it was on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, and not on any other date, that Canada became a nation.”[46]
As Cook has rightly observed, Vimy Ridge “overshadows every other event in Canada’s Great War experience.”[47] This was recognized in 1922 when the French government ceded the ridge and the land surrounding it to Canada in perpetuity. On it stands a stunning white marble memorial unveiled in 1936 that lists the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers of the Great War who have no known graves. Over the years the Vimy memorial has become the overseas focal point for Canadian war remembrance, virtually a shrine to which Canadians make a pilgrimage by the thousands every year.
Julian Byng was rewarded for his triumph at Vimy Ridge with a promotion to command the British Third Army. He was succeeded as commander of the Canadian Corps by Arthur Currie. The Canadian Corps, already a distinct army within the British army, finally had a Canadian commanding officer. Currie had impressed Byng and other British military leaders and would go on in the final year and a half of the war to impress British political leaders as well. Indeed, Lloyd George, who had little confidence in Haig, seriously contemplated promoting Currie to command all British forces in the field in 1918.
Unfortunately, he did not look like a general. Not having had a military education and a professional military career, he didn’t demonstrate the usual ramrod posture, didn’t wear the usual Kitchener-style moustache, and had a pear shape which his uniform could not conceal. Truth be told, he looked like a soft headquarters general who enjoyed the luxuries of behind-the-line chateaux. But his appearance was misleading, although it was true that he was awkward when trying to chat with the men and he didn’t like to get muddy when visiting the trenches. But he genuinely cared about his men, and as the historian Jonathan Vance puts it, “he was thorough and dogged” but also “showed the flashes of flair and creativity that characterize the best commanders.”[48]
His first operation was to direct the Canadian Corps’ participation in the next phase of the Arras offensive. Sir Henry Horne, commanding the British First Army, ordered Currie to capture Lens, which was eight miles northeast of Arras and visible from Vimy Ridge. After studying the situation, Currie concluded that a frontal assault on Lens would serve little purpose and be very costly in casualties, and persuaded Horne that, before advancing on Lens, he should first capture Hill 70, which would give the Allies the high ground overlooking the city and force the Germans to counterattack over open ground.
The attack took place on August 15, and Hill 70 was taken in a fierce battle, after which the Canadians advanced on Lens. As expected, the Germans counterattacked—twenty-one-times—through an artillery barrage and the fire of 250 Canadian machine guns. When it all came to an end on the 25th, the Canadians had achieved their main goal, taking Hill 70 and inflicting some 20,000 casualties on the Germans, but they had failed to capture Lens. Brigadier General E. W. B. Morrison, the Canadian Corps’ artillery commander, described it as “the greatest Boche-killing week that anyone in the Canadian Corps has ever taken part in.”[49] Even though Haig called it “one of the finest minor operations of the war,” a British staff officer told Morrison that Horne was “appalled” by how many shells had been fired. Morrison’s blunt reply: “So are the Germans.”[50]
For one of the first times on the Western Front, the defending forces had suffered greater losses than the attacking forces. In the somewhat distorted logic of the war, this was thought a positive result. But it was also, in Currie’s opinion, “the hardest battle in which the Corps has participated.”[51] Six Canadians earned the Victoria Cross, but there were more than 9,000 casualties. It is arguable that there were too many casualties, in fact, because, while Currie had meticulously planned the assault on Hill 70, the attacks on Lens were “clumsy, hurried affairs that betrayed Currie’s inexperience.”[52] The operation should have been called off earlier than it was, and even though Haig was undoubtedly right when he observed that the morale of the Corps was “very high,”[53] some at least were beginning to wonder if Currie was beginning to seek success at the expense of his men.
With the collapse of the Nivelle offensive, there were mutinies in fifty-four divisions of the French army, and Nivelle was replaced as commander-in-chief of the French army by General Philippe Pétain. Meanwhile, revolution had broken out in Russia in March 1917, and the Germans had understandably assisted Vladimir Lenin to return home from Switzerland. Not surprisingly, the Canadian government was less helpful when Leon Trotsky set out for Russia, sailing from New York to Europe via Halifax. He and his family were removed from the ship and taken to an internment camp at Amherst, Nova Scotia, for questioning. During their twenty-six day stay, while they were being interrogated, Trotsky typically established a strong rapport with many of the 850 internees—some of them German prisoners of war but most of them immigrants from what had become enemy countries—and when he and his family were finally released, they enjoyed a rousing send-off that included the camp orchestra playing a revolutionary march. Captain F. C. Whiteman, an officer at the camp, later recalled that Trotsky had “quite the most powerful personality of any man [he had] ever met before or since.”[54] Trotsky resumed his journey to Russia, where he joined Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who got control o
f the government six months later and promptly took Russia out of the war.
Despite the failure of the Nivelle offensive, Haig believed that the Germans were on their last legs, and he was now finally able to launch his long-desired Flanders offensive. The result was what was officially called the Third Battle of Ypres but was more popularly known—especially in Canada—as Passchendaele, a series of battles that took place between July and November 1917 for control of the ridges south and east of Ypres. The fighting began on June 7 with an attack on the German positions at Messines-Wytschaete Ridge, which dominated Ypres. Nineteen mines—many of them planted by a tunnelling company of Cape Breton coal miners—shattered the whole face of the ridge on an eight-mile front, after which it was easily taken. This prepared the way for the main offensive later in the summer by removing the Germans from a strategic position which they had held for two years.
The offensive began on July 31 with an attack on Pilckem Ridge, and by early October, the Germans had been pushed back to Passchendaele Ridge, at heavy cost to both sides. At this point the Canadian Corps was brought in to capture the village of Passchendaele and the high ground on which it stood. Ironically, its starting point was virtually the same line the Canadians had defended more than two years earlier before the first gas attacks in April 1915.
The decision to use the Canadian Corps—and the Australian Corps—for the assault on Passchendaele reflected Haig’s belief that the Canadians and Australians were the best troops under his command and he needed a victory, both to bolster his own reputation and to raise morale in the British army. Bernard Montgomery, then a captain who rose to the rank of Field Marshal in the Second World War and became Lord Montgomery of Alamein, commented at the time that “the Canadians . . . seem to think they are the best troops in France and that we get them to do our most difficult jobs.”[55] It was true: they were and Haig did.
Canada's Great War, 1914-1918 Page 14