Canada's Great War, 1914-1918

by Brian Douglas Tennyson

  1. W. A. Bishop, Winged Warfare: Hunting the Huns in the Air (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918), 1.

  2. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, 21.

  3. Wise, 26–27.

  4. Smith was the son of a wealthy businessman who owned oil wells and a refinery in southwestern Ontario. His service overseas proved to be brief. Apparently because of ill health, he returned to Canada in May 1916 and spent the rest of the war on the staff of Admiral Kingsmill. He subsequently pursued a career in banking in New York but joined the RCAF in September 1939 and worked with Billy Bishop and Clayton Knight, a prominent American commercial artist who had served in the RFC during the First World War, to recruit American pilots for the RCAF before the U.S. entered the Second World War. He was awarded the British OBE and the U.S. Order of Merit. Ince was the son of a prominent Toronto manufacturer and merchant. For a good contemporary account of flight training at Long Branch, see George Fleming, “Training Men to Fly,” The Canadian Magazine, 46, no. 1 (November 1915): 215–23. Born in London, Ontario, Fleming studied engineering at the University of Toronto and was employed in his father’s business when he joined the RNAS in August 1915. For a time, he ferried aircraft from England to France, then served in 3 Wing on bombing missions. He returned to Toronto on leave in December 1916 but returned to France in January 1917, was shot down on April 14, 1917, and died three days later.

  5. Wise, 75.

  6. Wise, 75.

  7. Wise, 39.

  8. Wise, 42.

  9. Wise, 45.

  10. Wise, 392.

  11. Wise, 75.

  12. Wise, 75.

  13. Wise, 113.

  14. Stanley M. Ulanoff, Introduction to Hartney, ix.

  15. He remained in the U.S. Army Air Service after the war, moved to Washington in 1918, and became an American citizen in 1923. See also Hartney, Up and At ’Em. His brother, James Cuthbert Hartney, was killed on May 1, 1917, while serving in the RFC.

  16. Major General George Owen Squier (1865–1934) attended the United States Military Academy and earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1893. He wrote and edited many books and articles on radio and electricity. He was also an inventor, who, with Albert Cushing Crehore, developed a magneto-optical streak camera that measured the speed of projectiles both inside cannon and directly after they left the barrel. He also invented telephone carrier multiplexing, for which he was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1919. He was instrumental in the creation of the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps, which evolved into the U.S. Air Force, and was responsible for the first purchase of airplanes by the U.S. Army in 1909. From 1912 to 1916, he was military attaché to the American embassy in London, where he studied European military aviation. From May 1916 to February 1917, he was Chief of the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, then was promoted Chief Signal Officer with the rank of Brigadier General. In 1922, he created Wired Radio, a service that piped music to businesses and subscribers over wires, which he later renamed Muzak. See also Arthur E. Kennelly, “Biographical Memoir of George Owen Squier, 1865–1934,” Biographical Memoirs, Vol. 20 (Washington: National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1938), 151–59.

  17. Sebastian Cox, “Aspects of Anglo-US Co-Operation in the Air in the First World War,” Air and Space Journal 18, no. 4 (Winter 2004) http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles//apj/apj04/win04/cox.html (accessed May 1, 2014).

  18. Wise, 90–91.

  19. Wise, 91.

  20. From March to September 1917, General Foulois was responsible for the production, maintenance, organization, and operations of all American aeronautical material and personnel in the United States. In March, he worked with General Squier and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to detail plans for appropriations of $54 million to support sixteen airplane squadrons, sixteen balloon companies, and nine aviation schools. When the French government asked the U.S. to provide 4,500 trained pilots by the spring of 1918, 4,900 training aircraft, and 12,000 combat planes, Congress voted $640 million, the largest appropriation for a single purpose in the history of Congress to that time. Foulois was promoted from Major to the temporary rank of Brigadier General to oversee this project, then was transferred to France in October 1917, where he became Chief of Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces.

  21. Hiram Bingham (1875–1956) attended Yale University and the University of California, then earned a PhD at Harvard. He taught at Yale and Princeton and became a well-known amateur archaeologist, working in South America. In 1917, he became an aviator and organized the United States Schools of Military Aeronautics at eight universities to provide ground school training for aviation cadets. He served the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, and the Air Service, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. In France, he commanded the 3rd Aviation Instruction Center, the Air Service’s largest primary instruction and pursuit training school. He was elected Governor of Connecticut in 1924 but resigned immediately to enter the Senate, where he served until 1933. He published several books, including a memoir entitled An Explorer in the Air Service (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920).

  22. Wise, 91.

  23. Wise, 93.

  24. For an account of the training program, see Hartley, 85–97.

  25. After the war he pursued an academic career, teaching at the University of Pretoria. See Vivian Voss, Flying Minnows: Memoirs of a World War One Fighter Pilot, from Training in Canada to the Front Line, 1917–1918. London: John Hamilton, 1935.

  26. The BCTAP trained more than 130,000 Allied aircrew during the Second World War, including Americans, serving as President Roosevelt said, as the “aerodrome of democracy.” Although the plan was created to train aircrew from Commonwealth countries, the RCAF began recruiting Americans in 1940. So many crossed the border that Roosevelt ordered that they should be granted exemption by the U.S. draft board. Indeed, training centers were made available to the RAF in the United States prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and by the end of the war, 16,000 RAF aircrew had been trained in the United States. After Pearl Harbor, almost 4,000 American members of the RCAF transferred into U.S. forces, while about 5,000 completed their service with the RCAF.

  27. Wise, 95. Kenly became the first Chief of Air Service of the American Expeditionary Force in France on September 3, 1917, effectively taking control away from the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps. When he was replaced in this position by Brigadier General Foulois, he returned to the United States to become Director of Military Aeronautics and titular head of the newly established U.S. Army Air Service from May through August 1918. He retired in 1919 and was appointed a Companion of the Bath (CB) by the British government.

  28. Cf. The Spider Web and the Submarines: A Year with the Flying Boats (Felixstowe, UK: s.n., 1919), also published anonymously by “PIX” as The Spider Web: The Romance of a Flying-Boat War Flight. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1919. This publication date is problematic because Hallam concludes the book by saying that he spent ten years after the war “lotus-eating down among the South Sea Islands” (245). It is probably a misprint and should be 1929.

  29. By October 1918, he had been withdrawn from combat service, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and worked with Billy Bishop on organizing the Canadian Air Force. He remained in the RAF after the war, commanded the Desert Air Force in North Africa, and rose to the rank of Air Vice Marshal.

  30. Four zeppelins were shot down by Canadian pilots serving in the RNAS: L.43 off Vlieland in June 1917 by B. D. Hobbs, L22 and L.70 by Robert Leckie in 1917, and L.53 by S. D. Culley (now RAF but formerly RNAS) in August 1918. Collishaw remained in the RAF after the war and in the Second World War commanded 14 Fighter Group, retiring as an air marshal. See Raymond Collishaw, Air Command: A Fighter Pilot’s Story (London: William Kimber, 1973), reprinted as The Black Flight: The Memoir of Legendary First World War Fighter Ace, Raymond Collishaw, CB, DSO, DSC, DFC (Ottawa: CEF Books, 2008).

  31. Wise, 590 not
e. William Barker’s biographer claims that when he was serving in Italy, more than 40% of the aircrew in the four RFC squadrons there were Canadians. Wayne Ralph, William Barker VC: The Life, Death & Legend of Canada’s Most Decorated War Hero (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 102. When pressed for a figure in the spring of 1918, the RFC reported that, as of April 1, 13,345 Canadians had served in the RFC and NSAS and that there were at that point 10,990 in the newly formed RAF, which combined those two services. This figure is clearly low, however, because it didn’t include non-Canadians who had joined the RFC in Canada or had transferred from the CEF or had been born elsewhere but lived in Canada for years. The Canadian War Records unit in 1919 claimed that 22,812 Canadians had served in the British air forces, but this is known not to be complete either, although it is probably fairly close to being correct. See Wise, 593–94. For a detailed analysis of the numbers of Canadians who served in the RFC/RAF and RNAS, see Wise, Appendix C: “Statistical Analysis of Canadians in the British Flying Services,” 633–49.

  32. Wulstan Tempest shot down L.31 in October 1916 while serving in the RFC, but he had only moved to Canada in 1911, so may not be considered Canadian.

  33. For a highly critical view of Bishop’s self-promotion, see Brereton Greenhous, “The Sad Case of Billy Bishop, VC,” Canadian Historical Review, 70, no. 2 (June 1989): 223–27, and “Billy Bishop—Brave Flyer, Bold Liar,” Canadian Military Journal, 3, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 61–64; and Greenhous, The Making of Billy Bishop: The First World War Exploits of Billy Bishop, VC (Toronto: Dundurn, 2002). For an understandably sympathetic account of how Bishop won the Victoria Cross, see Arthur Bishop, Our Bravest and Our Best: The Stories of Canada’s Victoria Cross Winners (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1995): 54–6. Arthur Bishop was Billy Bishop’s son.

  34. See Ralph. For a complete annotated list of Canadian aces in the war, see www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_I_aces_from_Canada.

  35. He was sent home to recuperate but died in the Spanish flu epidemic in November 1918 at the age of nineteen.

  36. Manfred Albrecht von Richthofen, popularly known as the Red Baron, was the leading German air ace during the war, being credited with eighty victories. He was shot down and killed on April 21, 1918, while engaged in combat with a Canadian pilot, Wilfred Reid May. The RAF credited the Canadian pilot, Arthur “Roy” Brown, with shooting down Richthofen, but it is now generally believed that he was killed by a shot fired from the ground.

  37. May shot down eighteen enemy planes in the war and was awarded the DFC. See Sheila Reid, Wings of a Hero: Canadian Pioneer Flying Ace Wilfrid Wop May. St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell, 1997.

  38. He is officially credited with only fourteen because he shot down the first ten while an observer/gunner in a two-seater airplane.

  39. See Libbey, Horses Don’t Fly. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000.

  40. Wounded again, he was demobilized and returned to Duluth. See E. M. Roberts, A Flying Fighter: An American Above the Lines in France. New York/London: Harper, 1918.

  41. He had lived in England with his divorced mother from 1895 to 1912 and became a naturalized British subject in 1907. He did not regain his American citizenship until 1956.

  42. Quoted in Wise, 583.

  43. See Ralph, 102.

  44. On Critchley’s life and career, see A. C. Critchley, Critch! The Memoirs of Brigadier-General A. C. Critchley, CMG, CBE, DSO. London: Hutchinson, 1961.

  45. He was only the second Canadian to do so. The first was Francis Gilmer Tempest “Wuffy” Dawson, whose father, John Tempest Dawson, was born in Nova Scotia but spent most of his life in England. He married Nannie Hutchison, who came from a wealthy family in Georgia but was living in England. Major General Jeremy F. Gilmer, Chief Engineer of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, was her cousin. Dawson killed his wife and himself in a murder/suicide in the National Portrait Gallery in London on February 26, 1909. Stephen Adams, “Gruesome murder-suicide revealed in National Portrait Gallery archive.” The Telegraph Online, February 3, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/7147540/Gruesome-murder-suicide-revealed-in-National-Portrait-Gallery-archive.html (accessed January 27, 2014). Francis Dawson appears to have been born in Austria, presumably while his parents were on vacation, but he lived in Montreal from 1899 to 1912 and subsequently claimed to be Canadian, although he lived in England for the rest of his life.

  46. Arthur Bishop, Courage in the Air (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1992), 6. When the Canadian Air Force was established in August 1918, he was the government’s first choice to command it, an offer that he declined because he wanted to return to civilian life.

  47. Wise, 600.

  48. Wise, 602.

  49. Wise, 21.

  50. Wise, 580.

  Chapter 14

  Canada’s Hundred Days

  You cannot meet and defeat in battle one-quarter of the German Army without suffering casualties.

  —Arthur Currie, 1918[1]

  It made a great lump come in my throat to look at them and think of what they had gone through.

  —Canon Frederick George Scott[2]

  In March 1918, recognizing that it was near exhaustion, that the collapse of Russia had come too late, and that American money, industrial capacity, and manpower were coming into play, the German army gathered its resources and launched Operation Michael—its final massive offensive on the Western Front. It focused at the point on the Somme where the British and French lines joined, hoping to divide them, causing the British to retreat north to protect the Channel ports while the French retreated south to protect Paris. The goal was to destroy the British army in the hope that if this were achieved the French would seek peace terms.

  It began on March 21, less than six weeks after the Third Battle of Ypres, and initially was very successful because, even though the Allies had been expecting it, they were surprised by its scale and ferocity. After an artillery barrage by 6,000 guns, the most ever employed in the war, half a million Germans then attacked. The British fell back, giving up more ground than at any time in the war. On April 9, another half million Germans attacked at Hazebrouck, a vital rail center just south of Ypres, following up the next day by launching the Fourth Battle of Ypres.

  The situation seemed truly desperate, and the normally inarticulate Haig sent out a message to all British troops telling them, in an effort to be inspiring, that “every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind alike depend on the conduct of each one of us at this crucial moment.”[3] Foch, the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, agreed, declaring that “every foot of ground must be defended.”[4]

  Eight days later, the Germans attacked the British line at Langemarck, just outside of Ypres, but were driven back with heavy losses. It was only a temporary setback, however, and when they attacked again at the end of the month, they recaptured places like Mount Kemmel and St. Eloi that the Allies had held since 1916. By now the British were “rushing every available soldier across the Channel to the front: half trained, untrained, overaged, underaged, and, in some cases, near cripples.”[5] So were the Germans. Among those who served in these battles was the young Adolf Hitler, who was wounded—by mustard gas—at Wervick, near Passchendaele.

  But the end was in sight. The cost of these gains to the German army was very high: it was exhausted, and the reinforcements needed to continue the offensive in the face of the determined Allied resistance simply did not exist. Nevertheless, in a final throw of the dice, General Ludendorff launched a diversionary attack toward Paris, hoping that this would cause the French to pull some of their troops out of Flanders. But Foch understood Ludendorff’s intentions and kept his troops at Ypres, relying on the newly arriving American divisions to defend Paris. The Germans got to within thirty miles of the city, but no closer.

  The C
anadian Corps, which was holding the line around Vimy Ridge at the time, was not directly involved in this stupendous affair. On the opening day of the German offensive, it fired hundreds of chemical shells into the German lines, but the Germans did not attack. Other Canadian units, particularly the Canadian Cavalry Brigade and General Raymond Brutinel’s Motor Machine Gun Brigade, supported the British and French in the crisis.