BATTLE-MAD WITH BOMBS & BAYONETS: A Dane's "Merry Hell" With The Canadian Army

Bayonet training was a significant part of a soldier’s preparation. But as Thomas Dinesen points out in “Merry Hell,” very little training beyond basic weapon instruction had trickled down from the experiences of his fellow Highlanders at Hill 70 and Vimy. Even once in Britain, they learned very little beyond preliminaries of trench warfare. In Dinesen’s case, he would receive the Victoria Cross for his agility with a bayonet that he learned at the front.

(Volume 24-06)

By Robert Smol

Early in the morning on June 26, 1917 a train from New York arrived in Montreal. Among the passengers on that train were several recruits, mostly American, who had joined the Canadian Army through its recruiting centre in that city. Among those new recruits was 24-year-old Thomas Dinesen, a Danish engineering graduate who was desperately looking for a chance to make his mark in the war.

He succeeded. Just over a year later Dinesen, who joined the Canadian Army before entering Canada and as a recruit could barely speak English, would be awarded the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Amiens. He would also earn the French Croix de guerre.

Part of the citation for his VC reads: “five times in succession he rushed forward alone, and single-handed put hostile machine guns out of action, accounting for twelve of the enemy with bomb and bayonet. His sustained valour and resourcefulness inspired his comrades at a very critical stage of the action, and were an example to all.”

By the time the war ended Private Thomas Dinesen VC had become a lieutenant. Returning to his native Denmark at the end of hostilities, he went on to a career as a novelist and, in 1929, wrote Merry Hell, one of the first Canadian memoirs of the war. To the historian, Merry Hell serves as a candid account of the life of a common soldier in training and in battle. The memoir also serves as a frank critique of the administrative and training shortcomings that continued to pervade the Canadian Army throughout the war.

A recruiting poster for the Royal Highlanders of Canada (Black Watch). Thomas Dinesen (right) enlisted with the 42nd Battalion in 1917, which fought as part of the 7th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Division in France and Flanders until the end of the war.

Thomas Fasti Dinesen was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Rungsted, Denmark on August 9, 1892. His older sister was the famed novelist Karen Blixen, whose award-winning stories, such as Out of Africa, have been adapted to film. While studying engineering at university, Dinesen served in the Danish Army reserve. Graduating from university in 1916 and frustrated at his country’s neutrality, Dinesen unsuccessfully sought to join the French and British armies. Refusing to give up, he then travelled to New York hoping to enlist in the U.S. military, which seemed poised to enter the war. Here too his hopes were dashed when the government chose only to enrol American citizens. As fate would have it, Dinesen happened to then stumble on a recruiting centre that the manpower-starved Canadian Army operated in that city.

And so it was that Dinesen found himself on his way to Montreal to train as a recruit in the 42nd Battalion (The Royal Highlanders of Canada, the Black Watch). At first his limited English and unfamiliarity with Highland traditions presented somewhat of a culture shock.

“I spent the whole first day of my military career wondering why our regiment should be named after a black watch.” Yet he found the kilt “pleasantly cool” in the summer heat but was nonetheless relieved that “they have promised us trousers for the winter.” Being an agnostic he narrowly escaped being rejected by the Canadian Army by agreeing to self-identify as a Presbyterian “on account of my kilt, I guess.”

Beginning their training with 2nd Reinforcement Company of the 5th Royal Highlanders, Dinesen and the other recruits were housed in the Guy Street Barracks, which was in an abandoned factory. The quarters were described by Dinesen as “a nasty, musty hole, with dark and narrow corridors; filthy and reeking with coal dust and all sorts of refuse.” Every morning, after inspection, the recruits would march through the city to the grounds in front of McGill University where they would train.

Throughout the first half of his memoir, up to the point he enters the front, Dinesen expressed a profound frustration with the quality and practicality of Canadian Army training. One month into his service he writes: “we are still waiting for the serious part of the work to begin … here the work is mere child’s play.”

Frustrated at his country’s neutrality, the Dane unsuccessfully sought to join the French, British and American armies. Refusing to give up, he stumbled on a Canadian recruiting centre in New York and soon found himself on a train bound for Montreal and the 42nd.

One would think that in the aftermath of costly battles such as the Somme and Vimy, some level of operational professionalism would have trickled down to the training establishments in Britain and Canada. Yet as the battle-hardened Canadian Corps, including his 42nd Battalion, was moving from Vimy to attack Hill 70 in July and August of 1917, Dinesen and his fellow recruits back in Montreal were still receiving their basic weapon instruction in the Ross Rifle, which Dinesen described as a weapon “far too dainty for warfare — a mere gun for target practice.” At no point did the training in Canada move much beyond the basic parade square drill, where “all they teach us, day by day is, therefore, the art of presenting arms and banging our rifles against our shoulders in the correct, jerky fashion — is there anything to be gained by this?”

Yet it was during his initial training in Montreal that Dinesen had his first near brush with combat. With the legislation bringing in conscription being hotly debated in Parliament, word came that an anti-conscription mob was planning to attack the Guy Street Barracks.

“Together with a few of the others, I was posted in the office, supplied with plenty of ammunition, with the order to hold the position to the last drop of our blood. The barracks were quickly turned into an impregnable fortress: machine guns were even placed on the roof.” Perhaps thankfully for the Army’s reputation, and the already strained French–English relations, the alleged mob never materialized.

In October of 1917, after only four months in Canada, Dinesen was on his way back to his native Europe, as a kilted Canadian soldier. Yet to his continued frustration, the additional four months of advanced training they were to end up receiving in Britain did not offer much in the way of practical skills that the conscientious Dinesen knew he would need at the front.

“Do they really mean to send us out without teaching us even the slightest preliminaries concerning trench warfare?” he angrily wrote on February 16, 1918 after training in Britain for over three months. “The whole plan of training, as far as I can see, is exactly the same as in pre-war days.”

And then there was the question of time which, according to Dinesen, the Army’s training system seemed to have way too much of in spite of the desperation for trained and reliable reinforcements.

“Our military training leaves much to be criticized,” he wrote on his training near Aldershot on January 14, 1918. The only exception to this was rifle practice, or “musketry,” where “they have given us plenty of time to acquire the art to perfection.”

But other than the time spent on the ranges, the typical day in camp consisted of “P.T. from 7.15 am to 8 a.m.; parade at 8.30 a.m.; drill till noon and again from 1.15 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.; one can’t call that heavy work.”

The conscientious recruit’s frustration at the tepidness and impracticality of the training regime seemed to reach a boiling point when combat skills vital to survival in the trenches, such as handling of Mills bombs, were taught in rigid textbook like fashion without actually going through the motions of handling or throwing an actual Mills bomb.

“We are taken out day by day and lined up on the parade ground and taught exceedingly carefully how to stand in a strange, theoretical position; left foot forward; body curved backwards; right arm, pretending to hold grenade, at backward stretch … It looks quite fine on the parade-ground, but do they really think we are going to act according to these instructions when hurling bombs from a deep and narrow trench — or rushing across No Man’s Land?”

Fortunately his deployment to the Western Front in mid-March 1918 was, at least in his area, a time of relative inaction allowing him time to pick up and learn the routines of trench warfare that were not covered in training.

The action that was to award Dinesen his Victoria Cross took place on August 12, 1918, when the 42nd was conducting mopping-up operations in the Parvillers sector. According to the 42nd Battalion’s War Diary, the battalion had “come into the line with instructions from Brigade to maintain a steady pressure against the enemy who was believed to be fighting a rearguard action.” However, a frontal attack was deemed by the commanding officer of the 42nd as too risky because of the strength of their own wire, which they would have to cross, as well as “heavy enemy entanglements.” Instead, the unit decided to attack the Germans by way of a bombing attack from their northern flank, which another division had recently penetrated.

When Thomas Dinesen made it across no man’s land with bayonet fixed, he jumped into successive German trenches to silent enemy machine guns with his steel blade and Mills bombs. The limited confines of hand-to-hand trench warfare did not impede Dinesen’s attack, who often had to press home with his bayonet. His actions of August 12, 1918 at Parvillers, near Amiens, earned him the Victoria Cross. (“trench fight” by h.j. mowat, canadian war museum, 19710261-0434)

According to the operations order produced by the 42nd on the morning of the August 12, the battalion’s first objective, once in the German lines, was to mop up the intermediate trench system on the Rouvray-Parvillers Road with their second objective being mopping up the enemy in Parvillers itself. Dinesen’s company was specifically tasked to “bomb down the old German front and support trenches.”

The Germans were hardly demoralized. According to the 42nd Battalion’s report on operations for that day, “strong resistance was encountered and all enemy posts and blocks fought with determination and in many cases the attack was pressed home with the bayonet.”

As his citation reads, Dinesen personally took the initiative on this series of bombing/bayonet attacks on five separate occasions. His recollection, on at least one such occasion, is described in his memoir.

“I turn a corner quickly — two grey Germans stand straight in front of me … Two red flashes straight into my face — done for already! — but they haven’t hit me, so now it is my turn. A snap-shot at one of the two, and the other disappears round a corner … At the next corner a shower of rifle bullets and “sticks” whizz past my head from a machine-gun post … I fire away madly till my magazine is empty; then I fling down my rifle and hurl my bombs at them … and then we reach the next machine-gun post and throw ourselves against it, yelling and roaring, with bombs and bayonets, battle-mad …”

After the Battle of Amiens, Dinesen was promoted to acting corporal and, during the last few months of the war, was selected to undergo officer training. Just prior to the Armistice of November 11, 1918 he received his commission as a lieutenant and was assigned to the 20th Reserve Battalion of the Quebec Regiment until his release in January 1919.

His service over, Dinesen moved to British East Africa (modern-day Kenya) where his sister Karen was already living and had run into trouble with the British authorities because of prior business dealings with a German general. According to Blixen, her brother’s presence with his Victoria Cross and Croix de guerre helped disseminate any lingering animosity the British had towards the family. He was also awarded the Order of Dannebrog from Denmark. In 1923 Thomas Dinesen returned permanently to Denmark and a writing career. He passed in March of 1979.

BOB LECKIE: Zeppelin Strafer

 Robert Leckie scored his first Zeppelin victory as a flight sub-lieutenant in the RNAS, and his second as a major in the RAF. In January 1944, Air Marshal Leckie rose to chief of the air staff for the RCAF. (royal air force)

(Volume 24-05)

By Jon Guttman

One of Canada’s many distinguished airmen of the First World War, Robert Leckie was born in Glasgow, Scotland on April 16, 1890; his family emigrated to Canada in 1907. When not working at his uncle’s firm, John Leckie Ltd., maker of fishing nets, he developed a passion for tennis.

When war broke out Bob Leckie trained at his own expense at the Curtiss Flying School at Toronto Island, followed by advance training at Chingford, England. On June 16, 1916 his rank of flight sub-lieutenant was confirmed and three days later he was posted to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) air station at Great Yarmouth, near Norwich, England. Flying anti-submarine patrols over the North Sea, Leckie gained a reputation for reliability in the most adverse conditions. His greatest claim to fame, however, involved another adversary — Zeppelin airships.

Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin’s quest to develop a large duraluminium-framed, controllable, lighter-than-air ship finally bore fruit in 1900. By the First World War, Zeppelins had developed into viable reconnaissance platforms and on August 6, 1914 army Zeppelin Z.VI bombed Liège, Belgium. In that same month Konteradmiral Paul Behncke, deputy chief of the German naval staff, proposed bombing Britain and was supported by Grossadmiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who wrote, “The measure of success will lie not only in the injury which will be caused to the enemy but also by the significant effect it will have in diminishing the enemy’s determination to prosecute the war.” Kaiser Wilhelm II finally approved of the plan on January 7, 1915, and on the 19th naval Zeppelins L.3 and L.4 dropped the first bombs on English soil. On the night of May 31 Army Zeppelin LZ.38 was first to strike London.

Like Leckie, Egbert Cadbury already had one airship to his credit when they teamed up against L.70 on August 5, 1918. In this 1943 image, Cadbury was serving as honorary air commodore of No. 928 (County of Gloucester) Squadron, a Balloon Barrage Squadron of the Auxiliary Air Force. (national portrait gallery, london)

Although material damage was modest, the very arbitrary nature of the civilian casualties the airships’ bombs inflicted raised public outcries for the government to “do something.” That in turn spurred the British to develop an air defence system that would ultimately incorporate searchlights, anti-aircraft artillery and aeroplanes. It also compelled both the Army and Royal Navy to divert at least some of their aerial assets from the Western Front to Home Defence. In that respect, the “Zeppelin menace” constituted history’s first aerial terror campaign. Moreover, between the morale factor, the occasional damage done and the resources diverted to countering them, the Zeppelins could also lay claim to being history’s first strategic bombers.

At first, operating at high altitudes at night made the airships difficult for Allied aircraft to intercept, but on June 6, 1915, Flight Sub-Lt. Reginald A. J. Warneford flew his Morane-Saulnier L above LZ.37 and destroyed it with bombs over Ghent, Belgium, for which he received the Victoria Cross. A more significant turning point came on September 2, 1916, when Second Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson destroyed the wooden-framed Schütte-Lanz airship SL.11, in flames within sight of London; he also earned a VC. Four more airships fell victim to aircraft by the end of the year, convincing the German army to abandon them in favour of aeroplanes such as the Gotha and Zeppelin-Staaken Riesenflugzeug (giant aeroplane) for attacking Britain. In the German navy, however, airships retained a fanatical advocate in their commander, Fregattenkapitän Peter Strasser, who relentlessly continued dispatching them against British targets. His hoped-for solution to the advances in aeroplane technology was unveiled on March 10, 1917, when the first of a line of high-altitude Zeppelins, L.42, made an inaugural flight to 19,700 feet.

At about that time Great Yarmouth was acquiring a new weapon of its own. On April 13, 1917, Leckie ferried in the first Curtiss H-8 “Large America” 8660, and flew in Curtiss H-12 8666 on May 7. With their original 160-hp Curtiss V-X-X engines replaced with Rolls-Royce Eagles of 250-hp and more to speed along at up to 90 mph, these well-armed, long-ranging flying boats offered fresh opportunities against the “Zepps.”

The first such opportunity arose on May 14, when L.23 and L.22 embarked on a maritime reconnaissance mission. The latter imprudently sent a wireless message upon takeoff, revealing its regular patrol route off Terschelling, located on one of the Netherlands’ West Frisian Islands. This message was intercepted by the British, who notified RNAS Great Yarmouth. At 0330 hours H-12 8666, crewed by Flt. Sub-Lt. Leckie, Flt. Lt. Christopher J. Galpin, Chief Petty Officer V. F. Whatling and Air Mechanic O. R. Laycock, took off to intercept.

“Destruction of L.22” by Norman Appleton. Leckie dived about 3,000 feet to bring the speed of his Curtiss H-12 up to the 90 mph necessary to catch the Zeppelin, at which point F/Lt Christopher J. Galpin, manning the forward Lewis machine guns, shot it down. (comox air force museum)

At 0445 hours, Galpin spotted an airship and as Leckie took over the controls, he manned the twin forward Lewis machine guns. Leckie closed to 50 yards and Galpin fired a mix of Brock, Buckingham and Pomeroy incendiary rounds into L.22’s starboard quarter until both weapons jammed. Galpin reported that, “As we began to turn I thought I saw a slight glow inside the envelope and 15 seconds later, when she came in sight on our other side, she was hanging tail down at an angle of 45 degrees with the lower half of her envelope thoroughly alight.” L.22, veteran of 81 flights and 11 raids, was the first Zeppelin destroyed in 1917, taking Kapitänleutnant Ulrich Lehmann and 20 crewmen with it.

Unlikely as a flying boat seemed as a “Zepp strafer,” the history in which Leckie took part was repeated a month later. As L.43 — one of the new “Height Climbers” — was covering a minesweeping operation 40 miles north of Terschelling, another Great Yarmouth-dispatched H-12 — 8677 crewed by Flt. Lt. Basil D. Hobbs, Flt. Sub-Lt. Robert F. L. Dickey, wireless operator H. M. Davies and engineer A. W. Goody — spotted it at 0840 hours on June 14. Catching their quarry at a relatively low altitude, the Curtiss attacked from above and sent it down in flames, along with Kapitänleutnant Hermann Kraushaar and 23 crewmen.

As a consequence of these sea encounters, the airships were ordered to conduct reconnaissance flights no lower than 13,000 feet; however, this handicapped their ability to spot submerged U-boats or mines from that height.

Still, Strasser persisted in championing his airships and on July 8, 1918, the first of a new “X” type airship, L.70, emerged from Factory Shed II at Friedrichshafen, with seven engines producing a combined 1,715-hp and an 81 mph maximum speed, also including a 20mm Becker cannon in its arsenal. Strasser was so encouraged by its performance that, on July 18, he approached Admiral Reinhard Scheer with a plan to dispatch three “super Zeppelins” with reduced bomb loads and increased fuel across the Atlantic to bomb port facilities in New York. Scheer returned Strasser’s proposal the next day with a terse penciled response: “R.S., nein.”

On August 5, L.70, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Johann von Lossnitzer with Strasser aboard, led L.53, L.56, L.63 and L.65 on another sally against industrial targets in the British Midlands. Weather conditions — 75 degrees Fahrenheit, 85 per cent humidity and an unprecedentedly low barometric reading of 29.77 — handicapped the raiders’ ascent, while steadily decreasing west winds resulted in their arriving 60 nautical miles from the coast at 1830 hours, while there was still daylight. By then they had only reached 17,000 feet, to which Strasser compounded the danger by sending last orders to his captains by wireless at 2100 hours. At that time the Leman Tail lightship, moored 30 miles off the Norfolk coast, spotted three airships 10 miles to the north and moving west-northwest in V formation.

Britain was having a bank holiday weekend and Great Yarmouth was hosting a “grand fête” sponsored by the Royal Navy in aid of the Missions to Seamen when the air raid warnings came in. Within 35 minutes 15 aircraft were either airborne or taking off. Among the first up was Egbert Cadbury, scion of the family of chocolatiers and, like Leckie, already sharing credit in the destruction of a Zeppelin, L.21 on November 28, 1916. Now a major in the Royal Air Force, he commanded No. 212 Squadron (Land Flight) as he climbed into the cockpit of de Havilland D.H.4 A8032. Leckie, also a major and in charge of No. 228 Squadron (Boat Flight), clambered into the observer’s pit behind him. Two 110-lb. bombs were still under the wings as Cadbury hastened skyward at 2105 hours.

Sighting the Zeppelins against the fading twilight, Cadbury pulled his bomb release and climbed to 16,400 feet. At 2220 hours he approached the leading airship head-on and slightly to port so as to “avoid any hanging obstructions.” Leckie’s single Lewis gun lacked sights and his first rounds missed, but he used his fiery Pomeroy ZPT rounds to correct his aim.

“The ZPT was seen to blow a great hole in the fabric and a fire started which quickly ran along the entire length of [the] Zeppelin,” Leckie reported. “The Zeppelin raised her bows as if in an effort to escape, then plunged seaward, a blazing mass. The airship was completely consumed in about ¾ of a minute.”

L.70 fell five miles northwest of the Blankeney Overfalls bell buoy, along with Strasser, von Lossnitzer and 20 crewmen. Meanwhile, Cadbury made for nearby L.65, which had turned east and dumped its water ballast. Leckie fired at it, only to suffer a double feed jam which his hands — in minus-60-degree temperatures at that altitude — were too frozen to rectify. Cadbury raised the D.H.4’s nose to bring his twin Vickers into play, but just then his plane stalled. The four remaining airships returned home, having landed no bombs on England, but at least having survived.

 On August 5, 1918, Cadbury was in the cockpit of de Havilland D.H.4 while Leckie had jumped into the observer’s pit behind him. Upon sighting the L.70, Leckie fired incendiary Pomeroy ZPT rounds into the super Zeppelin, blowing a great hole in it. Within a minute, the airship and her crew of 22, including Peter Strasser, disappeared in flames into the North Sea. (“shooting down a zeppelin” by charles dixon, cwm, 19910216-400)

Returning through 12,000 feet of cloud at night, “Bertie” Cadbury had a terrifying half hour until he spotted rows of lights pointing inland from Hunstanton and landed at Sedgeford — followed by the horror of discovering that his bombs had failed to release. Both he and Leckie were gazetted for the Distinguished Flying Cross on August 21.

Other participants in the action were less fortunate. D.H.9 D5802, crewed by Capt. Douglas B. G. Jardine and Lt. Edward R. Munday, put some 340 rounds through L.65’s rear gas cell before it climbed away, but they subsequently crashed in the sea, as did Lt. George F. Hodson in a Sopwith 2F1 Camel. All three men drowned. Additionally, Lt. Frank A. Benitz of No. 33 Home Defence Squadron, in Bristol F.2B C4698, crash-landed at Atwick aerodrome. He and his observer, 2nd Lt. H. Lloyd-Williams, were both badly injured and Benitz died the next day.

Strasser’s Zeppelin bombing campaign against Britain literally died with him in a suitably Wagnerian finale. In retrospect, Cadbury was glad that L.53 and L.65 got away, regarding their destruction as unnecessary overkill. As Leckie put it, “We accomplished our object in that the shooting down of L.70 put an end to the Zeppelin raiding of England.”

Of a total of 115 airships produced during the First World War and employed on all fronts, 53 were destroyed and 24 too badly damaged to remain operational, an attrition rate of 40 per cent. Bob Leckie, involved in the destruction of two of them, later wrote a succinct requiem:

The lesson of the airships is plain for all to read. The Germans had in their possession the most effective vehicle for fleet reconnaissance in any power’s hands at that time. It was, at the same time, just about the world’s worst strike aircraft!

After the war Leckie commanded 1 Canadian Wing on April 2, 1919. He subsequently directed flying operations on the Canadian Air Board and overseeing the development of postal and commercial air services throughout the country. Rejoining the RAF in 1922, Leckie served at the Naval Staff College and Coastal Command headquarters, also marrying an American girl he’d met on the voyage to Britain. His many interwar positions culminated in RAF Commanding Officer for the Mediterranean from Malta, but much to his subsequent regret he was recalled to Canada before things heated up there.

In February 1940 the British Air Ministry appointed him Air Member for Training in Canada — superseding Royal Canadian Air Force Headquarters — with the rank of air commodore. He took up that somewhat touchy duty in February 1941 and was subsequently promoted to acting air vice marshal. In 1942 he transferred to the RCAF, rising to chief of the air staff with the grade of air marshal on January 1, 1944. After retiring from the RCAF in on September 1, 1947 he played an active role in the Canadian Air Cadet League. A Companion of the Bath with the Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Flying Cross and Canadian Forces Decoration, Bob Leckie died in the Canadian Forces Hospital, Ottawa, on March 31, 1975, just 16 days short of his 85th birthday.

THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE: Part 3: Canadian Corps Succeeds Where Others Had Failed

Beyond Vimy, the Douai Plain. This stunning photograph fully captures the tactical significance of Vimy Ridge. As possessors of the ridge, the Canadian Corps had turned the tables on the Germans. Once overlooked from the summit of the ridge, the Canadians now had the benefit of a view kilometres into the German rear areas. (w.i. castle, dnd, george metcalf archival collection, cwm 19920085-244)

(Volume 24-05)

By Bob Gordon

On the first day of the Canadian Corps’ assault on Vimy Ridge, the three divisions on the right and centre all met with success, gaining their objectives in a timely manner. Moreover, by the standards of the Western Front, they did so with limited casualties. Only the 4th Division on the left flank failed to keep to the timetable.

Of all the divisions, the 4th had the narrowest no man’s land to cross and the closest objective lines to reach. Despite these superficial advantages, they confronted the most difficult assignments tasked to the Canadian Corps on Easter Monday.

Unlike the 1st Division in the south, which advanced four kilometres up a gentle rise, the 4th Division faced a steep climb to the summits of The Pimple and Hill 145, the two highest points on the ridge. Hill 145 was on the right of the divisional front, its capture assigned to the 11th Brigade. The Pimple, 1,500 metres north, dominated the division’s left flank. Accurately the official history notes:

Hill 145, the 4th Division’s principal objective, was the highest and most important feature of the whole of Vimy Ridge. As long as it remained in German hands, enemy watchers could observe all movement in the valley of the Souchez … and its southern offshoot, Zouave Valley, which ran behind the 4th Division’s front. Once taken, however, Hill 145 would afford its captors a commanding view of the German rearward defences in the Douai plain and on the Ridge itself. It was thus a valuable prize.

Cognizant of the importance of these two dominant points, the Germans had spent over two years reinforcing their defences. On Hill 145 the German First Line consisted of two trenches on the forward slope. Two more lines of trenches encircled the summit. Additionally, the defenders were protected by both peacetime mine workings and dugouts (Hangstellung) buried deep in the reverse slope.

This aerial photograph illustrates the major trench lines around an unknown sector on Vimy Ridge. The large craters, some 10 to 15 metres deep, were made from mine explosions set off by Canadian engineers prior to and during the assault of April 9, 1917. Mines could create great confusion and blow huge gaps in an enemy’s defences, but they were also significant obstacles for advancing troops. (george metcalf archival collection, cwm 19740387-060)

According to the official history, The Pimple’s “surface was a maze of trenches, and below ground German engineers had constructed deep dug-outs and tunnels protected in every way that their ingenuity could devise.” The 4th was tasked with capturing the highest, most heavily defended points on Vimy Ridge.

The 11th Brigade’s assault companies that had left the trenches to attack Hill 145 were immediately decimated and the attack dissolved. Withering enfilade fire from The Pimple scythed through the ranks. By the end of the day, the 87th and the 102nd Battalions had both suffered over 300 casualties.

On the left, the 12th Brigade’s assault was also immediately disrupted and momentum was lost. Attacking across lower ground between The Pimple and Hill 145, the leading platoons found themselves wading through mud. Unbelievably, considering the intensity of the bombardment, they confronted a 90-metre section of trenches, machine guns and emplacements that had passed through the inferno unscathed. Finally, as long as Hill 145 held out they endured enfilade fire from machine guns dug in on the Ridge’s northern slopes.

Desperate for a success, divisional CO Brigadier-General Victor Odlum threw the 85th (North Nova Scotia Highlanders) Battalion against Hill 145 in the early afternoon. It was their first experience of combat and, remarkably, they cleared the summit. Finally, after 1500 hours, divisional HQ could report Hill 145 clear of Germans. In contrast, 20 minutes earlier, General Sir Julian Byng had telephoned the British First Army pointing out the possibility of using a cavalry regiment to exploit the success of his two right-hand divisions.

Along the Canadian lines, day two of the attack consisted of mopping up and consolidation with the 4th being a painful exception. With Hill 145 subdued, the division was expected to turn its attention to securing The Pimple. After the disasters of day one, the assault on The Pimple had to be delayed. The 10th Battalion had been scheduled to put the attack in. Bloodied when it was dragged into the desperate fight for Hill 145, it was no longer available.

On April 12, the fourth day of the attack, the 4th Division finally captured The Pimple and nearby ruins of Givenchy. At terrible cost, days behind schedule, the 4th Division’s battle for Vimy Ridge ended. The exceptional nature of the 4th Division’s struggles demands closer examination.

In The Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War, historian Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson places the blame for the 11th Brigade’s failure on the shoulders of the CO of the 87th Battalion, Major H. LeRoy Shaw: “A portion of German trench had been left undestroyed by the heavy artillery at the request of the commanding officer of the left assaulting battalion (the 87th), who hoped to put it to good use when captured. From this position machine-gun fire cut down half the 87th’s leading wave and pinned the right of the supporting 75th Battalion to their assembly trenches.” Nicholson cites the “4th Div. Report on Operations, Appx. “B” to W.D., April 1917” in support of this interpretation.

While the cited document clearly blames an undamaged stretch of trench, it does not identify that as an intentional omission, but rather an error. “The portion involved was about 100 yards in length, and the trench and wire had not been properly destroyed. Either the barrage did not cover this point, or the men did not follow it closely enough.” Simply put, the document that Nicholson refers to does not support his contention that the blame rests with Major Shaw.

The body of a dead German soldier lies near the entrance to his dugout. While the entrance is intact, the sides of the trench have collapsed. Common items such as an entrenching tool, a water bottle, and ammunition pouches lie scattered on the ground. (george metcalf archival collection, cwm 19920044-195)

The question is further complicated by the research findings of Andrew Godefroy. In his contribution to Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment, he refers to a document found in the personal papers of 11th Brigade CO, Brigadier-General Victor Odlum. Marginalia in Odlum’s hand states: “Requests were made for the heavy artillery to destroy this position on the 8th but in compliance with Brig. General Odlum who hoped to make it his headquarters during the advance, the bombardment was not carried out.” Subsequently, Godefroy asserts, “It appears that Odlum assumed responsibility for the decision not to bombard the German trenches.”

The document Nicholson quotes in blaming Major Shaw actually clearly places responsibility for the division’s hard going elsewhere. “It was finally decided by superior authority that the PIMPLE operation should take place at a date subsequent to that against Hill 145 … It would have been preferable to put in an attack against the PIMPLE at the same time as the other.” The 4th Division’s interpretation held that the plan imposed by “superior authority” was inherently flawed. It places the responsibility further up the chain of command, not down on the brigades and battalions.

Other historians have placed the blame a month before the assault on Hill 145 even occurred. In early March the 4th Division undertook one of the largest trench raids of the war and the only raid to employ gas. It was also uniquely unsuccessful. The gas discharge was deadly — to the raiders. The gas refused to flow up the ridge; instead, much of it moved laterally and wreaked havoc among the erstwhile raiders. It settled in shell holes in no man’s land and poisoned raiders, wounded or seeking shelter from the German counter-barrage, when they sought protection in them. The raid resulted in heavy casualties with no appreciable benefits. This apparently plausible explanation does not hold up under detailed scrutiny. [For the most part,] the battalions that suffered the worst during the gas raid were not engaged in the initial assault on Vimy Ridge. They were not principle actors in the debacle that Easter Monday became for the 4th Division.

Interestingly, Major Michael Boire finds the roots of the 4th Division’s failure underground. The original plan of attack called for the detonation of a large offensive mine underneath the defences of The Pimple at zero hour. Its purpose was twofold. With The Pimple scheduled for assault on the second day of the attack, the mine was intended to destroy its defences and kill its defenders. [Immediately,] it was intended that the explosion of the mine would eliminate long-range machine-gun fire from The Pimple, augmenting the defence of Hill 145 to the southeast during the initial assault on that position.

Unfortunately, despite Herculean efforts, the tunnellers had come up short. On Easter Monday, their tunnel was 30 metres short of the objective. Consequently, no mine was laid and throughout the attack the Canadian troops on the northern, western and eastern slopes of Hill 145 were subject to long-range machine-gun fire from The Pimple. Wading through mud in the valley between the two promontories and clawing their way up the steep slopes of Hill 145, the Canadian infantrymen were subject to shattering fire from The Pimple.

The large section of undamaged trenches coupled with the inability to counteract defensive fire from The Pimple condemned the 4th Division to the hardest and longest fight of the battle for Vimy Ridge. While Hill 145 was eventually subdued on April 9, success of the plan required the deployment of the troops committed to assault The Pimple on April 10. Consequently, The Pimple was not fully occupied until April 12, two days later than the plan called for and three days after the other three Canadian divisions had reached the Brown Line, their final objective.

Regardless, with the occupation of The Pimple on Thursday, April 12, the Canadian phase of the larger Battle of Arras drew to a close. It was undeniably an astounding victory, at a cost of 10,602 casualties, a fraction of the number suffered during previous unsuccessful attacks.

  German prisoners captured by Canadians at Vimy Ridge in April 1917 are marched toward prisoner or war camps to the rear. Initial reports claimed Canadians captured almost 6,000 POWs in the fighting. (dnd, library and archives canada, pa-001190)

In the ensuing century, the Battle of Vimy Ridge has been elevated to mythic status in the Canadian psyche. Boundless hyperbole has seen popular historians declare it the birth of the nation, akin to, or even greater than, the Royal Proclamation (1763), the British North America Act (1867), or the Statute of Westminster (1931). Undeniably, it is more widely known than the three, with the possible exception of the British North America Act. According to historian Andrew Godefroy, “Canadians consider Vimy Ridge an icon of national achievement.”

While this is all well and good, in the wider framework of the First World War, the battle must be placed in the proper context and granted only its due importance and influence. Simply put, and with awareness this assessment may provoke anger, it was a relatively minor engagement, only one part of the overall offensive known as the Battle of Arras.

North and south of the Canadian Corps, 23 British divisions also were involved. On a total frontage of over 40 kilometres, the Canadian Corps was responsible for only seven kilometres. In total, Imperial forces suffered approximately 160,000 casualties of which approximately 10,600 were Canadian. In terms of the larger Battle of Arras, the Canadian Corps was responsible for 16 per cent of the offensive frontage and suffered 15 per cent of the total casualties. The Canadian Corps attack on Vimy Ridge was only one small part of a larger whole.

Furthermore, the capture of Vimy Ridge did not play any part in a significant strategic shift in the war. The Battle of Vimy Ridge did not lead to the breakthrough that the generals had been dreaming of since the spring of 1915. Four months later, the Canadian Corps was still struggling to cross the Douai Plain and capture Lens, less than 10 kilometres north of the Canadian front line when the first wave went over the bags on Easter Monday morning. The stunning, but local success of the Canadian Corps had little impact on the course of the war.

Significantly, in 1922, former Canadian Corps CO Sir Arthur Currie informed veteran A.C. Macdonnel that Vimy was categorically not the most important battle the Corps fought. “We fought other battles where the moral and material results were far more reaching than Vimy’s victory. There were other battles also that reflected to a greater degree the training and efficiency of the Corps.” He continued, Vimy “did not call for the same degree of resource and initiative that were displayed in any of the three great battles of the last hundred days — Amiens, Arras, Cambrai.”

The overall Allied strategic plan for 1917 foresaw the Imperial offensive around Arras (including the assault on Vimy Ridge) drawing German reserves into the battle. A subsequent French attack to the south, launched on April 16 along an 80-kilometre front, would then punch through the weakened German lines and achieve a decisive breakthrough, reintroducing mobility to the static slogging match that had persisted since the fall of 1914. It is reported that the French commander-in-chief, General Robert Georges Nivelle, boasted, “The German Army will run away; they only want to be off.” He even predicted that the French offensive would end the war.

In fact, the French offensive was a miserable failure. Casualties far exceeded Nivelle’s predicted 10,000 — they were greater than 100,000 on the first day alone. The optimism with which the French troops entered the battle quickly soured. Mutinies, beginning with the French 2nd Division’s refusal to follow orders to attack on May 3, quickly spread throughout the French armies on the Western Front. Nivelle’s war-ending offensive actually destroyed the combat effectiveness of French forces for the remainder of the year.

Without diminishing the extraordinary achievement of the Canadian Corps, but keeping in mind the Allied strategic plan, the battle of Vimy Ridge had little impact on the course of the war. In an industrial war that mass-produced casualties, the Battle of Vimy Ridge was but a blip on the screen. It was widely celebrated not because of its significance, but rather for the reason that it was the lone victory in a spring of failure and disappointment.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was undeniably a Canadian victory. It forced the Germans off of a significant geographic feature. It succeeded where the British and French had previously failed. It realized all of its objectives with far fewer casualties than the previous failed assaults had suffered. It was a single achievement and the first time the Canadian Corps fought an independent action as a whole. All of these points mark it as a major achievement for the Corps. However, it was only one aspect of the larger and largely unsuccessful Battle of Arras. Moreover, it did not lay the groundwork for the anticipated breakthrough, and four months later the Canadian Corps was still slowly slogging its way across the Douai Plain only 10 kilometres from Vimy Ridge’s summit. The Battle of Vimy Ridge was clearly a tremendous victory for the Canadian Corps; its coming out party. However, it was neither a war-ending gambit nor the ‘birth’ of the Canadian nation.  

ARTHUR CURRIE - THE MAN UNDER THE UNIFORM: Part 3: "Whence Cometh The Warrior"

Sir Arthur Currie, who commanded the Canadian Corps from June 1917 to 1919, is widely regarded as one of the war’s finest generals. Forty-three years of age when he sat for this painting in 1919, Currie later wrote that he intensely disliked it. “Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, Knight Commander of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath” painted by Sir William Orpen. (beaverbrook collection of war art, cwm 19710261-0539)

(Volume 24-4)

By Bob Gordon

Note to readers: Unexpected health complications and hospitalization necessitated a delay in publication of the third and final installment of Bob Gordon’s series linking the 38 years of General Sir Arthur Currie’s pre-war life to his success on the battlefield and ascent to the position of commander of the Canadian Corps in June of 1917. We are happy to report he is back in writing form! The final installment in the series follows.

The first Canadian-born commander of the Canadian Corps, Arthur Currie rapidly rose to the heights of military authority within the Corps and influence beyond it. Jowly and bottom heavy, alone among senior officers in the British Army to disdain a moustache, only his eyes, both placid and piercing, betrayed his intellect and fierce independence. Three years from a faltering land boom on Vancouver Island, he led the most potent fighting force on the Western Front. From the beginning, praise was unstinting. Before having even left Canada, while still at Camp Valcartier, after a meeting with the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden confided to his diary that he was “impressed.” On Salisbury Plain, six months later, divisional commander Lieutenant-General Edwin Alderson regarded him as “out and out the best” of his brigadiers.

Currie’s military career and accomplishments, and his dual denouement as academic administrator and subject of scurrilous rumours culminating in a very public libel trial, have all been explored frequently and thoroughly. However, his prewar life remains largely unexplored. The published sources have all relied heavily on Hugh M. Urquhart’s Arthur Currie: The Biography of a Great Canadian. The previous instalments in this series have established that it is demonstrably false and flies in the face of the documents. Simply put, current understanding of Currie’s life to 1914 is ludicrously saccharine and sanitized.

In an article in Canadian Military History about the prewar life in Edmonton of machine gun innovator Raymond Brutinel, author Cameron Pulsifer makes a point about the historiography of his subject that is equally true of Currie. “No real attempt has been made, however, to undertake the necessary research that would allow for an in-depth examination of this formative period of his life, for what it might reveal about the experiences he had that helped to shape him, and what they reveal about his developing personality and character.” The preceding articles in this series provided a preliminary survey of Currie’s 38 prewar years, based on the sources, unblinkered by Urquhart. It allows these four decades to be woven into his whole life story. Now, his relatively brief but spectacularly successful military career needs to be fit into this same life story, as one episode in a sustained narrative of a “developing personality and character.”

Currie’s story is that of a man born to the rural yeomanry of Upper Canada, who also made, and lost, his own fortune. It is that of a self-made man, accustomed to marching to his own drummer. Currie was not necessarily a leader, but he definitely was not a follower. His civilian careers demonstrate that he was an enterprising individual willing to blaze his own trail. At the same time, however, he was also risk-averse. His big gamble, his real estate speculation, wrecked him and almost killed him financially. Currie had been stung by speculation. Arguably, this shock only reinforced a trait already innate. He was not one to ‘roll the dice’ until the odds were stacked in his favour, as they were when he left school for Victoria with a grubstake and welcoming accommodations with extended family awaiting.

General Sir Arthur Currie served as President of McGill University between 1920 and 1933. During this period, he successfully led a fundraising campaign which revitalized a moribund institution that was becoming worn at the seams. (mcgill university archives, pu010537)

The shift from pedagogue to insurance salesman was the most radical career choice he made in his life. It was made during months of illness and convalescence. It can hardly be described as rashly made in the heat of the moment. Again, regardless of the fact that speculation was on the verge of destroying him financially by 1914, he was innately conservative and incremental. He made three moves in his teaching career of only five years. First to Sydney, a hamlet north of Victoria. Then back to a school in the city at the first opportunity. Finally, he finished his brief career as a teacher having moved on to the best collegiate in Victoria. Methodically, Currie followed a definite path to the pinnacle of the teaching world on Vancouver Island.

Naturally risk-averse and burned by speculation, his mindset was fertile ground for a way of war that demanded that one must bite and hold, taking small, systematic steps toward the objective. A mind that knew speculation about a shattering breakthrough was a Chimera — a fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a tail that ends in a snake’s head — and an unrealistic and never attainable myth. Patience, painstaking preparation and measured, manageable objectives characterized Currie’s prewar life and defined his approach to combat. Nowhere was this more evident than at the battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917. The Canadian Corps was not chasing a war-ending breakthrough at Vimy. Four carefully defined objective lines were to result in Canadian control of the heights. Vimy was a methodical, incremental attempt to achieve a measured and manageable goal, nothing more and nothing less.

On another level, the battle also demonstrates that Currie remained both a fluent teacher and effective trainer, but also an avid and successful student when he was motivated to perform: A factor apparently lacking during his lacklustre performance at Strathroy Collegiate.

When the Canadian Corps was ordered to provide an officer to examine and analyze the French experience at Verdun, Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng selected Currie. Walking the ground and speaking to combatants, Currie was to distil the lessons learned, focusing on the successful French counterattacks in the battle’s final phases. He was then to introduce those lessons to the four divisions of the Canadian Corps. His performance as a student of the French battles at Verdun and then a teacher of those lessons to the Canadian Corps was one of his most successful, influential and important achievements.

Success at Vimy largely followed from a significant change in the Corps’ tactics. According to Mark Osborne Humphries, “for Arthur Currie, the most important lesson of Verdun was that a flexible doctrine employing self-reliant platoons could solve the riddle of the trenches.” It did and marked the ascension of the Canadian Corps to its premier role within the Imperial Army. Battlefield confusion coupled with unreliable communications led Currie to conclude that the French decision to devolve decision-making and firepower was the key to their success. Currie proposed that the Corps integrate specialists into every platoon. Previously, as specialists they had been under battalion or brigade command. Now, each platoon CO would have direct control over them. The platoon was reorganized in four sections of riflemen, bombers, rifle-grenadiers and Lewis gunners. Currie introduced this revolutionary idea and oversaw its implementation.

However, his success as a trainer can hardly be seen as surprising. Prewar school board trustees had praised his students’ orderliness and performance. Within the militia, he had progressed rapidly and his units were constant medalists based on the quality of Currie’s training regimen. The combat value of the Dandy Fifth’s militia training was not worth the powder to blow it up, but it is evident that Currie knew how to teach and to train.

Currie was open to learning these innovative lessons because, counter-intuitively, his utter lack of combat experience and instruction with modern weaponry was an advantage. He had neither tactical or technological training of relevance and, consequently, nothing to unlearn. In many senses he was a tabula rasa, with no preconceived notions of tactics he had to be disabused of. He was open-minded, willing to learn and able to impart this newfound knowledge to the Canadian Corps.

Demonstrably flexible and original, based on the creative Nanaimo operation, he was open to observe and analyze the reality of industrial warfare, and apply the lessons learned to its conduct. Currie’s willingness to see the radical solution of converting the platoon into a combined arms team, and his ability to introduce this reorganization to the Corps at large, follows logically from his prewar success as a militia officer and teacher. He was at the very heart of the revolutionary reorganization of the platoon that vastly increased its firepower and the Corps’ combat effectiveness. Currie learned the lessons of Verdun and taught them to the Canadian Corps: Hardly surprising considering his prewar success as a teacher.

Arthur Currie, 57, died on November 30, 1933 at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital from bronchial complications brought on by pneumonia after a series of strokes. Crowds lined the streets on December 5 as his funeral cortege proceeded to Mount Royal Cemetery. On the same day in London, England, a memorial service was conducted in Westminster Abbey which was filled to capacity. (bc archives collection, g-02960)

Promoted to Corps commander in the wake of Vimy Ridge, his first battle at Hill 70 revealed a great deal about Currie‘s transferable, civilian skills. He possessed extraordinary geographic intelligence, not surprising from a speculator and developer, and the considerable self-assurance of an entrepreneur. The office full of maps, the ability to call to mind the details of myriad lots, the entire practice of land purchase and development refined Currie’s awareness of the lay of the land. Currie could read the maps, observe the ground and integrate his plans into its constraints. Nowhere would this be more evident then in August 1917 as the Corps advanced towards Lens.

On July 7, 1917 the First British Army ordered the Canadian Corps “to take Lens with a view to threatening an advance on Lille from the south.” Lieutenant-General Arthur Currie, the newly minted Canadian Corps commander, didn’t approve of the order. He believed that an alternative plan would divert and destroy more Germans, at less cost to the Canadians than an assault on Lens. Involved in planning his first battle as a Corps commander and a Canadian militiaman amongst professional British officers, Currie, remarkably boldly, argued for his alternative at a conference of Corps commanders on July 10. Currie proposed that the Canadian Corps capture Hill 70, a dominating point of ground immediately north of Lens. Control of Hill 70 would make retention of Lens an impossibility as troops on Hill 70 could enfilade Lens and, from its heights, direct artillery fire on the city.

Therefore, Currie continued, the Germans would be forced to counterattack to retake Hill 70 and Canadian fire would engulf them. Currie proposed to distract the Germans and destroy those that fell for the ruse. Currie carried the day. First Army issued an entirely new set of orders to the Corps that “place[d] the whole of the operations for the capture of Lens in the hands of G.O.C., Canadian Corps [Currie].” The new orders also changed the Canadian objective from Lens to “the high ground N.W. of the town [Hill 70].” Currie had converted the Battle of Lens into the Battle of Hill 70 based on his reading of maps and the ground. Independence, innovation and geographic intelligence are entirely congruent with Currie’s civilian career in Victoria. The Battle of Hill 70 epitomizes his practical experience as a developer and the mindset of an independent, self-confident entrepreneur.

His life experience as an independent entrepreneur and his position as an absolute military novice in April 1914 render entirely understandable Currie’s actions in the wake of the German gas attacks on the Ypres Salient in April 1915. The initial German gas attack broke the French forces on Currie’s left flank leaving a gaping hole in the Allied lines. Currie’s 2nd Brigade risked being isolated, faced the real possibility of German troops pouring through the gap and assuming positions behind his troops as they endured a subsequent German gas attack from the front. British troops were visible in reserve and able to protect his exposed flank, but they refused to respond to Currie’s entreaties to assume the necessary positions without orders from a senior British officer.

A portrait of Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defence from 1911 to 1916. Both he and his son, Garnet, sought revenge after the war by attacking Currie’s reputation through editorials. Currie eventually fought back by going to court, winning a high-profile libel case in 1928. (painting by harrington mann, beaverbrook collection of war art, cwm 19710261-0394)

Currie made the unorthodox decision to leave his headquarters and venture to the headquarters of the senior British officer to explain the situation and make a personal appeal for help. His harshest critics have condemned this approach as irresponsible, even a dereliction of duty. While this was certainly not a textbook approach to the situation, it is no surprise when one is aware of his prewar civilian experience as an independent businessman. While his efforts proved ultimately unsuccessful in that he received nothing but a severe dressing down, he had left his battalion COs explicit orders as to how to proceed in his absence and was simply taking the reins in hand as any self-confident and independent businessman would in civilian life. His approach is entirely understandable when one factors in his civilian life experiences.

Moving into the realm of pure speculation, his prewar civilian life also offers fertile ground for explaining his contentious relationship with former Minister of Militia and Defence, Sam Hughes, in the years following the war. By Armistice Day, Hughes had developed an almost pathological hatred of Currie and, within the protected confines of Parliament, had no problem labelling Currie a vainglorious butcher. He was particularly offended by Currie’s disdain for his son, Garnet Hughes, and his ability (or rather lack thereof) to command in combat. Currie resisted Garnet’s appointment as CO of an active front-line division because he did not believe he was up to the task. However, Hughes seems to have regarded this as a personal slight and was enraged.

Perhaps Hughes was unable to accept the shifting dynamic between the two men. Arguably, Hughes continued to see Currie as the prewar militia officer who owed his advancement to the omnipotent but beneficent Sir Sam and expected fealty in return. For both reasons, Hughes may have been unable to see that, as his star had fallen, Currie’s had risen. All Hughes seems to have been able to see was that a prewar militiaman was no longer doing what he was told.

General Sir Arthur Currie’s time in the Canadian Expeditionary Force was not the final act in his life story. After the war, he would go on to a successful career as Principal of McGill University. However, neither was it the first chapter of his life. Understanding his success in the Canadian Corps is impossible without a clear appreciation of the 38 years he lived before he put on a regular army uniform at Camp Valcartier.

THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE: PART 2: A Calculated Artillery Barrage Precedes The Assault

“The Taking of Vimy Ridge, Easter Monday 1917.” Richard Jack was the first Canadian official war artist, appointed in 1916. In this painting, he depicts the crew of an 18-pounder field gun firing at German positions on Vimy Ridge. To the left, wounded soldiers move past the gun towards the rear. (painting by richard jack, beaverbrook collection of war art, cwm 19710261-0160)

(Volume 24-4)

By Bob Gordon

In the pre-dawn darkness of Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, the weather took a turn for the worse. Sunday’s spring-like conditions turned foul. Lieutenant-Colonel G. R. Stevens noted in the 49th Battalion War Diary that “the weather became an ally; the temperature fell and a northwest gale blew snow into the faces of the Germans.”

Minutes before 0530 hours the sound of the Canadian guns abruptly ceased. “There had been an ordinary amount of night firing, our batteries and machine-gun fire. But about five minutes before Zero Hour, there had been an eerie, almost complete silence,” Lieutenant Leonard Youell of the 43rd Battery Canadian Field Artillery told historian Pierre Berton. Youell continued, “Then the most deafening roar and display of fireworks you’ve ever seen in your life.” Private Lewis Duncan wrote his aunt Sarah one week later that “5:30 came and a great light lit the place, a light made up of innumerable flickering tongues.” On the 3rd Division front, LCol Stevens wrote: “On the stroke of 0530 hours, a bombardment of terrifying intensity burst on the enemy forward position … From the German lines multi-coloured rockets soared in mute appeals for aid.”

With the launch of the infantry assault the Canadian artillery shifted to a creeping barrage. It had 40 separate lifts scheduled. At Zero Hour it concentrated on the German front line; at plus three minutes the barrage lifted from the German front line to the support line; at plus eight minutes it moved to the Black Line, the main German defences. The troops were to arrive at the summit directly behind the last lift, accompanied through the German defences by the destructive power of the artillery.

The advance of the creeping barrage could not be altered once the attack started. The infantry had to keep up with it. Nor could they get ahead of schedule. Private Alex Gerrard of the 1st Canadian Rifles noted that following too close to the barrage also had risks. “Some of our boys got going faster than the shells and they hit a lot of our men with ‘friendly’ shrapnel. They got caught in the barrage from the batteries behind us.”

Canadians of the 29th Infantry Battalion advance across no man’s land through the German barbed wire during the Battle of Vimy Ridge, April 1917. Most soldiers are armed with their Lee Enfield rifles, but the soldier in the middle carries a Lewis machine-gun on his shoulder. (dnd, george metcalf archival collection, cwm 19920085-915)

On the right, the 1st Canadian Division had the longest distance to cover, about four kilometres up a gradual slope to Farbus Wood. Next, 2nd Division had the same distance to advance, their objective being the summit above the village of Vimy. La Folie Wood, after a two-kilometre advance, was the objective of the 3rd Canadian Division. The Division had to fight its way up a steepening slope and through a complex of German strongpoints to get there.

On the far left of the Canadian attack, with Hill 145 on the right and ‘The Pimple’ on the left, the steepest slope was the 4th Division’s front. Hill 145 was to be captured immediately to prevent enfilade fire on the left flank of the 3rd Division. The Pimple was to be assaulted on day two of the attack by the 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade. The 4th Division had the shortest distance to cover, less than a kilometre, but faced the steepest slope, worst terrain and the strongest defences on the entire ridge.

On the 1st Division front the leading platoons of the 2nd Brigade had crept into no man’s land before Zero Hour. The success of the 1st Division attacks is largely attributable to this decision and the valour of the individual infantrymen who crept into no man’s land early. The attack was supported by the explosion of two large mines under the trenches of the defending Bavarian Infantry Regiment. “Before the stuff had stopped falling, we had to man the lip of the crater that was caused,” remembered George Alliston of the 7th (British Columbia) Battalion.

The need to stick to the schedule and keep up with the barrage was in the forefront of Lance-Corporal Jack Pinson’s mind. Pinson later told a CBC interviewer that “On the way through we’d run into German machine-gun posts. We’d bomb them out or clean them out with rifle fire … We were in a big hurry. We had a timetable to keep to.” The War Diary of the 5th Battalion later noted that the training had served its purpose and the Canadians were well informed and well led, even when their officers and non-coms became casualties. “Casualties among officers and NCOs were extremely heavy, but at no time were there wanting natural leaders to carry the work forward with speed to success.”

On the far right of the Canadian assault, the southernmost unit was the 13th Battalion. One of its members, Private Roy Henley, was the youngest participant in the attack. In 1915 he lied about his age, claiming to have been born in 1898 rather than 1901, and enlisted. At Vimy Ridge he was barely 16. Interviewed in his 80s, he attributed his courage to “the rum jar … You could go and lick your weight in wildcats after that!” With a bullet hole in his canteen, two in his kilt, and a sock torn by a ricochet, he was eventually hit by shrapnel, ending up at the neighbouring 51st Highland Division (British) casualty clearing station. By the time this boy soldier was receiving medical attention, his comrades were at their final objectives and staring over Vimy Ridge into the Douai Plain with the slag heaps of Lens on the horizon.

German battle doctrine called for immediate and powerful counterattacks when a position was lost. Canadian machine gunners use shell holes as gun pits for their water-cooled Vickers Mk 1 machine guns as they prepare to hold and consolidate atop Vimy Ridge. At 28 kilograms (62 pounds), it required a crew of 6 men to carry the gun, its tripod and the water for its cooling jacket, and a further 16 for the ammunition. (dnd, library and archives canada, mikan 3241489)

In the 25th Battalion, on the 2nd Division front, the crucial moment for Frank MacGregor came with the order to fix bayonets. “The locking ring on a bayonet is a little loose. When the order to fix bayonets went along the line, you’d think there were a thousand bees humming. The trembling. Waiting.” Captain Claude Williams of the 6th Brigade Machine Gun Company and formerly a medical student from Hamilton, Ontario later told Pierre Berton that everyone’s highest priority was to maintain the synchronization with the barrage. “The orders were that in no circumstances was anybody to stop to do anything for the wounded — to help them, to carry them out, doing anything — it would break up the line.” For a former medical student, the order to not stop to help the wounded must have been heartrending.

At 0645 hours the 21st and 25th Battalions passed through the first wave of attackers into Les Tilleuls on their way to the Red Line northeast of the town. Thirty minutes later they were digging in on their objective. The quick leap forward had cost the two battalions 468 casualties.

The third wave of attackers then entered the fray. The 31st Battalion led the attack on Thelus and on to the Blue Line. The unit war diary attests to the effectiveness of the Canadian guns: “Buildings were demolished, trenches obliterated and wire smashed to atoms. There was hardly an inch of ground that did not bear witness to the tremendous effect of our guns.” By 1020 hours, less than five hours after Zero Hour, they were digging in on the Blue Line, and well on their way to the crest of the ridge.

At 1415 hours elements of the 27th and 29th Battalions fired three white rockets, indicating that they had successfully attained their objective: the Brown Line running from the summit near the village of Vimy to Farbus. By mid-afternoon units of both the 1st and 2nd Canadian Infantry Divisions were looking northeast over the Douai Plain, a view the Allies had been denied for almost three years.

The only aspect of the assault on the 2nd Division front that could be deemed a total failure was the effort to introduce armoured vehicles or tanks. This failed miserably. The 2nd Division assault was supported by eight Mark I tanks of the British Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps. The tanks were armed with five machine guns and carried 30,000 rounds of ammunition. A variety of roles were foreseen for the tanks. They were to provide mobile firepower against dugouts and resistance nests: they were to provide some cover for the advancing infantrymen; and they were intended to crush barbed wire entanglements and hasten the advance of the infantry.

They proved, in practical terms, underwhelming. On foot Captain Claude Williams, commanding officer of 6th Brigade Machine Gun Company, advanced across no man’s land faster than the tanks. “The tanks were mired,” sniper L. R. Fennell, 27th (Winnipeg) Battalion, told CBC Radio years later. “They had tent posts and everything else wired to their racks, but [the tracks] were just turning around through the mud and the tanks weren’t making any headway.” Three of them were subsequently destroyed by German artillery fire. Ultimately, none of the new vehicles even made it across no man’s land.

On the 3rd Division front Private Harold Barker, a scout with the Royal Canadian Regiment, learned that being on schedule meant keeping up with the barrage but not getting ahead of it. “When we were going over the rehersal [sic] tapes at Bruay in the rear, we had to wait so long for the barrage to lift, but I didn’t think anything about that. I kept on going. I was too fast.” Caught in the Canadian barrage, he was wounded by shrapnel in the mouth, chest, back and leg and knocked out of the rest of the day’s action.

Canadian medical officers (with the Red Cross emblems on the soldiers at right and to the left rear of the photo) use German prisoners, destined to captivity, to help transport Canadian casualties from Vimy Ridge, April 1917. They use a two-tiered carrier, pulled along a light railway line leading from the front. Almost 6,000 Germans were captured and thousands of Canadians were wounded on the first day of the battle. (george metcalf archival collection, cwm 19920085-924)

Advancing on the 3rd Division front, Gus Sivertz of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles felt pressed downwards by the hail of lead. “We were dancing a macabre dance as our nerves vibrated to the thousands of shells and machine gun bullets,” recalled Sivertz. “I felt that if I had put my finger up, I should have touched a ceiling of sound.”

Private Alex Gerrard, the number two man on a Lewis gun crew, was struck not by the noise, but by the colourful German response. German flares, signalling an attack, made “streaks of reds and yellows and greens — like fireworks. It was like a coloured hail storm.” Bitterly, Lieutenant Fred James of the 2nd (Eastern Ontario) Battalion later wrote, “It was a display that made the [Canadian National] Exhibition seem like a joke. It made me think how foolish I had been to pay 25 cents to see some sputtering illuminants.”

Blind saps running forward from the Grange Subway — a tunnel system approximately 800 metres in length that had connected the reserve lines to the front line — were blown and Canadian troops had direct access to the Duffield and Durrand craters in no man’s land. The 3rd Division advanced so fast that the desultory German artillery fire fell largely behind the advancing Canadians and caused few casualties amongst the assault troops.

The biggest problem that the 3rd Division encountered was Hill 145. The promontory was actually on the 4th Division front, but immediately adjacent to the 3rd Division’s left flank. Throughout the morning, positions on the hill directed artillery and mortar fire on the 3rd Division’s advance while enfilade fire from machine guns swept through the ranks. Despite the heavy casualties, the 3rd Division fought itself toward the summit of Vimy Ridge throughout the morning. Speed moving through the kill zone and synchronization with the creeping barrage were the key elements of the 3rd Division’s rapid success, and by the end of the afternoon its leading elements had reached their objectives and joined their comrades in the 1st and 2nd Divisions along the crest of the ridge.

For the first three divisions of the Canadian Corps the attack on Vimy Ridge came off like clockwork. Casualties were well below predicted numbers and the advance went much like it had over the tapes on the practice fields in the weeks before the attack. Along the front, the Canadians attained their objectives on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Division fronts.

THE MAJILLSES GO TO WAR: McGill University's 7th Siege Battery At Vimy

Slogans for recruitment, such as “Calling on men of trained intelligence” and “For God, for Country, for McGill” brought in the initial intake of recruits in the spring of 1916. Initially, they were designated the 6th and the 271st, until receiving the designation 7th. (mcgill daily newspaper, april 25, 1916 edition)

(Volume 24-03)

By Robert Smol

In late March of 1917, as the artillery phase of the Battle of Vimy Ridge was ramping up, a new inexperienced siege battery was getting ready to fight.

It was here, in a muddy swamp, that history was made for Canada and McGill University. In the line-up for the first major battle fought by a unified Canadian Corps was a combat unit recruited from and bearing the crest of the university.

The 7th Canadian (McGill) Siege Battery was barely a year old when it slogged and staggered into the line at Vimy. At the time, it was commanded by a university professor and manned mostly by students from McGill and its subsidiary MacDonald College.

At almost every turn, fate frowned derisively on this new unit. They had little time to prepare, having arrived late. Facing bad weather, they were also desperately short of food and supplies. To worsen matters, the unit’s commanding officer seemed headed for a mental breakdown. But they managed to pull through. And when zero hour came at 0530 on April 9, the McGill Battery was ready.

The 7th Canadian Siege Battery was one of five units mobilized and trained at McGill for overseas service and it was the first combat unit from the university to deploy overseas. The 7th even managed to retain its original university identity with McGill’s crest being emblazoned on the unit’s badge. Its affiliation was not lost once deployed overseas.

Slogans for recruitment, such as “Calling on men of trained intelligence” and “For God, for Country, for McGill” brought in the initial intake of recruits in the spring of 1916. Initially, the Majillses, as they were popularly called, were designated the 6th and the 271st, until receiving the designation 7th.

The battery’s first commanding officer was Major William Dunlop Tait, a professor at McGill. He served in the Corps of Guides before the war. After the war in 1924, he founded the department of psychology at the university. A professor of English, Captain Cyrus MacMillan became the deputy commander of the unit. He was also an author.

According to Gunner Terence Macdermot’s memoir The Seventh, written in 1953, the battery initially consisted of 61 active students as well as 35 clerks, eight engineers, two architects, and six teachers — many of them McGill alumni. The unit also had a gardener, barber and farmer.

After conducting training in Montreal, Halifax, and Great Britain, the 7th was ordered to proceed to the Vimy front. Landing at Boulogne, France on March 15, 1917, the unit departed in motor lorries for the front on March 27.

Men of the 7th Canadian Siege Battery catch up on some rest in a D hut in France, January 1917. Comprised primarily of students of McGill University and its subsidiary MacDonald College, the unit’s first commanding officer was psychology professor Major William Tait. (library and archives canada)

On the unit’s journey to the front, tractors dragged the guns, slowing the trip as they had to make frequent stops, wrote Gunner Richard Beverly Moysey in his diary. For the next two days, the battery slept in farmers’ barns, dealt with frequent delays, choked roads, worsening weather and mechanical breakdowns. Moysey could hear the distinct sound of gunfire and spent his evenings “watching the illumination along the front.”

Once arrived at the front, the unit was greeted with a tactical and logistical nightmare. The unit was ordered to place their howitzers — short guns firing shells on high trajectories at low velocities — in a swamp.

A frustrated Captain Cyrus MacMillan wrote of the muddy conditions in his personal diary. “Did our best to get things in order. Living in a swamp. No material to work with. This is Canada’s treatment of us!”

The unit’s official war diary was equally ominous in its assessment of the situation and the challenge of getting guns positioned and calibrated on time.

“No material to work with, no brick, stone, or timber. Men sleeping in mud and water or under canvas. Rations very poor.”

According to Gunner Macdermot, the supply situation worsened so much that “the hungry gunner was not above picking a stray onion from the mud, wiping it on his muddy sleeve and swallowing it, mud and all.”

The first two guns arrived at 2300 on April 2. Without proper supplies to mount the guns, the men began to scrounge through the ruins of a local village to get whatever material they could improvise with.

Hauled into position by the wet, hungry and sleep-deprived gunners at 0200 in the morning, they were greeted by a torrent of rain and snow. The remaining two guns arrived the following midnight and were hauled into their improvised gun pits. But before they could move on in their preparation, a gun had sunk in the mud.

The McGill gunners tried unsuccessfully to pull it out, only to see it sink once more. Two tractors attempted the feat, without any luck. Anxiously, they began to implement their programme of preparatory firing to ensure that the guns were properly calibrated and the improvised platforms and gun pits were secure enough to withstand a continuous and heavy gunfire. Over the remaining two days, the unit fired over 200 shells to ensure that their guns and designated targets were properly calibrated and registered.

Added to the litany of challenges was a missing commanding officer. Almost immediately after the unit’s arrival at Vimy, Major Tait confined himself to his tent and remained shut off from any interaction with his unit or with medical personnel for five days. Interestingly, the professor who founded McGill’s psychology department was likely suffering from a mental health crisis at Vimy.

Although Tait’s condition was not mentioned in the unit’s official diary, Captain MacMillan included “Major still in bed” for each of his diary entries from April 1 to 4. In a private letter to his brother, MacMillan was more detailed. “He did not appear sick — and his indisposition, I fear, gave a strange impression.” On April 5, Tait reported to the hospital, making deputy commander MacMillan the leader of McGill’s first combat unit.

Though MacMillan doubted their CO’s return, Tait did return after Vimy, commanding the unit during the Battle of Hill 70 in August 1917.

The world “seemed to thunder,” recalled MacMillan, when the guns began their bombardment of Vimy Ridge on April 9. In addition to destroying Vimy Ridge, the 7th McGill Siege Battery was focused on destroying the villages of Thelus, Farbus, and Farbus Wood, as well as the roads leading to Thelus. During the first day of the battle, the heavy guns, firing from the dreadful swamp, had expended 350 rounds.

Men of the 7th Siege Battery, based in the Souchez valley, await orders to fire their 6-inch Howitzer at the Germans positions in addition to obstacles on Vimy Ridge in the spring of 1917. INSET:  The unit’s cap badge included the University of McGill’s crest; its motto is Grand escunt aucta labore. (library and archives canada)

“We fired as hard as possible until noon,” recounted Moysey in his diary. After that, the gunners were on standby, ready to respond to SOS calls from the infantry, while it was consolidating its position on the ridge. “The German prisoners started coming back,” wrote Moysey. “Some of the boys went out and got their helmets in exchange for cigarettes.”

The same throng of German prisoners that weaved through the lines of the 7th all morning were described by MacMillan as tired-looking young men, with “pale unshaven faces, tanned about the eyes.” As they passed MacMillan and the others, “they placed their hands over their ears as if to shut out a noise that would have brought memories of hell.”

After Vimy, the 7th went on to fight at Lens and Hill 70, Passchendaele, Arras, Canal-Du-Nord, Valenciennes, and Mons. There is nothing to remind today’s McGill students of their First World War unit, aside from a discrete plaque placed on campus by veterans of the battery after the war.

THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE: Part 1: Preparing The Attack

Artillery support was an important strategic aspect of the plan to take Vimy Ridge from the Germans. In this striking nighttime photograph taken behind Canadian lines at Vimy, a British naval gun fires in support of the Canadian attack. Approximately 1,000 Allied guns and mortars pounded the ridge prior to the assault, a period called by the German defenders the “week of suffering.” (george metcalf archival collection, cwm 19920085-215)

(Volume 24-03)

By Bob Gordon

Prior to assaulting the ridge, the Canadian Corps had to dig tunnels, lay pipelines, and stockpile munitions. It was a Herculean effort of logistics.

On January 19, 1917 British First Army Commander General Sir Henry Horne ordered Lieutenant-General Julian ‘Bungo’ Byng, commander of the Canadian Corps, to be prepared to attack Vimy Ridge in the spring. For the first time in the war, the Canadian Corps would fight a separate and distinct operation, with all four infantry divisions together. From right to left, in ascending numerical order, they were to attack up the southwestern slope of the ridge and occupy the summit.

The geography of northwestern France is uniformly flat and low, rising only gradually above sea level. Topographical elements that appear insignificant carry tremendous weight locally. Vimy Ridge is just such a commanding feature. Roughly seven kilometres in length, Vimy Ridge runs from northwest to southeast between Lens and Arras. Even at its highest points Hill 145 — the highest and most important feature of the Ridge and where the Vimy monument now stands — and a bulbous rise at its north end known as ‘The Pimple’ the ridge never rises more than 150 metres above sea level. Yet despite its modest dimensions, it is the highest feature for dozens of kilometres.

Map of Vimy Ridge showing Canadian operations from April 9–12, 1917. Situated in northern France, the seven-kilometre ridge had been heavily fortified by the German forces. The Canadians would be assaulting over an open graveyard since previous Allied attacks had failed with over 140,000 casualties. (canadian war museum)

The German positions on the summit overlooked the Canadian trenches and many kilometres into the rear of their positions. Sergeant Walter Draycot, serving in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, learned how much the Germans could see from documents captured during a raid. After the battle he wrote home that the Germans “had nearly as accurate description of our trenches as we had; how they were held, and of what strength in men, whether they were in good condition or otherwise, what new work was going on … These facts I discovered by taking a map from a prisoner after a successful raid by our troops.”

The Germans overlooking the Canadians did so from deep and complex fortifications. A Corps appraisal estimated that the ridge was protected by 34,000 metres of fire trenches, 15,000 metres of communication trenches, and over 9,000 metres of barbed wire entanglements.

The Allied war council decided that the first step in their plan for 1917 was a Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge. After the Canadian Corps had pushed the Germans off of that vantage point, it would be possible for the British and French armies’ offensives to start. With the Canadian Corps occupying the summit of Vimy Ridge, these attacks would be free from German flanking fire. At the same time, forward artillery observers on the ridge could overlook German movement and direct fire on German installations.

The plan for the Canadian attack was simple. Burst out of the trenches, race up the slope and capture the top of the ridge. The exact same plan that had been tried time after time on the Western Front by armies wearing uniforms of every colour. The Germans had occupied the ridge in October 1914 and fought off a six-division counterattack. In the summer of 1915 the French had suffered 100,000 casualties in a second unsuccessful assault. That fall a British attack had failed despite 40,000 casualties. Altogether 300,000 men had been killed or wounded on the slopes of Vimy Ridge.

Now it was the Canadians’ turn. LGen Byng was determined to succeed. To this end, the preparation phase was meticulous, methodical, and on a scale never seen before. Brigadier Victor Odlum, commanding officer of the 11th Brigade, put it simply: “Our fights are won or lost before we go into them.” Training was undertaken in an entirely new manner and the execution of the plan was to be revolutionary.

The Canadian plan was organized to the last detail. Four objective lines had been identified for the troops. Moving progressively deeper into the German defences, they were known as the Black, Red, Blue and Brown Lines. Times for the assault troops to reach each of these lines and for the next attackers to pass through the previous wave, all coordinated with a creeping barrage rolling forward over the German positions, were precisely scheduled.

The overall artillery plan was the brainchild of Major Alan Brooke, a staff officer on loan from the Royal Artillery. Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew McNaughton, formerly an engineering professor at McGill University, was the head of the Canadian counter-battery office (CCBO) and responsible for using Canadian artillery to destroy the German artillery. His counter-battery work was remarkably effective. The Germans had assembled 212 artillery pieces to support the defence of the heights. When the Canadian troops left their trenches on Easter Monday, four out of five German guns had already been destroyed. McNaughton described the exercise as “intense neutralization.”

Pack horses taking up ammunition to guns of the 20th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, near Neuville St. Vaast, April 1917. They are transporting 18-pounder ammunition for field guns. The 100,000 troops assembled for the attack needed food and water daily as did the more than 50,000 horses with them. (dnd, library and archives canada, mikan 3194797)

Moving these millions of shells to the front was only one of the many logistical challenges that had to be overcome. Small arms ammunition, mortar and Mills bombs, as well as wood, concrete and sandbags for endless trench and tunnel construction also had to be brought forward. The 100,000 troops assembled for the attack needed food and water daily as did the more than 50,000 horses with them. Feeding these needs was a huge challenge, particularly when it all had to be done under the watchful eyes of the Germans atop Vimy Ridge.

Daily consumption of 600,000 gallons of water required installation of 70 kilometres of pipeline as well as its maintenance and repair. Even fed and watered, some horses were simply worked to death. Stephen Beames of the Canadian Field Artillery later wrote: “Our wretched, emaciated, starving, shivering horses died as we were forced by swearing, raving provost marshals to flog them into starting heavy loads of shells.” The War Diary of the 1st Canadian Field Artillery Brigade took note of the casualties amongst the horses on Sunday, April 8, the day before the assault: “Many horses died during the past few days owing to so much hauling of ammunition and cutting down of hay and straw ration.” The day after the battle the 3rd Division was so short of horses that officers were ordered to turn their saddle horses over to the Divisional Pack Train to be used as beasts of burden.

The Canadian Corps had entire units devoted to building and maintaining railroads, trenches and tunnels. Foresters and a crude sawmill supplied all the lumber for these projects. Communications required that some 4,200 kilometres of telephone and telegraph wire and 40 kilometres of communication cable be laid. The two months before the battle saw furious construction work ongoing everywhere behind the Canadian front.

Bridging work was undertaken under the command of the artillery. Major Crearer, 11th Field Battery, officer commanding the road construction, handled those duties in the sector of the 1st and 3rd Canadian Field Artillery (CFA) Brigade. On April 4 the brigade’s war diary noted: “Work started on bridges under 3rd Brigade, C.F.A. control on route over trenches in the coming advance.” Two days later it stated: “A standard gauge railway has been built and is now completed up to the 2nd How. (howitzer) Battery. Bridges made and trenches filled in up to 500 Crater …”

Immediately behind the Canadian line, the ground underneath the city of Arras was honeycombed with mines and tunnels. Tunnelling companies expanded these ancient catacombs linking them together and to the Canadian lines. Eventually, the Canadians had constructed a total of 12 large subways leading to the front line. The largest, the Grange, was over two kilometres long with innumerable side passages housing offices, infirmaries, dormitories, and caverns to hold the assault troops. After a tour, Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Sharpe, CO of the 116th (Ontario County) Battalion, described the underground system as “the most wonderful tunnels and dugouts … There is room here for a small tramway and it is entirely electrically lighted.”

Preparing subways and dugouts was a piece of cake compared to the work that other tunnellers had to do. Miners were also excavating deep tunnels more than 20 metres underground beneath the German defensive system. The objective was to excavate large caverns under the German defences, fill them with explosives and detonate huge land mines in conjunction with the attack. Other blind saps stopped just short of craters in no man’s land. When the attack commenced, they were to be blown open thereby providing the assault troops with direct, protected access to no man’s land.

The infantry assault troops had weaponry only slightly advanced from the disastrous fall battles on the Somme. However, the Corps was entirely reorganized before Vimy. The platoon of approximately 30 men became the basic combat unit. It was diversified to include riflemen, rifle-grenadiers, bombers and Lewis machine-gunners who used their various weapons in combination to suppress German fire and destroy machine guns and strongpoints.

The Corps also trained in an entirely different way. The level of openness was astonishing to experienced officers. Captain Ian Sinclair of the 13th Battalion recalled: “Troops throughout the ranks knew their objectives, the objectives of the units on their flanks, and the overall goals and scheduling of the offensive. They were encouraged to learn and rewarded for it.” They studied aerial photographs and maps. They looked at Plasticine models of the Ridge.

Safely behind the lines near Servins, they walked over fields with German trenches and positions marked on them exactly where they were known to be. “We got to know every part of that front,” Private Percy Twidale, a long-serving member of the 16th (Canadian Scottish) Battalion told an interviewer decades later, “which was a great help on the day of action.” Captain Sinclair concurred, noting that “Everybody down to the lowest Private knew exactly what the plan was from beginning to end … The timetable was clear to all involved.” At the time, an unheard of 40,000 maps were prepared and distributed to every officer and NCO involved in the operation.

Abandoned were the wave tactics employed on the Somme in 1916, when poorly trained troops of Kitchener Army’s advanced in lines, like automaton, only to be cut down by German machine-gun fire. Brigadier Griesbach of the 1st Brigade issued brigade orders on March 24, 1917 specifying that, “As long as an enemy machine gun is firing, it is clear that our people cannot advance in any sort of formation, and they must instead advance in short bounds or by stealth.” Byng concurred. He ordered his officers to fight “with the discipline of a well-trained pack of hounds. You find your own holes through the hedges. I’m not going to tell you where they are. But never lose sight of your objective. Reach it in your own way.”

Unloading some of the 70 kilometres of water mains behind the front lines. On the near side of the road, the tracks of a small-gauge railway are visible. The rail cart in the background, designed to carry anything from shells forward to wounded to the rear, was pulled by men, not mules. (library and archives canada, mikan 3521936)

By Monday, April 2, the final phases of the preparations were underway. The barrage that had gone on sporadically for weeks suddenly erupted with a new level of fury. In the week before the attack 50,000 tons of high explosives fell on the German defenders. The Canadian guns fired almost continuously. On occasion literally melting their gun barrels, they fired one million shells. So many, with such devastating effect, that the Germans on the receiving end named the period Woche des Leidens (the week of suffering).

“Once again trebled is the raging hurricane of fire,” one Bavarian soldier wrote in his diary. “The thunder of the heavy guns drowns any other noise. The rumble of the unparallelled storm is deeper now than the Somme.” Another experienced German soldier noted, “My dugout is four metres under the ground, but yet is not quite safe from the British who bombard us like the very devil.” Yet another wrote: “Men are constantly being killed and wounded.”

A German general staff account of the battle quoted an unnamed soldier: “What the eye sees through the clouds of smoke is a sea of masses of earth, thrown up and clouds of smoke rolling along … spitting fuses, slow burning gas shells, exploding trench mortars …” He also identified the psychological strain it imposed: “How long did this nightmare last? The sense of time seems intensified so that every second is divided into one hundred moments of fear.”

The bombardment was fiercer, and more accurate, than any that had preceded earlier battles.

On the Canadian side of the lines reports on artillery fire recorded in war diaries were workmanlike. “Weather fair and warm. All wire suspected is engaged, some 3,800 rds. expended by our 18 Pdr. Batteries. 4.5” Hows. busy on Trench Destruction. At 8 P.M. our Heavies put up a very good trial barrage. No hostile shelling of any extent during the past week.” By Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917 all of the preparations for the attack were complete.

Next month: The attack begins. After months of planning and preparation the Canadian Corps goes over the bags on a snowy, sleety Easter Monday morning.

JOHN MCELROY: Fighting In - And Against - Spitfires

Canadian fighter pilot John McElroy distinguished himself in the Royal Air Force in 1942, never dreaming he would distinguish himself against it in 1949, while flying for Israel’s sole fighter unit. (canadian war museum)

(Volume 24-02)

By Jon Guttman

During the Second World War Canada produced a healthy surfeit of Supermarine Spitfire pilots who distinguished themselves against such redoubtable counterparts as the Messerschmitt Me 109 and the Macchi MC.202. John McElroy stands out in one respect, however, because the last two planes he claimed while flying a Spitfire were Royal Air Force Spitfires.

Born in Port Arthur, Ontario in 1920, John Frederick McElroy had served in the North Battleford Light Infantry and the Rocky Mountain Rangers before entering the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. Commissioned in September 1941, he was shipped to Britain in November and, after further instruction at an operational training unit (OTU), was posted to No. 54 Squadron RAF in April 1942. In June, however, he embarked on the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle as one of 32 airmen flying Spitfire Mark VCs to the besieged Mediterranean isle of Malta. Pilot Officer McElroy’s Spitfire BR388 damaged its tail during takeoff on June 9, and the consequent crash landing resulted in McElroy being grounded and almost reposted to the Middle East. Finally, though, he was assigned to No. 249 Squadron at Takali airfield on Malta.

By spring 1942, Malta’s situation was critical. General Erwin Rommel had defeated the British Eighth Army at Gazala, had taken Tobruk and was driving on Egypt. Malta remained a thorn in the side of the Axis seaborne supply routes, but its own stocks of aircraft, ammunition, fuel and food were in short supply — the only thing in abundance were aircraft of the Italian Regia Aeronautica and German Luftwaffe, coming almost daily in their effort to neutralize the island. George F. Beurling, Malta’s — and Canada’s — highest-scoring ace of the war, cockily proclaimed it a fighter pilot’s paradise, but its air commander, Air Vice Marshal Hugh P. Lloyd, gravely declared it as “no place for beginners.”

On July 1 the Axis began a series of strikes at Malta’s airfields and the next day McElroy damaged an Me 109 (actually an MC.202), followed on the 4th by a “probable” claim on a Reggiane Re.2001. On the 7th McElroy scored his first confirmed success, shooting down a C.202 while “borrowing” a No. 601 Squadron “Spit,” BR301 UF-S. On the 9th he and Flight Sergeant John D. Rae shared in destroying a Junkers Ju 88A of Kampfgeschwader 77.

The Germans attacked Luqa airbase on July 13, but McElroy, again in BR301, claimed an Me 109 destroyed and another damaged, though they were actually MC.202s of the 151a Squadriglia, 20o Gruppo, 51o Stormo. He and Pilot Officer Leslie W. Watts shared in a probable Me 109 and a second damaged on the 23rd. McElroy damaged an Re.2001 and an Me 109 on the 28th. In August he was dispatched to lead the ferrying in of more replacement Spitfires, taking off from the carrier HMS Furious on the 17th.

Supermarine Spitfire Mk. Vs of No. 249 Squadron RAF await their next scramble at Takali airfield in mid-1942. The Mk V was produced in greater numbers than any other single mark of Spitfire, and was also the first Spitfire to be used in large numbers outside Britain. The first such deployment came in March 1942, when 15 Mk VBs were delivered to Malta in an effort to hold off the Bf 109F, while Hurricanes were used to attack lower-level bombers. (249squadronraf@wordpress.com)

By October the tide was turning in both North Africa and the Mediterranean, with Malta holding its own against a final succession of Axis aerial onslaughts. During a fight 15 miles north of Gozo Island on October 10, McElroy, in EP708 “U,” shot an Me 109 off his wingman’s tail and damaged another. His bag on the 12th was an Me 109, probably killing Gefreiter Georg Gunkel of 4th Staffel, Jagdgeschwader 53, and a Ju 88 destroyed and a Messerschmitt damaged, but his own plane was damaged in the fight.

The next day, he downed an Re.2001 and damaged an Me 109. On the 15th he and Flying Officer Leonard Cheek of No. 185 Squadron destroyed a Ju 88A of 3./KG 77 piloted by Unteroffizier Herbert Gross and damaged another, but McElroy was bounced by fighters — possibly credited to Maggiore Luigi Borgogno of the 352a Squadriglia, 20o Gruppo, 51o Stormo. He was slightly wounded in one leg and crash landed at Takali. He damaged a Ju 88 of KG 77 the next day, but again his plane was hit, this time by an Me 109G-2 of I Gruppe, JG 53, and crash-landed.

In spite of this mixed run of luck, McElroy and Pilot Officer Joseph Lowery shared credit for an Me 109 downed five miles north of Grand Harbour on October 22, and he damaged an MC.202 on the 27th. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and promoted to flight lieutenant, he was posted back to Britain. He served as an instructor at 57 OTU until December 5 and, after some leave in Canada, he also did a stint in No. 276 Air-Sea Rescue Squadron and returned to instructing at 56 OTU in July 1943.

In January 1944 McElroy returned to combat with No. 421 Squadron RCAF, participating in the Allied landings at Normandy on June 6. During an encounter with I./JG 27 over Caen on the evening of June 15, he damaged an Me 109G before it escaped into a cloud, but his Spitfire Mark IXB was also shot up and crash-landed in Allied lines (this hit was possibly credited to Oberfähnrich Max Winkler of 1./JG 27). Flying Officer Lorne F. Curry was also killed by Feldwebel Gustav Sturm of 2./JG 27, but No. 421 claimed nine victories in the fight and JG 27 acknowledged the loss of six, with at least three pilots killed.

McElroy downed a Focke-Wulf Fw 190A over Le Merlerault on June 23 and an Me 109 over Caen on the 28th. In July, he was put in command of No. 416 Squadron and shot down an Fw 190 northeast of Alençon on the 27th. On September 30 he and Flight Lieutenant David W. A. Harling shared in the destruction of an Me 109 over Nijmegen, and McElroy received a bar to his DFC in October.

With nine lone and three shared victories to his credit, McElroy returned to Canada and spent the rest of the war on the Pacific Coast. He was released from service on September 24, 1945, but remained in the Auxiliary Air Force as an instructor with No. 422 Squadron.

In May 1948 McElroy was living in Vancouver, no longer flying and evidently missing it sorely, when two Jewish acquaintances asked if he knew any flyers willing to fight for the newly founded state of Israel, which had immediately come under attack by five Arab states. McElroy contacted 40 pilots, of whom some went. After the police visited his wife to ask about his activities, McElroy decided to leave Canada and fly for Israel himself. Along the way, he met two fellow volunteers: Clifford Denzel Woodrow Wilson and Joseph “Jack” Doyle.

After making their way to Israel, all three Canucks ended up in No. 101 Squadron, Israel’s sole fighter unit, which since May had been operating Avia S-199s, Czechoslovakian-built Me 109Gs with Junkers Jumo engines that were inferior in performance and less safe to fly then the Daimler-Benz powered originals. On December 18 McElroy and other pilots were sent to purchase and ferry in war surplus Spitfire Mark LF Mark IXs from Czechoslovakia.

On December 30, “Jack” Doyle reported that “Johnny McElroy and I were doing a recce of Bir Hama when I saw two enemy aircraft strafing our troops.” These were two Macchi MC.205Vs — improved versions of the MC.202 — of No. 2 Squadron, Royal Egyptian Air Force (REAF). Elements of the Israeli 9th Regiment had raided their airbase at Bir Hama the previous day, and were in the process of withdrawing when the Macchis attacked.

“I cut into their circuit and shot down the leader,” Doyle continued. “The second one broke and ran with Johnny on his tail. In a short while he finished him off and we returned to base.”

Squadron Leader Mustafa Kemal Abd al Wahib was killed by Doyle, while McElroy killed Flight Lieutenant Khalil Jamad al Din al Arusi. On the same day, the RAF’s 205 Group, based at Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone, received orders to monitor the Israeli offensive in the Negev Desert and pass on the information to United Nations Truce Supervision teams. The first such sortie was flown by six Spitfire LF Mark 18s of No. 208 Squadron RAF, guided to the battlefield by three bomb-armed REAF Spitfire LF Mark IXs.

On January 7, 1949, four Spitfires of No. 208 Squadron were ordered on a tactical reconnaissance of the Israeli–Egyptian frontier, also escorting two deHavilland Mosquitos of No. 13 Squadron, photographing heavy fighting along the Al Auja-Rafah road. Taking off at 1115 hours, the four Spitfires swept over the battle area, unaware that five Spitfires of No. 2 Squadron REAF had just strafed an Israeli armoured column, setting three trucks afire. Two Spits, flown by Flying Officer Geoffrey Cooper and Pilot/III Frank Close, flew toward the column of smoke to investigate and take pictures, only to come under fire from the Israeli troops. Hit in the engine, Close bailed out at 500 feet, caught his foot on his parachute rigging and came down on his head, breaking his jaw.

At that point McElroy arrived at the scene leading Chalmers Goodlin, a newly arrived volunteer with previous service in the RCAF, U.S. Army Air Forces and as a test pilot for the Bell Aircraft Company. Some 3,000 feet below them were two Spitfires, still observing the crash of their comrade. “John took after the one on the left, with guns firing,” recalled “Slick” Goodlin, “while I tried to get into position to shoot at the other.”

“We were right on top of them,” McElroy reported. “They pulled up right in front of us and I blasted one, I guess from about 200 yards, and saw many explosions all around engine and cockpit; I knocked quite a few pieces off his wings.”

Possibly killed by McElroy’s first volley, Pilot/II Ronald Sayers power-dived into a sand dune. “I looked over and saw another aeroplane off about two o’clock to me, just off to my right and slightly below,” McElroy continued. “It wasn’t one of ours, so I just dropped my sights on him — it was 400 yards — and let fly. I got strikes all over him. Right down the fuselage and the engine. I broke off, looked around, but couldn’t see ‘Slick.’”

The first that Flying Officer Timothy McElhaw knew of what was going on was a radio-telephone call of “Look out, there’s one behind you!” The next was the sight of a Spitfire behind him, before being shot down and bailing out. Nearby, Cooper engaged Goodlin in a series of scissors manoeuvres — a mistake, since it conceded the advantage to the slower but nimbler old Mark IX. Goodlin finally got some hits in the cowling and saw his opponent bail out 10 miles south of El Arish.

Israelis examine a Spitfire IX of No. 2 Squadron, Royal Egyptian Air Force, that was brought down by ground fire during a strike on Tel Aviv on May 15, 1948, and belly landed on the beach at Hertzliya. The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Mahmoud Barakat, was taken prisoner. (israel defense force)

Wounded in the leg, Cooper was found by Bedouins who turned him over to the Egyptian army, which treated his injuries and put him on a train to Ismailia. McElhaw and Close were picked up by Israelis and eventually sent to Tel Aviv for questioning. Meanwhile, McElroy and Goodlin did victory rolls over their airfield at Hatzor, after which everyone wondered whether there would be retaliation. Britain did not retaliate and suspended reconnaissance flights, but demanded compensation from Israel for the losses in men and equipment, and warned that the Air Ministry would “regard as hostile any Jewish aircraft encountered over Egyptian territory.”

On January 8, certain pilots of No. 101 Squadron sent a message to No. 208: “Sorry about yesterday, but you were on the wrong side of the fence. Come over and have a drink sometime. You will see many familiar faces.”

“I was visited by McElroy whilst I was a POW in Tel Aviv,” Tim McElhaw later said. “I can only recall that we had a perfectly civil conversation, whilst both being on guard not to reveal anything of operational significance; I think he said he had been ‘involved.’”

In March 1949 the Canadians were shipped home. Any concerns McElroy may have had on the consequences of his actions were settled during the Korean War and the concurrent expansion of the RCAF. He rejoined as a flying officer in April 1951, instructed and flew Canadair Sabres with No. 421 Squadron in Europe, and became a flight lieutenant in January 1956. He finally left the RCAF in November 1964 and became a real estate salesman in London, Ontario.

John McLeod, Canada’s only Spitfire ace with Spitfires to his credit, died in Victoria, British Columbia on October 24, 1994.

Sacrifices At The Battle Of Hill 70

Further to this article, Lubomyr Luciuk travelled to France for the unveiling of the plaque and bas relief honouring Ukrainian-Canadian Filip Konowal, who distinguished himself during the Battle of Hill 70 one hundred years ago, on August 22, 1917. Below are photos from the ceremony and a press release from the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association:

Trilingual plaque honouring Cpl Konowal & bas relief of Konowal (detail from a trilingual plaque unveiled by Branch #360 of The Royal Canadian Legion [Konowal Branch] on 22 August 2005, in Lens, France)

On Tuesday, 22 August 2017, hundreds of people from France and a sizeable delegation of Ukrainians from the Diaspora attended the public unveiling of the Battle of Hill 70 Memorial, at Loos-en-Gohelle, France. Included in the ceremony was an official opening of the Konowal Walk. Corporal Konowal’s valour at the Battle of Hill 70 one hundred years ago (22 August 1917) was recognized with the highest medal of the British Empire, the Victoria Cross, the only Ukrainian ever so distinguished. The naming of the central pathway at the Hill 70 memorial after Konowal was made possible through the generosity of the Temerty Family Foundation, the Ihnatowycz Family Foundation, the Petro Jacyk Education Foundation, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund, Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, Ukrainian Canadian Veterans Fund, Shevchenko Foundation and other Ukrainian Canadian organizations and individuals, with the support of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain. Shown from left to right are Paul Grod (president, Ukrainian Canadian Congress), Professor Lubomyr Luciuk (chairman, UCCLF) and the presiding officer, Lieutenant-General Paul Wynnyk (Commander, Canadian Army). Commenting, Dr Luciuk said: “This is a very fitting tribute to a Canadian hero, 100 years to the day on which his valour in a fierce battle won him the Victoria Cross. Almost two decades ago the chairman of Branch #360 of The Royal Canadian Legion, the late John B Gregorovich, initiated our community’s efforts to honour Cpl Konowal, the honourary patron of that branch. Being here today to see John’s vision finally realized, on the site where Konowal fought so bravely, is a privilege. This Ukrainian Canadian hero will now always be remembered."

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A Prayer For Those Who Did Not Come Back

(Volume 24-4)

By Lubomyr Luciuk

My parents took me there when I was a young lad. I recall going into City Park, to the corner of Wellington and West Streets, and walking around the Great War memorial reading the names of the battles where Kingston’s 21st Battalion fought- the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Ypres, Passchendaele, Hill 70. I had no clue as to where those places were or what they echoed. What I do remember is being puzzled by the statue. A sculpted infantryman stands high on a plinth, gazing upwards. I remember wondering - shouldn’t a fighting man be looking forward, toward the enemy’s trenches? I can’t say I liked this statue, not then. It simply wasn’t martial enough for a boy.

Years later I found myself researching the life of a Great War soldier, Corporal Filip Konowal. He served in the ranks of the 49th Battalion - at the Somme, on Vimy Ridge and then at Hill 70, his valour in that battle earning him a Victoria Cross, the only Ukrainian Canadian ever so distinguished. It seems my interest in Konowal eventually caught the notice of a remarkable group of Kingstonians who had come together determined to recover the memory of the Battle of Hill 70. Under the able leadership ofColonel (retd) Mark Hutchings, and with the patronage of His Excellency David Johnston, the Governor General of Canada, these men and women have already raised several million dollars for a Hill 70 memorial at Loos-en-Gohell, in France. It was unveiled on Saturday, 8 April. I was  there.

I have been to Lens before, on 22 August 2005, unveiling a trilingual plaque and bas relief honouring Corporal Konowal. Thanks to the generosity of some proud Canadian Ukrainians his valour will be further commemorated as the central pathway at the Hill 70 memorial is being named the Konowal Walk. I am honoured to have done my bit to make that happen. But I am also a proud Kingstonian. And so today, as I stand atop Hill 70, I will be thinking not only about Konowal but about those whose came to this very place some 100 years ago, but never left.

While it is true that we don’t know if any Kingstonians died at Hill 70 what is certain is that at least seven soldiers from our city were killed as that battle raged, between 15-25 August 1917. Lieutenant Frederick Gooch died in action on 15 August, as did Portsmouth’s Private Harold Langsford, and Private Henry Vivian, who enlisted on 11 November 1915 and whose wife Sarah once lived at 236 Wellington Street. Private Thomas McFern, 18, from Amherst Island, was killed “near Lens” on 17th August; his military will, dated 14 March 1917, left his estate to his mother, Rose. Private Marshal Polmateer, from Arden, died in the field on 18th August, Private Charles Bremner, originally from Battersea, on 21st August, and Private Joseph Boyd, a KCVI graduate, on 24th August.  From nearby Napanee, Corporal Frank Davern was definitely in the fight. Even though he lied about his age (17) when he enlisted in the 21st he proved a resourceful signaller, winning a Military Medal for bravery at the Somme. In his last letter home, 1 May 1917, he observed his unit had been “very busy lately” at Vimy Ridge, adding that while the enemy “occasionally… reaches out with long range guns that does not trouble us as long as he does not have our name and number on it.” On the 16th August 1917 the enemy did. Davern suffered a serious shrapnel wound to his left leg, dying 3 days later at a casualty clearing station. He now lies buried in the Bruay Communal Cemetery,  forever aged 19, one of the 8,677 casualties the Canadian Expeditionary Force took at Hill 70. As for Kingston’s 21st - of the 1,013 volunteers who left our city in May 1915, and moved into the trenches of the Western Front on 18 September 1915, only 103 were still with the battalion when it marched into Germany in 1918.

When I got home I went to City Park and again stood by the war memorial. I finally realize what its creator intended. On the monument’s front, facing east, are carved the poppies of Flanders Fields adorned with a Cross, sacred symbols of the sacrificed surrounded by the upward-flowing rays of a stylized sunrise. I shall pause, face east, and offer up a prayer for those who never returned from France. I now understand that, for many more years than I have been alive, this centurion has stood not simply to herald triumphs won on earthly battlegrounds but as a reminder of the hope of the Resurrection, the very message of Easter. Often it takes the passage of much time before you see truly.

Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at The Royal Military College of Canada and author of A Canadian Hero: Corporal Filip Konowal, VC and the Battle of Hill 70

_________________________________________________________________________________

THE MAN UNDER THE UNIFORM: Part 2: Arthur Currie Becomes A Pillar of Society

This photograph shows men from the 5th Regiment Canadian Garrison Artillery, Victoria, and the 6th Regiment The Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles of Vancouver having an outdoor meal in camp at Macaulay Point, Victoria, circa 1900. In 1897, Currie joined the ‘Dandy Fifth’ as they were nicknamed. By 1908, his gunnery skills and aptitude led to his commanding the regiment. (major james matthews, city of Vancouver archives)

(Volume 24-02)

By David Pugliese

As the twentieth century dawned Currie’s life was at its nadir. Teaching seemed to offer only a life of gentile poverty. He had no economic prospects to speak of, a limited network and a stalled militia career. Illness, an affliction in and of itself, had forced him to sit out the South African campaign and his militia career was largely undistinguished.

However, in the spring of 1900 Currie’s joining Matson and Coles, the prominent Victoria insurance firm, triggered a remarkable change in his fortunes. Turns out he was successful as an insurance salesman and his income increased considerably and quickly as a result. Insurance company co-owner JSH Matson, despite being only half a dozen years older than Currie, quickly developed into a friend and mentor. Four years later, when Matson became the publisher of Victoria’s Daily Colonist, Currie took over as manager of Matson and Coles. In 1906, he also became provincial manager of National Life Assurance of Canada. Currie’s advancement within the industry speaks to his ability to master a new set of skills and stands as evidence of growing prosperity.

The wedding of Lillian Warner (left) and Arthur Currie on August 14, 1901 was a highlight of Victoria’s high society that summer. Born Lucy Sophia Musters in Comox, British Columbia in 1875, her name was changed to Lillian by her adoptive parents, Orlando and Jane Warner, after Lucy was abandoned by her father following her mother’s death from childbed fever. According to family history, it was love at first sight when Arthur Currie met “Lil” when visiting his aunt, Jane Warner, in Victoria. Lady Lucy Currie survived her husband by 36 years and passed away in 1969 at age 93. (barbara chaworth-musters, strathroy age dispatch)

In 1908 he struck out in a new direction when he established Currie and Power, a real estate firm. Apparently, success in insurance sales allowed him to accumulate the capital to take this step. At the time, real estate was not sold by agents for a commission; the owner, developer, promoter and salesperson were one and the same. Currie and Power speculated in land. They relied on subdivision, development and sales, enhanced by the inflationary pressure of a hot real estate market, for profits. The considerable capital required demonstrates that Currie was getting ahead financially.

A friend, Augustus Brindle, describes an office with map-covered walls supplementing Currie’s pitch highlighting the specific features of each lot and parcel of land. The Victoria economy was booming, and the city regarded itself as “the best-paved, best-lighted and best boulevarded city in North America.” A lot in Fairfield, a new suburb, bought for $400 in 1908 could be sold for $5,000 four years later. Colonel Hugh Urquhart, historian for the 16th Battalion (The Canadian Scottish), asserts that Currie netted over $17,000 on property sales in 1911. A history of the province published in 1914 described Currie as owning “much property in Victoria and surrounding area” while operating from “commodious office premises on Douglas Street,” in the Vernon Hotel.

Socially, Currie’s profile and influence grew with his new-found financial success. On August 14, 1901 he married Lillian Warner (née Lucy Sophia Musters). The nuptials were a highlight of the Victoria summer and garnered significant coverage in the social pages. The Colonist described the bride’s gown as a “handsome costume of cream satin, with veil.” Dispensing with specifics, the Daily Times simply noted she was “extremely pretty.” To a friend, Currie confided he had presented his bride with “a handsome ring set with diamonds and opals.” Over the next decade, the couple would have three children: Marjorie (1902), Garner (1911), and a child between them who died in infancy.

Garnet Burk Hughes had shown promise as a cadet officer and was politically well-connected (his father was Sam Hughes).
In 1913, he, alongside his friend LCol Arthur Currie, helped form the 50th Regiment (Gordon Highlanders) militia in Victoria, BC. Although he attained the rank of major-general during the First World War, Currie judged him to be an incompetent commander. 

Affluent and with an established home, Currie’s community profile was growing. A gifted marksman, he joined the British Columbia Rifle Association, quickly assuming the presidency, a position he held until the outbreak of war in 1914. It was in this role that he first encountered Sam Hughes. A politician and publisher, Hughes was a fanatical proponent of the militia and saw the citizen-soldier as the ideal warrior. An organization promoting martial arts among the citizenry earned both his support in Parliament and his active participation as a member of the national executive. Through the militia, Currie became friends with Hughes’s son, Garnet, a fellow militia officer four years his junior.

Currie was also active in the Orange Lodge, rising to Deputy Grand Master of the Victoria District of Freemasonry in 1907. Politically, he was a lifelong Liberal and spent two years as president of the Young Men’s Liberal Association of Victoria. By 1911, his public profile was such that he garnered an entry in Who’s Who in Western Canada. Along with being senior partner in Currie and Power, it noted he was president of both the King Edward Mine and the British Columbia Rifle Association. Currie was also vice-president of the Artillery Association and a member of the Pacific Club.

Prior to 1900, Currie’s militia career was largely undistinguished. On June 5, 1897 he had been taken onto the strength of the 5th Regiment, Canadian Garrison Artillery, dubbed the ‘Dandy Fifth’, as a gunner. He received only one promotion. In the winter of 1897–98, he earned his first stripe and was appointed company secretary.

While the Canadian government loved the idea of the citizen-soldier militiaman, it adored even more his low price. Throughout the 1890s the Canadian militia reeled in the face of budget cuts. In 1895, all rural training had been cancelled indefinitely and the income of urban regiments was reduced by one third. Cost, to the public purse, competed with the ideal of competence. The Victoria-based 5th Regiment, Canadian Garrison Artillery, while models of sartorial splendour, were still training on ancient muzzle loaders that they would never fire in anger. Ultimately, in the pithy words of historian Frank Underhill, the militia were “not taken seriously by the country at large and hardly by itself.”

They were ill-equipped and undertrained at the very time that the pace of technological change was accelerating and revolutionizing the art of warfare. Historian James Wood describes the militia as “a social rather than a military occupation” and notes that their “martial enthusiasm far outstripped their expertise.” Consequently, the primacy of military competence was also neglected in terms of promotion. Patronage and personal wealth played a larger role in advancement in the militia than martial proficiency. As a lowly high school teacher, Currie could neither socially earn nor financially afford promotion.

However, his militia career took off as soon as he entered into business, in large part a reflection of his increased income and influence. Less than a year after his illness, he skipped the rank of sergeant and was gazetted a 2nd lieutenant. Eleven months later, he was promoted to captain, and appointed CO of No. 1 Company. Subsequently, in seven of the eight years he was CO, the company won the Regiment Efficiency Shield. In two years, he advanced from the ranks to captain. In May 1906, Currie was promoted to major and became second in command of the regiment. He became the Dandy Fifth’s CO on September 1, 1909 along with promotion to lieutenant-colonel. Again his unit excelled: In four of his five years as CO they won the Governor General’s Cup as well as three Landsdowne Cups and two Turnbull Shields.

His units’ achievements testify to Currie’s skills as a militia trainer: As a militia officer he also remained a star pupil. As a lowly subaltern he averaged 96 per cent in examinations. He earned a First Class, Grade A badge from the Royal School of Artillery. In early 1914, he achieved the highest grade in a course on the Franco-Prussian War conducted by Major Louis Lipsett. Historian Tim Cook describes him as “perpetually devoted to soldiering,” and Currie once confessed, “When some of my associates were playing lawn tennis or swinging golf clubs, I was at the armouries or on the rifle ranges with the boys.” In the 1900s the Canadian militia was no potent military force, yet Currie was one of the best of a lacklustre lot.

While Currie had no combat experience when he arrived in Flanders in 1915, he had led a military operation, and done so with intelligence, effectiveness and flare. From 1912 on, strikes and union drives persisted across Vancouver Island’s coal mines. In August 1913 a labour dispute between coal miners and mine owners in Nanaimo, north of Victoria, became increasingly violent. The Chinese miners were seeking a first contract as members of the United Mineworkers of America. Canadian Colliers (Dunsmuir) Ltd responded by locking them out and bringing in scabs. On August 12, after violent disturbances and erroneous reports of as many as six deaths, the Attorney General of British Columbia, William Bowser, ordered out the 88th Victoria Fusiliers and Currie’s Dandy Fifth.

Commander of the Victoria Fusiliers, Currie’s predecessor as CO of the 5th, Colonel John Hall, was in command of the operation, but he fully acknowledged Currie handled the deployment, exhibiting “wonderfully accurate powers of sizing up the situation.” A detachment of special police arriving by boat had previously been beaten off by a mob on the docks. Currie determined that the docks had been neutralized and that even an alternative approach would require an accompanying diversion.

Thus while Currie’s main force did travel by boat, it landed at Departure Bay, five kilometres north or seaward of Nanaimo. While the miners concentrated south of Nanaimo, preparing to confront a small, but very public diversionary force en route by train, the main force was able to secure Nanaimo. While the constitutionality of the Attorney General’s deployment of the militia has been questioned, its efficacy cannot be. Currie attained his objective by occupying and pacifying Nanaimo while using both manoeuvrability and misdirection to avoid violence. Conceived with flare and executed flawlessly, Currie’s performance did not go unnoticed.

In the wake of the Nanaimo strike operation, Currie was preparing to wrap up his militia career and retire as CO of the Dandy Fifth, but a ghost from Currie’s heritage, ethnic chauvinism, was about to intrude. The Victoria Fusiliers were the preserve of Victoria’s English elite. Since its appearance in late 1912, the city’s Scottish merchant class had been hollering for a Highland regiment of their own. On August 24, 1913 the federal government authorized the 50th Regiment (Gordon Highlanders) and the search for a commanding officer commenced.

Currie, whose militia experience the Daily Colonist described as “second to none in the province,” was soon being touted as a potential CO of the new regiment. He prevaricated. Unbeknownst to his boosters, Currie was preoccupied with a personal financial crisis. The building boom that Currie had ridden on an inflationary wave to affluence and influence had crested. The market dried up and when buyers disappeared, Currie’s heavily mortgaged properties quickly became liabilities. Currie, accustomed to overseeing vigorous sales and growing profits, was suddenly struggling to avoid insolvency. In his current financial straits, Currie could not afford to assume command of the 50th. Arguably, his time and energies were also better directed to redeeming his precarious personal finances. He only agreed to take over the regiment when a financial saviour agreed to underwrite the regiment in return for the honorary lieutenant-colonelcy.

An honour guard at the Canadian Pacific Railway station greeting General Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of the Militia, near the start of the war. (stuart thomson, city of vancouver archives)

His friend and now the regiment’s second-in-command, Garnet Hughes, was influential in persuading Currie to accept the position. Six months later, Garnet played a key role in the back and forth between Currie and his father that saw Currie placed in command of the Second Brigade at Valcartier in August 1914. Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur William Currie, ages 38, suspended over a financial abyss and months earlier on the verge of retirement from the militia, was on his way to war.

Currie was embarrassingly unassuming in appearance and bearing. Early in his militia career he actually hired a fitness instructor to improve his posture. A great bear of a man, he stood almost two metres tall. Unfortunately, his Sam Brown belt rode up over a substantial belly that, along with an ample bottom made the more unseemly in jodhpurs, had him forever appearing like a uniformed Michelin Man. A soft chin, fleshy mouth, and bare upper lip did little to create a martial mien.

Appearances are deceiving and the things this southern Ontario farm boy with the 3rd class teaching certificate carried with him, were about to blossom. In three years he would be commander of the Canadian Corps, indisputably the most potent fighting force to take the field in the First World War; he was regarded as one of the best, if not the best, general in the British forces; and he was reputed to be in line to become the next, and first colonial, British Army commander if the war went on into 1919.

HERBIE TO THE FRONT: Canadian War Cartoonists Of The Second World War, Part 2

Canadian cartoonist William “Bing” Coughlin articipated in the invasion of Sicily in 1943. Through his main character, Herbie, Coughlin illustrated many of the similar hardships and general complaints that abounded in any army: lack of food, horrible weather, and the need to constantly dig in. This 1945 cartoon is one example of what soldiers should not do: drink local alcohol.

(Volume 24-01)

By Cord A. Scott

Last month, we learned how the venerable comic panel became a much-utilized creative outlet for Canadian soldiers during the Second World War. Several Canadians — Bing Coughlin, H. Stewart Cameron, David Low and Les Callan among them — became well-known war cartoonists after their drawings were published in enlisted men’s newspapers. The second part of “Herbie to the Front” concludes with a study of Les Callan’s iconic Johnny Canuck.

D-Day and the cartoons of Festung Europa

The cartoons that portrayed the fighting of the Canadian Army were often as varied as the conditions themselves. While one doesn’t necessarily get the impression of the difficult, mountainous conditions of Italy from the Herbie cartoons, one does begin to see how the two theatres were different in their fighting styles. For many of the cartoons done in northwest Europe (Normandy, Belgium, into Holland and Germany), the mobility of units and the fluid situation of the fighting was far more prevalent. In addition, there were more cartoonists brought in to tell the “humour” of war.

One of Les Callan’s earliest cartoons was about all of the preparations for the attack on D-Day. The caption below the cartoon read:  “Supplies to Normandy! Great preparations in the south of England! Great expectations! Heaps of material. Roaring bombers. Endless convoys. Pubs all sold out. Finally — D-Day and Normandy!”

One artist who drew of the build-up and invasion of France was Lt. Les Callan, who created a strip entitled Monty and Johnny for the Maple Leaf Northwest Europe edition in the fall of 1944-1945. Callan started off in the Army Reserve in 1940, went into the Artillery in 1942, and then was assigned to the army Public Relations Branch, where he drew cartoons for the Maple Leaf. One of Callan’s earliest cartoons on the invasion was the fact that the supplies for France were so heavy it was tilting the entire island of England. As the troops awaited the invasion, spirits ran high, and ran through the men, as many local pubs sold out of spirits. Another of Callan’s jokes in the cartoons was the fact that Johnny Canuck was constantly misreading French and was trying to impress his friends and fellow soldiers. In 1945, after the end of the war, Callan published his cartoons in a book entitled Normandy and On: From D-Day to Victory. In it, he went one step further and added realistic illustrations of real soldiers as a kind of greeting card back home, such as L/Cpl. George Laverock from C Company of the Canadian Scottish Regiment, who hailed from Frae Auld Victoria.

As the Canadians progressed inland, the cartoons noted the lack of “Superman” in the German army. One cartoon noted that the Germans should be thrown back as they were under the limit. Perhaps Callan’s most humorous cartoons dealt with the dispatch riders, who seemed to go everywhere and through even the most inhospitable conditions and traffic to get where he needed to be. In one cartoon, based on an actual event, a dispatch rider even came in with a group of German prisoners of war. While he was riding he made them jog, stating “There’s nothing in the Geneva Convention which says you can’t run so git going – yuh Baskets!”

There were some issues of internal censorship. Since the cartoons were produced for as wide an audience as possible, overtly crude language and blatant sexual references were avoided for publication. However, the women drawn were often drawn in a pinup fashion, with physical attributes that made them seductive to the eye, and suggestive in their occupations. All in all however, the language and sexuality were often unstated, and the violence more for comedic effect. Of all the cartoons perused by the author, only two have ever shown dead soldiers, and the cartoons were American. The two in question were from Hubert, by Dick Wingert, which ran in the U.S. Army paper Stars and Stripes. One referenced the smell of dead bodies, and the other featured Germans who died in holding a town. Both were examples of gallows humour.

:Les Weekes was another cartoonist who drew for the Maple Leaf, with the title of This Weekes’ War. One of his notable cartoons, republished in Maple Leaf Scrapbook, was one in which a recce jeep had crashed into the water, and upon inspecting the map (underwater) the officer noted, “Hey, you know that canal bridge? Well it’s gone!”

For the artists in the northwest theatre, be it Callan, Tom Luzny, Jan Nieuwenhuys, or L. Clay’s illustrations in the 13th Field Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery, the cartoons reflected the conditions of the soldiers in the field. As the Canadians moved from Normandy, through Belgium and into Holland, the stories often told of how they adapted to the local conditions. All of the cartoonists noted the search for some sort of alcohol, be it Calvados from Normandy, or beer, or something stronger in Holland. Other cartoons noted the “accidental” discharge of weapons or artillery that happened to kill local animals. Since they couldn’t go to waste it was best to cook them, especially with the field kitchen nearby.

This was not to say that others didn’t contribute to the war effort or to the cartoons. Les Weekes was another cartoonist who drew for the Maple Leaf, with the title of This Weekes’ War. One of his notable cartoons, republished in Maple Leaf Scrapbook, was one in which a recce jeep had crashed into the water, and upon inspecting the map (underwater) the officer noted, “Hey, you know that canal bridge? Well it’s gone!”

Nieuwenhuys did a small book for the Canadians stationed in Holland during the winter of 1944-1945. Entitled Daag, the booklet featured sixteen comic-like colour caricatures of life in Holland. These illustrations were not of combat but of rest and recuperation in the area. Many of the cartoons dealt with the bartering of cigarettes for alcohol or even female companionship. Another discussed that “d-d Dutch Gin.” And finally several cartoons dealt with driving around the small country in oversized Allied army vehicles that often clogged the roads.

Clay’s illustrations that accompanied the history of the Royal Canadian Artillery were humorous but also told of more pressing issues. After the early comics that illustrated the training conditions, the later cartoons exemplified the conditions of the army in Normandy. Early on it was easy for the artillery to target anything that moved in Normandy. One cartoon, the appropriately named “Enemy Movement,” noted that the forward observers were calling in a strike against a German answering the call of nature. Another cartoon again went back to the “tradition” of making use of cows that were killed after being mistaken for enemy troops or being collateral damage from some sort of strike. Since the animals would rot otherwise, why not use them to augment the regimental kitchens, “Rations Supplement” suggests?

However, as the unit moved further into Holland during the fall of 1944, the fighting was more intense, leading to the jokes of bunkers (in Clay’s “Command post Fashions”), as Herbie had lived in Italy, or the sudden need to conserve rounds, as was common during the later part of the winter when supplies were hindered from reaching the front. One Clay cartoon titled “Ammo Return” even went so far as to note that a young lieutenant was about to hang himself for not reporting the proper count of artillery shells.

The key to many of the Canadian military cartoons is that they serve as a type of visual record of the fighting in Europe. While there were some artists and cartoons that were meant to be universal, such as the complaints about ineffective officers, training regimens, or food and drink, many of the cartoons did serve as a reminder of local issues encountered during combat. It might be Italian women or the incessant mud of Italy, the Calvados and Canadian troops trying out their French language skills on the locals, or the Dutch weather in the fall, but regardless it was important for soldiers to retain those memories. Callan often used many true stories as the basis for the cartoons, as did many cartoonists from all countries. Of all the cartoonists and their creations however, Coughlin’s illustrations of Herbie are the most memorable and universal.

THE MAN UNDER THE UNIFORM: Part 1: Young Art Curry: The first 25 years

The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) was the designation of the field force created by Canada for service overseas in the First World War. The force fielded several combat formations on the Western Front in France and Belgium, the largest of which was the Canadian Corps, consisting of four divisions, and led by General Arthur Currie. (library of congress)

(Volume 24-01)

By Bob Gordon

General Sir Arthur Currie. The Canadian Corps’ first and only Canadian commander. The first full general in the Canadian Army (1919). Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, and Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (Britain); Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and Croix de guerre (France); Knight of the Order of the Crown and Croix de Guerre (Belgium); Distinguished Service Medal (United States).

A century later, the accolades still echo. Royal Military Academy Sandhurst instructor Christopher Pugsley describes Currie as “perhaps the most brilliant corps commander of the war,” who led “the most effective fighting formation among the British armies on the Western Front, superior in performance to its vaunted Australian contemporary in terms of organisation, tactical efficiency and staying power.”

This “most effective fighting formation,” the Canadian Corps, first took to the gas-soaked fields of the Ypres salient in April 1915. During the last hundred days, they spent three months at the sharp end as the shock troops of the Empire. Their route from novice to master of the arts of Ares was once seen as a simple, linear progression with the Canadian forces consistently and persistently growing in combat effectiveness. More recently, the variability, inconsistency and irregularity of change have been emphasized. Evolutionary dead ends, explored and abandoned, have been identified. Periods of sudden and revolutionary change (January to April 1917) are also evident. Today, historians concur the march to the final Hundred Days Offensive was anything but straight for the Canadian Corps.

Its leader, General Sir Arthur Currie, the man under the uniform, has never been granted a similar, measured reappraisal. In the immediate wake of the Great War, former Minister of Militia Sam Hughes slagged Currie, all but branding him a vainglorious butcher. Initially, much attention was directed at dismissing these accusations as baseless. More recent analyses have focused on his achievements as he progressed from brigadier to corps commander. The narrow focus has been on his military career, and one such assessment is even subtitled “A Military Biography.” Moreover, as was once the case with the corps itself, they suggest an unvarying and inexorable rate of ascent: A career simply destined to greatness.

From whence this apparent military genius arose has remained unexplored or, like an elephant in the room, been politely ignored. Was he a failed land developer and embezzler? A frustrated lawyer? A dedicated militia officer and daring entrepreneur? A chance confluence of man and circumstance? Was he all of the above or none of the above?

Young Art Curry, aged approximately 12, at the time of his admission to Strategy Collegiate Institute. (museum strathroy-caradoc)

This series will tack this way, exploring Currie’s civilian life from his youth in Ontario through his financial coming of age in Victoria. This portrait of Currie to age 40 in 1914, when his military, as opposed to militia, career commenced will provide a lens through which his military biography will be reinterpreted. Currie was hardly wet behind the ears when he went to war. He was approaching 40. He was on the verge of retiring from the militia. He was a self-made man of considerable influence socially, politically and financially, precarious as the latter may have been by 1914. These life experiences were foundational to Currie’s success with the Canadian Corps.

According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography: “Arthur Currie’s paternal grandparents, John Corrigan and Jane Garner, a Roman Catholic and an Anglican, fled religious intolerance in Ireland to farm in Adelaide Township, Upper Canada. Upon their arrival in 1838, the Corrigans changed their name to Curry and became Methodists ... The elder son, William Garner Curry, married Jane Patterson in 1868.” William Curry was relatively affluent and held numerous local government positions. Born from this union on December 5, 1875, on the family farm near Napperton, six kilometres west of Strathroy, in Adelaide Township, was William Arthur Curry. He would not change his name to Currie until he was a militiaman and, reportedly, tired of the jokes about spicy food that were told at his expense in the mess and orderly room.

Curry began his education in a one-room schoolhouse in Napperton, Ontario. Apparently a promising student, he moved on to Strathroy Collegiate at the age of 14. On October 23, 1891, 15-year-old Arthur’s father, William, unexpectedly died from an “inflammation of the bowels” at the age of 46. The [Strathroy] Age, describing William Curry as “well known” with “numerous friends,” noted that “the funeral on Sunday last was one of the largest ever seen in the township, 165 rigs being in the procession.” Not surprising, considering that William had served as a township councillor, school board trustee, was deputy reeve at the time and owned a 300-acre farm.

In the wake of this tragic event Curry left Strathroy Collegiate and entered the Model School, earning a 3rd Class Teaching Certificate. His biographers imply that this abandonment of his dream of becoming a lawyer was necessitated by strained financial conditions following his father’s death.

However, circumstantial evidence tends to undermine this assertion. The Currys were a reasonably affluent family and they seem to have remained financially stable and secure following William’s death. Crystal Loyst, Museum Collections and Research Coordinator at the Museum Strathroy-Caradoc, has stated that, “As for the farm, the original plot was divided into two – William Currie [an older brother of Arthur’s] lived on the west half of the west half of lot 15 con 5 SER and his brother T.O. Currie lived on the east half of the west half of lot 15 Con 5 (by the map, however other records state Lot 14) … Arthur’s cousin Harold owned the property next door.” Under these conditions, it is difficult to see penury driving Arthur out of school.

Officers of the 5th Regiment (BC), Canadian Garrison Artillery, at Macaulay Point in 1909. Currie is seated in the middle row, at left of centre.

Regardless, leave he did, only to discover positions for a novice pedagog with a 3rd Class Teaching Certificate were few and far between. By November 1892, he had returned to the Collegiate hoping to achieve his honours and qualify for admission to a university.

As treasurer of the Strathroy Collegiate Institute Literary Society he took an active role in debates as both a disputant and a judge. In November 1892 he failed to demonstrate that “The Indian in North America has suffered more injustice than the Negro.” Four months later, Curry decided against the resolution, “War has caused more destruction and misery to the human race than intemperance.” A story published in his hometown newspaper, The Age Dispatch, on February 27, 1930, headlined “Sir Arthur Retreated Like a Good Soldier,” affirmed his debating prowess. It details his youthful determination to finish his arguments leading him to depart the podium, but circumambulate the room at a slow march, spitting out arguments, before resuming his seat.

Other schoolmates’ reminiscences, published in the Age Dispatch on April 17, 1919, affirm young Curry’s energetic and independent disposition. The article describes him as “the recognized star of the large class of which he was a member,” taking note of both his wit and pugilistic prowess. Proof of the former is provided by the pleasure he took, in later life, as Principal of McGill University, sharing a dram with an economics professor on the faculty by the name of Stephen Leacock. Coincidentally, as a young student teacher Leacock had done a brief placement at Strathroy Collegiate and taught Curry in the early 1890s.

Between Curry’s grades and his extracurricular activities, biographer, and former subordinate on the staff of the Canadian Corps, Hugh Urquhart asserts that the principal regarded his attaining “honours” as a given. Regardless, in May of 1894, weeks shy of graduation, Arthur Curry dropped out and headed west to Vancouver Island. Purportedly, the rather rash decision was precipitated by a dispute with a teacher. Contradicting himself, Urquhart then asserts that it was a premeditated excursion with a total of six young men participating. What is clear is that enough planning was required for Curry to have secured the $25 train fare.

While the timing of Curry’s exodus may have been impetuous, it was hardly Quixotic: he left with a well-defined destination. In Victoria he had arrangements to stay with a maternal great-aunt, Mrs. Orlando Warner, and her husband, a master shipwright from Pugwash, Nova Scotia. He promptly settled into their large house on Alston Street, overlooking the harbour.  The welcome was warm enough that Curry remained for 16 months while he qualified for a BC teaching certificate at which point he took a position teaching in Sydney that paid $60/month. The local trustees were impressed with his abilities, noting particularly his classroom management along with his students’ deportment and discipline.

As soon as possible, upon securing a job at Victoria Boys’ Central School, he returned to the city. One year later he moved to Victoria High School. This apparently lateral move was actually a step up for Curry as the high school had a more prestigious reputation and drew its students from the most affluent and influential families in Victoria. Curry would remain there into a fourth school year. It was during this period that he began spelling his name Currie.

In the winter of 1899–1900, Currie’s teaching career was interrupted by a prolonged illness. Apparently, Currie used the down time to contemplate his future. Probably with an eye to marrying, he left teaching, concluding it offered prestige but not pounds sterling. In the spring of 1900, presumably capitalizing on connections made with students’ parents, Currie reinvented himself as an insurance salesman joining Matson and Coles, a prominent Victoria firm.

Liberal Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier claimed the new century for Canada: “As the 19th century was that of the United States, so I think the 20th century shall be filled by Canada.” Currie, a life-long Liberal, set out to personify this dictum in the century’s first dozen years.

Next month: Currie’s affluence, influence and profile all grow exponentially. Ascending to the top of Victoria society, Currie is staring into a financial abyss when European rivalries and violence erupt into global war in the summer of 1914.

HERBIE TO THE FRONT: Canadian war cartoonists of the Second World War, Part 1

(Volume 23-12)

By Cord A. Scott

“If the troops like the cartoons I can thank my army experience more than any other one thing. Because no matter how well you can draw, you can’t get that feeling of live humor into an army cartoon unless you’ve experienced the things you’re trying to put into black and white. You’ve got to live it first.” — Bing Coughlin, This Army

“It will serve as a reminder that during the most trying periods the Canadian Army always retained a sense of humour.” — General H.D.G. Crerar, Maple Leaf Scrapbook

When the Second World War began in Europe, Canadians from all walks of life and a multitude of different jobs answered the call to defend the British Empire.

Given the country’s strong familiarity with American media, in addition to the older British tradition of enlisted men’s papers, it was not surprising that the venerable comic panel became a much-utilized creative outlet for Canadian soldiers. These cartoons allowed men in the field to enjoy a laugh while dealing with the harshness of war.

As with the American military, one cartoon character has come to dominate the Canadian soldier’s service: William “Bing” Coughlin’s Herbie, who was featured in This Army. A variety of other comics were also in circulation, depicting soldiers in different regions and conditions, and confronting different struggles.

Most cartoons came from two principal sources: armed forces papers and weekly magazines. These were akin to the editorial cartoons or Sunday funnies from the newspapers many soldiers would recognize from their civilian life. There were also personal sketches that were compiled into some form of booklet and were sold as a souvenir to the troops.

There were plenty of publications for Canadian Armed Forces personnel to choose from: Khaki, The Maple Leaf, and Wings Abroad, as well as front-line papers like the Big 2 Bugle and The Column Courier.

The cartoons served several valuable purposes. First and foremost, they were used to entertain. They were a way for personnel to vent their frustrations in an innocent manner.

They were also used to educate. For example, illustrations by Len Norris were adopted as part of the Canadian Army’s training regimen. His cartoon posters were created to show how to properly maintain equipment.

The importance of wartime cartoonists was recognized at the time. There was even a book on the major artists and their work: War Cartoons and Caricatures of the British Commonwealth, by Alan Reeve, published in 1941. Among the artists acknowledged in the book were British artist Bruce Bairnsfather (famous for the Second World War cartoon “If you can find a better ‘ole”) and Canadian artists such as David Low and Les Callan.

For most of the artists profiled in the book, fame would come after war’s end. Only Callan was a known artist at the time of the book’s publication.

One of the universal experiences of any military service is the transition from civilian to military life. Several Canadian artists attempted to capture the essence of basic training in their cartoons.

One of the earliest attempts at this was made by H. Stewart Cameron, who drew a series of cartoons that were bound into a leaflet called Basic Training Daze: Candid Cartoons of You and Me in the Army. Cameron illustrated the chaos of basic training: marching in formation during the first week, gas chamber training and mess hall. He was also quick to note how difficult it was to handle weapons like a Bren gun, which bounced all over during discharge. The cartoons were meant to make light of training that was often trying.

Vancouver cartoonist Len Norris was another artist whose illustrations made light of training. Norris’s initial job for the Canadian Army was to illustrate training and education posters for the department of military maintenance. Interestingly, this mirrored American comic book illustrator Will Eisner, who was working for the Aberdeen Proving Ground, creating posters for Army Motors, a U.S. Army training manual.

Norris produced a book about his experiences in cartoon form, entitled “Private” Reflections, with text and poems by Paul Zemke. The book contains reflections on everything from gas masks and parade drills to comments on the fairer sex (“Hey look! Real legs!”). There were even comments on how the Yanks were different in their approach to war. One private says to another as shells whip by, “If you were a Yank you’d get the Purple Heart for this, chum,” as the second man’s head came off — sarcasm and understatement at their finest.

The comparison between Norris and Eisner is no coincidence. Given the sharing of equipment and supplies between Canadian and American troops, and the need to maintain them effectively, articles appearing in American and Canadian publications would frequently be shared. It was natural, therefore, that the two would develop similar forms of entertainment and illustrations to augment military training or doctrine.

One book that captured the essence of air training in Canada was Dat H’ampire H’air Train Plan, by Carroll MacLeod and illustrated by H. Rickard. This book, which was first written in 1943, described the training regime of the RCAF. The book, which was told through verse as well as cartoons, ended with the crew of a Halifax bomber being shot down, escaping, and making their way back to England.

Several cartoons tried to embrace the concepts of training in Canada or overseas before they saw combat. Another example of training as a subject is found in the book The Canadian Field Artillery. Several cartoons noted the increased training schedules that were instituted while in England. What made these cartoons unique, however, is that they were drawn not by an enlisted man, as is often the case for many war cartoons, but by Lieutenant P.P.F. Clay. His drawings depicted life in England, where the training was undertaken before the inevitable landings in France. Another thing that made these illustrations unique was the fact they depicted a unit from training in England, through to actual combat in Europe.

Regardless of where an individual soldier trained, the topics of complaint were universal. Shared experience allowed soldiers the ability to vent to one another and bond over shared struggles. For example, a cartoon might depict the bitterness of soldiers who are forced through harsh and rigorous training, while their officers sipped spirits and discussed tactics.

This sort of humour was critical to the morale of the Allied fighting men, and served as a way to inform and amuse. It offered a release for those who were either unsure of how they might react to combat, or had seen the horrors of war and wished to vent in a way that those who understood would appreciate. These comics were an essential part of military life and continue to this day.

Italian Campaign and the fame of Herbie

Of all the cartoons drawn by military artists, one inevitably stands out for the troops. For the American GI, it was the characters Willie and Joe, as they appeared in Stars and Stripes. For the Canadians, the most recognized figure was the “everyman” that slogged through the mud and suffered: Herbie. The creation of “Bing” Coughlin, a sergeant with the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards, Herbie was similar in form to Kilroy. He had a big nose, was often involved in a variety of mishaps, and was definitely a citizen soldier, not a professional career type. He was also a man who enlisted with the goal of getting the job done. The cartoon character came from the Mediterranean theatre, where the fighting and harsh conditions of Italy created the need to laugh.

Coughlin illustrated many of the similar hardships and general complaints that abounded in any army: lack of food, horrible weather, and the need to constantly dig in. More importantly, Herbie was the illustrated member of the Canadian ground forces who, at that time, were seeing their first significant, sustained fighting. While the military ventures of Hong Kong in December 1941 and Dieppe in July 1942 were significant for the Army as a learning exercise, the landing at Pachino in July 1943 was the first real experience that the Canadian Army would have in both joint operations with Allied forces, as well as a way to validate training of their own troops. Coughlin, like his American counterpart Bill Mauldin, participated in the invasion of Sicily, and then went to work drawing the famous characters while initially in Naples. While many of the cartoons became icons of their particular fighting men, it is Herbie more than any other that was the “face” of the Canadian fighting man.

Herbie was well meaning but often the epitome of what NOT to do in combat, whether trying to drive between a bulldozer and a tank with his jeep, or drinking the local vino while in Italy, or simply complaining of the things that all soldiers did: a lack of women, decent food, and mostly the desire to go home. However, he was not a shirker and he did his job well. The sense of humour shown by Herbie was typical of combat jokes. He was an expert on different types of soil after digging so many trenches or foxholes. At times he had visions of personal glory, but more often was quick to head for shelter and safety. Mostly, he simply wanted to get the job done and get back home to his regular life. Coughlin drew his cartoons with an eye on the average grunt. As with so many military historians, the life of the enlisted man is frequently overlooked, in favour of the battle or the commander. However, by looking at the cartoons, which were meant for the common soldier, one can tell of morale, of equipment comparisons, or even the condition of fighting.

Coughlin was quick to pick up on emotional themes from the Italian campaign. The gripes about constant digging of trenches were similar to the cartoons from American artist Bill Mauldin as were the cartoons of stolen or stripped jeeps. Other cartoons were uniquely Canadian: one was a cartoon of a sniper engaged in his deadly craft, with his spotter noting, “Whatever you do, don’t hit his binoculars!” No doubt this was in reference to the Zeiss binoculars prized by the Allies for their superior optics.

Several other cartoons made light of Herbie’s run-ins with the military police while on a temporary pass, or even of the MPs grabbing German prisoners of war. One cartoon noted that the MPs were in such a rush to put up the out-of-bounds signs that they advanced too far and were in fact now prisoners of the Germans. Many of the German POWs were quick to point out to Herbie and his comrades that they would be in Canada before the Canadian troops would.

Beanie was a character that Coughlin later introduced to work and pal around with Herbie. Like Willie and Joe of American fame, they would run afoul of military police, drink lots of alcohol, enjoy the sights, and think about home. Herbie later would be depicted by Coughlin in the process of slowly making his way back to Canada and the various troubles or escapades he encountered on the way back. Regardless of how, the key was that they were home. W

Next month: D-Day and the cartoons of Festung Europa will be profiled

Photographic Advances in War: Bringing the reality of the battlefield to the home front

(Volume 23-12)

By Garla Jean Strokes 

In previous articles, I explored war photography’s emergence in the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the First World War. This article examines the formation of the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit in the Second World War, and how that system of information operated.

Photographic technology developed drastically between the First and Second World Wars. During the 1920s, lightweight, rapid-firing cameras like the Leica (1925) and Rolleiflex (1928) became available for purchase. As a result, the 1930s saw the birth of pictorial magazines — such as LIFE, in 1936 — and photographers like Robert Capa and Henri Cartier Bresson became household names.

The precedent set during the First World War for photographs in the news, combined with the relative saturation of images in weekly illustrated magazines meant citizens at home expected to see pictures of war. Photographers’ technical ability to deliver had improved dramatically.

Photographers of the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit attached to the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. From left to right: Sergeant C.M.G. “Mike” Lattion, Sergeant A. H. Calder, Lieutenant Charles H. Richer. Photograph by Lieut. Barney J. Gloster. (dnd, library and archives canada, mikan 3524544)

As their predecessors had in 1914, soldiers of the Second World War had experience using basic cameras. Government and military leadership feared what information could be leaked, but the official war photography unit that was established during the First World War had long since been disbanded. An equivalent was found in the Canadian Military Public Relations Organization and its civilian counterpart, the Canadian Bureau of Public Information (later the Wartime Information Board).

The Military Public Relations Group went on to appoint photographers, while the Canadian Army Film Unit recorded events with motion-picture cameras. The two organizations merged in 1943 to form the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit (CAFPU). Each branch of the military — Army, Air Force and Navy — appointed its own photographers and cameramen. Usually two cameramen were paired with a photographer, and each unit had a driver and the support of film-developing technicians. No military photography or film unit existed prior to the outbreak of war, but by 1945 more than 200 individuals contributed to the effort.

Photographers were given specific assignments, based on the twin desires of promoting the Canadian military effort and historically documenting its activities. Numerous letters and memos from CAFPU Major Gordon Sparling tell us that photographers were asked to get images of Red Cross personnel, Canadian Women’s Army Corps, sporting events and specific officers, particularly Montgomery and Eisenhower. Some of the photographers were stationed in Canada to record the British Commonwealth Air Training Program, the nation’s major war contribution, while others tested new types of film, or were given the prosaic task of making ID photographs.

In Europe, one of the CAFPU’s first assignments was to record the Dieppe Raid. Cameraman Alan Grayston and photographer Frank Royal trained with the troops in advance of the attack, but as historian Dan Conlin states:

“When high command cancelled plans to send Grayston and other Canadian cameramen on the Dieppe Raid, he got so angry at the film unit headquarters that while waving his hand gun around it went off and he fired three bullets through the glass door of his commander. However, he was so respected in the unit that he was just demoted from Sergeant to Private for a few weeks and then sent back into the field with his camera.”

Royal was unable to even land on the beach on August 19, so he captured scenes of the battle in the distance from his ship. All extant images of the failed raid were taken by the German defenders.

The invasion of Sicily in 1943, codenamed Operation HUSKY, gave Canadian photographers another chance to record the overseas action. Royal and Grayston were both on hand to photograph the Canadian Forces. Despite transportation issues that made it difficult to capture as much footage as they would have liked, their work brought international attention to the CAFPU, and nine cameramen and photographers remained on hand to record the Battle of Ortona in December 1943.

Sergeant Alan Grayston of the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit filming a Canadian demonstration of German infantry tactics, Polegate, England, March 28, 1943. Photograph by Lieut. Jack H. Smith. (dnd, library and archives Canada, mikan 3210377)

Other members of the CAFPU returned to Britain in anticipation of the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy. On the morning of June 6, three main teams landed on Juno Beach: photographer Don Grant and cameraman Bud Roos landed first with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, while cameraman Bill Grant and photographer Frank Dubervill were sent in with the Queen’s Own Rifles. Grayston and Ken Bell landed with follow-up troops. Other photographers and cameramen associated with the Navy, including Gilbert Milne, were also on hand. Each team landed at different parts of the beach to gather comprehensive coverage and to reduce the risk of mass casualty. 

As the first Canadian cameraman to land on the beaches of Normandy, Bud Roos remembered, “You can hear funny little bees running by your ear, and my only thought was, ‘Why are people dropping here and here and why am I still walking?’ but I kept walking anyway.” Of the 30 men in his assault craft, only he and two others made it ashore alive. His camera would not work, and he abandoned it to help the injured.

Roos’ partner, Don Grant, landed with two cameras. His Speed Graphic was ruined when his landing craft toppled into a sandbar — he was thrown into the water while many of the men behind him in the landing craft fell pray to enemy machine-gun fire. Grant had a Leica tucked inside his battle dress blouse, and began shooting.

The Canadians scooped D-Day — correspondent Ross Munro’s written account and Bill Grant’s film footage made it to North America before any others. This speedy transmission was primarily because the chaotic nature of the American beaches meant that none of their footage made it out as quickly. When the offices of LIFE magazine received press photographer Robert Capa’s four rolls of film depicting the Americans landing on Omaha Beach, they were rushed through the dryer and destroyed. Eleven were salvageable, of which only nine exist today.

Despite speedy transmission, the CAFPU had to deal with wartime censorship. Images of the war were considered to have the power to make or break morale and the ability to reveal military intelligence. Upon passing the censor, however, images were made available to soldiers as well as the press. For the rank and file, albums of contact sheets were sent to field offices and orders were sent through commanding officers. Prints were then processed in the field.

In all, official photographers made more than 200,000 negatives during the war, which are now housed at Library and Archives Canada. The film unit’s footage was given to the National Film Board after the war, but it was destroyed during a fire in 1967. Its wide wartime distribution of the film means that some of the work has survived. This output was not without great sacrifice. Photographer Terry Rowe was killed in February 1944, and Jack Mahoney was killed that April. Cameraman Jimmy Campbell was killed that July. Bud Roos left Europe after suffering a nervous breakdown, and Bill Grant and Bill Cox were each taken out of the war with injuries.

THE DAY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD: The Archduke, his lim and his date with history

(Volume 23-3)

By Larry D. Rose

Visitors to Vienna usually want to see the magnificent palaces, listen to Strauss waltzes or perhaps savour chocolatey desserts at one of the many superb coffee houses. However, hidden away in one corner of the Austrian capital, is something rather more unusual.

 On display at the Austrian Military Museum are several items relating to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, including the uniform he was wearing when it happened. The assassination, of course, was the spark that touched off the First World War, which left 15 million people dead, Russia swept by revolution and the map of Old Europe in tatters.

The archduke’s sky-blue cavalry general’s tunic, with high collar and gold braid cuffs, still shows ample evidence of the attack in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. His helmet, festooned with now-faded green ostrich feathers, sits nearby.

Only a few feet away is the 1911 Gräf und Stift phaeton convertible car which carried Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, to their fateful encounter with assassins. The car comes complete with a bullet hole on the right-hand side, near where the archduke was seated. The Graf und Stift was the luxury limo of its day, and although splendid, somehow doesn’t seem as big as one might expect considering its role in such a momentous event.

The museum also has the actual Browning Model 1910 semi-automatic pistol the assassin, Gavrilo Princip, used in the attack along with other weapons seized from the group of conspirators.

The archduke, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was 51 years old at the time and, given the grim outcome of events, it would be nice to think he was an admirable prince. Alas, it turns out that he was a passionate believer in the absolute right of kings who thought his Hungarian subjects were “infamous liars” and who wasn’t much loved by his uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph or just about anyone else except his wife.

For her part, Sophie was intelligent and assertive but not a “royal” and, as a result, was shunned by the extremely rigid etiquette of the Austrian court. At least the couple could say they had a loving and happy marriage.

The assassination was the result of ghastly security blunders, blind dumb luck by the mostly amateurish assassins, and, above all, terrible judgement by the archduke himself. Tiny details, such as the fact that the Graf und Stift limo did not have a reverse gear, also played into the ultimate outcome.

It is clear the archduke should never have gone to Sarajevo in the first place since it was among the most notorious trouble spots in the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire. Several earlier plots had been foiled. Meantime, in terms of security lapses, the route the archduke was to take was well advertised in advance while the royal couple rode in the wide open car with almost no guards around them. One officer who was part of the security force joined the motorcade, leaving most of his troops behind.

The assassins were part of a Bosnian group committed to throwing the Austrians out of the Balkans. There were seven of them, armed with six bombs and four Browning semi-automatic pistols. They also carried a handful of cyanide suicide capsules which, in the event, proved ineffective in hastening their own dispatch.

Three of the group had been in Sarajevo for some time, scoping out the parade route and planning to cover three bridges since the archduke’s motorcade would have to use at least one of them.

The archduke and Sophie had arrived in Sarajevo by train on the morning of the fateful day — which happened to be their 14th wedding anniversary — and, under bright sunshine, set off down a broad boulevard toward city hall amid splendid uniforms, fluttering ostrich feathers, fezzes worn by locals and Sophie’s fashionably big-as-all-outdoors bonnet.

At the first stop one of the plotters threw his bomb. It hit the archduke’s car but bounced off and exploded under the following vehicle, injuring several officers, some bystanders and slightly wounding Sophie on one cheek. The bomb thrower was arrested. This apparently unnerved most of the other conspirators who, although the motorcade passed directly in front of them, found various excuses for melting into the crowd and calling it a day.

It was blindingly obvious to the Austrians that if there was one assassin about, there could be others and this might be the right moment to depart for safer havens. However, unaccountably, the archduke commented, “That fellow is clearly insane” and ordered the visit to continue.

Amid dust and smoke, the injured members were taken to hospital and then the cavalcade proceeded to city hall. There, the archduke was greeted with a previously written speech — macabre in the circumstances — noting that all the people of Sarajevo were “filled with happiness” over the royal visit.

Then came the archduke’s next—and ultimately fatal — decision as he demanded plans be changed to visit the wounded men in hospital. All piled into their vehicles and the convoy headed off. However, no one told the archduke’s driver of the new plan and after setting out he turned onto the wrong street. Without a reverse gear, the car remained stationary while assistants assembled to push it back far enough to take the correct route.

By chance one of the assassins, described by historian Max Hastings as “a weedy teenage terrorist,” was standing on the exact spot where the car stopped. Gavrilo Princip seized this unexpected opportunity and fired two shots at the archduke from a few feet away. One bullet hit Franz Ferdinand in the neck while the other entered the side of the vehicle (hence the hole) hitting Sophie in the abdomen and severing an artery. She died very quickly.

Franz Ferdinand’s last words, muttered in the car, were, “Sophie, Sophie, don’t die — stay alive for our children.” The archduke was rushed to hospital and examined for what appeared to be chest wounds. His uniform was ripped twice as doctors tried to locate his wounds, with the rips still obvious on the tunic today. He died lying on a couch, which is also part of the exhibit at the Vienna museum.

The assassin, Princip, tried to commit suicide but was grabbed, arrested and later sentenced to a long prison term since he was too young to be executed. He died of tuberculosis while still in jail.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The archduke’s uniform, the car, gun and other artifacts are only a small part of the museum that is spread over two floors and includes hundreds of photos, weapons, uniforms and memorabilia covering more than 200 years of Austro-Hungarian military history. The Austrian Military Museum, known in German as the (take a deep breath) Heeresgeschichtliches
Museum, is a $25 cab ride from the city centre. Entry fee is about $10.

"YANK" NELSON: An early Canadian ace in the Battle of Britain

(Volume 23-11)

By Jon Guttman

Born to a Jewish family in Montreal on April 2, 1917, William Henry Nelson took an interest in airplanes when he was six. At age 16 he won the junior championship of the Montreal Model Aircraft League. He attended King Edward VII Public School, Baron Byng High School in Montreal and, after his family moved to the suburb of Westmount, Academy High School in Outremont. In 1936, however, Nelson crossed the Atlantic aboard a cattle boat and tried to enlist in the Royal Air Force. He was initially rejected due to poor eyesight, but he persisted and on May 9, 1937 he managed to enlist as an “Acting Pilot Officer on Probation.”

After completing his training Nelson was assigned to No. 10 Squadron, a bomber unit equipped with Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys. During that time his “colonial” accent earned him the nickname “Yank.” By the time war broke out in September 1939 he had attained the rank of flying officer.

Nelson’s was one of eight Whitleys involved in No. 10 Squadron’s first mission, attacking the German seaplane base at Hornum on the island of Sylt on the night of March 19–20, 1940. In spite of some heavy anti-aircraft artillery fire all aircraft returned unscathed, but most of their bombs fell short of the target, straddling the railway line leading to Hornum.

On April 20, with the German invasion of Norway underway, No. 10 Squadron raided Oslo, but impenetrable weather compelled the Whitleys to attack the secondary target, the airfield at Stavanger, resulting in hits on the runways. Afterward the commander of RAF Station Dishforth recommended Nelson for the Distinguished Flying Cross on April 25. On the 30th his appraisal was reprised by the commander of No. 4 Group, Air Commodore Arthur Coningham: “This Canadian officer has carried out many flights over enemy territory, during which he has always shown the greatest determination in his reports and results generally have been successful above the average.” In consequence, on May 31 Nelson became the first Jewish Canadian to be gazetted for the DFC, with the following citation:

“This officer carried out many flights over enemy territory, during which he has always shown the greatest determination and courage. On the 20th April 1940, after an attack on Stavanger, a balloon barrage was encountered west of the target, a report of which was transmitted to the base in sufficient time to enable following aircraft be warned.”

Nelson subsequently went before King George VI, who personally congratulated him for his performance. At that point, however, Nelson’s ambitions turned elsewhere, as he requested a transfer to Fighter Command. With France surrendering to the Germans and Britain clearly their next target, the RAF needed all the fighter pilots it could muster and, on June 24, the man it once rejected for faulty eyesight reported to No. 6 Operational Training Unit at Sutton Bridge, to transition from bombers to the RAF’s hottest operational fighter, the Supermarine Spitfire Mark I. He completed the course on July 20 and on the 27th was assigned to No. 74 Squadron at Manston.

Known officially as “Trinidad Squadron” but more popularly as “Tiger Squadron,” No. 74 Sqn had a tradition harkening back to the Great War and formidable members such as Edward “Mick” Mannock, Ira “Taffy” Jones and Keith “Grid” Caldwell. If “Yank” Nelson had an entirely new game to learn — and fast — he was fortunate to do so under the seasoned tutelage of South African Squadron Leader Adolph Gisbert Malan. Then credited with five confirmed victories and shares in three more — to which he added a Messerschmitt Me 109E on July 28 — “Sailor” Malan was also a first-rate leader and trainer of men.

Nelson seems to have been a quick study, for just three weeks after joining No. 74 he opened his account on August 11. That morning the Luftwaffe launched a high-speed morning raid on Portland Harbour using Jagdbomber (fighter bomber) variants of the Messerschmitt Me 110 from Erprobungsgruppe 210, while other units conducted a feint operation over Dover. This was followed up at 1000 hours by the largest bombing raid yet seen over England, by 150 aircraft spread out over five miles, consisting of Junkers Ju 88As of I and II Gruppen, Kampfgeschwader 54 and Heinkel He 111s of KG 27, escorted by Me 110s of I and II Gruppen, Zerstörergeschwader 2, and provided top cover by Me 109Es of Jagdgeschwader 2 and 27. The Zerstörer, some 60 strong, had hoped to divert British attention from the bombers, and they succeeded, drawing an attack by No. 609 Squadron’s Spitfires and Hurricanes of Nos. 238 and 601 Squadrons. Forming circles for mutual defence, the Me 110 crews claimed 17 victories, but six crews failed to return and five other planes were damaged. The British in fact suffered the loss of 15 planes shot down and 14 pilots killed, as well as nine damaged.

The Me 109s were conspicuously absent from the main action, and JG 2, at least, was busily engaged with No. 74 Squadron, which claimed eight Me 109s, including two by Malan, for the loss of Spitfire P6969, from which Pilot Officer Peter C.F. Stevenson bailed out and was rescued by a motor torpedo boat. Nelson described his own first success in his combat report:

“I was yellow 3 in No. 74 Squadron, on patrol at about 24,000 feet and sighted 8 ME.109’s to port. My leader suddenly dived on one ME.109, so I circled looking for any E/A [enemy aircraft] coming down on our section. While climbing and turning I saw 6 ME.109’s at 28,000 feet who obviously did not see me, they were circling widely so I climbed onto the last E/A. I was sighted and they started turning steeply, I easily out-turned them. They all broke up and the last E/A flick-rolled away from me. I closed rapidly and at the short range of 150 yards I opened fire with a 3 seconds burst dead astern, and he burst into flames. I immediately turned away and saw the remainder E/A speeding for home, well away. Not seeing any further E/A I pancaked Manston.”

JG 2 claimed an exaggerated 22 victories that day, while losing seven fighters and five pilots killed or missing, including Oberleutnant Heinz-Ewart Fricke, adjutant of III Gruppe, and Hauptmann Edgar Rempel, commander of the 6th Staffel (6./JG 2). An eighth plane made it across the Channel to crash land near Cherbourg. The 7th Staffel of JG 26 also had a brush with No. 74 Squadron at 1130 hours, in which Leutnant Josef Bürschgens’s Me 109E-1 was hit in the engine over Manston. Although he too made it across to belly land at Calais-Caffiers, his plane broke its back and was written off.

Large though they were, the first two waves of German attacks were mere feints to distract attention from the main strike of the day, an attack on a convoy code-named “Booty” off the Essex coast by Me 110C-6 and Me 110D-0 “Jabos” of ErprGr 210, with I./ZG 26 providing top cover. Attacking from cloud cover off the Thames Estuary, ErprGr 210 claimed an 8,000-ton vessel sunk before six Hurricanes of No. 17 Squadron turned up, soon joined by 11 Spitfires of No. 74. Hit from two sides, 1./ErprGr 210 lost two planes and crews before their escorts could intervene. When it did descend on the British fighters, 1./ZG 26 claimed nine of them — two credited to Leutnant Martin Meisel — but lost two Me 110Cs and their crews, while two damaged Zerstörer of 2./ZG 26 barely made it back, one crash landing at St. Omer. 

Of 11 Me 110s destroyed and five damaged claimed by No. 74, Nelson was credited with one destroyed east of Harwich and another damaged, but at the cost of Pilot Officers Denis N.E. Smith and Donald G. Cobden, whose bodies later washed ashore in Belgium, to be buried at Ostende by the Germans. Claiming some shared victories, No. 17 Squadron lost Pilot Officer Kenneth Manger, DFC (five victories), whose body was never found.

August 13 was Adler Tag, slated for a supreme effort in which the Luftwaffe would wrest control of the air over Britain, but it did not go as planned. Malan and No. 74 Squadron’s contribution was to surprise a formation of Dornier Do 17Zs coming in over the Thames Estuary, resulting in 11 claims, though several were later downgraded to “probables,” including one of the two by Malan and the single Do 17 claimed by Nelson.

Though now a full-fledged “Tiger,” Nelson would add no more to No. 74’s tally until October, during the Battle of Britain’s fourth and final phase. Having failed to dominate the Channel, eliminate the RAF or cow the British people into submission with the bombing of London, the Luftwaffe made increasing use of Me 110s and Me 109s to make high-speed bombing raids on selected targets. During that time No. 74 had replaced its Spitfire Mark Is, powered by 1,030-hp Rolls-Royce Merlin III engines, for Mark IIs using the 1,175-hp Merlin XII in September and, after a rest period, moved from Coltishall to Biggin Hill on October 15, to deal with the Jabo threat.

Its first opportunity came on October 17, as Me 109s of III./JG 53 headed up the Thames Estuary toward London. At 1510 hours Malan led 11 Spitfires up to intercept, making contact at 1530. Nelson reported of the action:

We climbed rapidly, and at 26,000 feet saw some bursts from our antiaircraft [guns] below, and turned towards them. Two Me 109s suddenly appeared across our bows. The squadron leader, ‘Sailor’ Malan DFC, immediately got on the tail of the leading 109, and I closed with the outside one.

They took no evasive action as we came out of the sun, and I fired a burst with slight deflection at 150 yards, down to point blank range. He immediately started a half-roll turn down, white smoke streaming out, obviously glycol.

I followed him easily at first, firing short bursts, then more eruptions came from his engine, almost blinding me. Diving down to 2,000 feet he entered some low cloud vertically. Having got up tremendous speed I had to pull up in order to avoid hitting the ground. I found him difficult to hold in the latter part of the dive, as he went well past vertical, and I had my actuating gear wound fully forward. He was seen to crash near Gravesend. The enemy aircraft was coloured dark on top, with a tremendous yellow spinner, and was sky blue beneath.

Besides Nelson, Malan and Flight Lieutenant Peter C.B. St. John were credited with Me 109s, but Flying Officer Alan L. Nicalton was killed, shot down over Tunbridge by Feldwebel Eduard Kosolowski of 8./JG 53; his Spitfire crashed at Hollingbourne at 1540. German casualties were Oberleutnant Ernst-Günther Heinze, commander of 8./JG 53, whose Me 109E-7 crashed in the Channel, but who was rescued, and Oblt. Robert Magath of 7./JG 53, who returned to Le Touquet with 10 holes in his plane. In another action that day Pilot Officer Brian V. Draper forced Me 109E-4/B W Nr 1106 “Yellow 1” to crash land at Manston, Leutnant Walter Rupp of 3./JG 3 being taken prisoner. 

On October 27, No. 74 Squadron again clashed with JG 53. Nelson reported:

“I was No.2 to S/L [Squadron Leader] Malan detailed to patrol Biggin Hill at 7.50 hours. We intercepted 30 Me.109s over Ashford. Two of them came across my bows, heading into the sun. I followed and closed to 150 yards on the port side of the enemy and opened fire with a three-second burst which caused to the 109 to smoke badly and half-roll down. I followed easily and the enemy, after a sharp dive, pulled steeply into the sun. I could only follow him with the smoke trail. After two minutes I closed once more in the climb and gave a continuous burst of ten seconds at point-blank range. The 109 shed bits of machine which hit my aircraft and damaged the spinner and propeller. The enemy then wallowed in a shallow dive, and I formated on it down through the clouds. I saw the whole central portion of fuselage was shot away and no pilot to be seen. He did not jump, so I assume he was slumped in his cockpit. The machine crashed a couple of miles to the south of Rochford Aerodrome.”

The Jabo unit, II./JG 53, had taken off at 0918 and lost Uffz. Hermann Schlitt of 4./JG 53 whose Me 109E-4 went missing near Tunbridge Wells around 0950. The unit providing top cover was III./JG 27 and its commander, Hauptmann Max Dobislav, claimed a Spitfire south of Maidstone at 0800 for his 18th victory, while Oblt. Erbo Graf von Kaganeck of 9./JG 27 claimed a Spitfire over Ashford at 0948. Sergeant John Alan Scott of No. 74 Squadron was shot down over Maidstone and his Spitfire crashed and exploded at Dundas Farm, Elmstead, at 0900.

On October 29 Flight Lieutenant John Colin Mungo-Park was leading No. 74 Squadron on patrol when he got a call from Sector Operations Control to join No. 92 Squadron at 25,000 feet over Biggin Hill. Climbing to 30,000 feet, he spotted a ragged Me 109 formation at about 27,000 feet and called out “Tally-ho” to his men. In the ensuing scramble Mungo-Park got two, Pilot Officer Robert L. Spurdle and Sergeant Neil Morrison each claimed a Messerschmitt that could not be confirmed, and Pilot Officer Edward W.G. Churches attacked an He 111 that he last saw in a shallow descent south of Dungeness, also counted as a “probable.” Meanwhile, Nelson got on an Me 109’s tail at 25,000 feet and as it dove followed it down, giving it a three-second burst at 150 yards followed by a second at 50 yards before it crashed in a field near East Grinstead Hospital. On the debit side, Sergeant Harold J. Soars was shot-up for the third consecutive day, though he force-landed at Biggin Hill and his Spitfire was eventually repaired.

October 30, 1940 marked the official end of the Battle of Britain, but that did not mean the fighting was over. On November 1, No. 74 clashed with JG 26, en route home from covering a midday Jabo raid on London. The ensuing dogfight did not go well for the Tigers this time, for JG 26’s commander, Major Adolf Galland, destroyed a Spitfire west of Ashford for his 51st victory, Leutnant Hans Heinemann of 1./JG 26 downed another over Ashford — his only success before being himself shot down and killed on December 5 — and Hauptmann Walter Adolf, CO of II./JG 26, claimed one over Maidstone for his 14th.

Adolf’s victim, Sergeant Frederick P. Burnard, brought his Spit home badly damaged. Hit southeast of Ashford, Sergeant Soars bailed out off Dover; fished out of the Channel, he was rushed to Victoria Hospital at Folkestone. Bob Spurdle noted afterward: “Soars got shot down again and this time wounded; he should be taken off fighters.”

The third Spitfire, Nelson’s P7312, is also believed to have gone into the Channel off Dover. His body was never recovered, but the contribution and sacrifice of Bill Nelson — bombing DFC, Tiger Squadron ace, Canadian — to the Battle of Britain and ultimate Allied victory, is commemorated on Panel 4 of the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey.

Christmas In The Trenches: The meaning of the season during the Great War

By Kyle Falcon

(Volume 23-11)

The story of the Christmas Truce has been told many times. On Christmas Day 1914, men who had been sending each other bullets and bombs left their trenches to exchange pleasantries, food, souvenirs and, depending on who you ask, even played a game or two of football. As incredible as the story is, it was not to be repeated, since efforts were made by officials to prevent what they saw as lack of discipline on subsequent holiday seasons.

So what was Christmas like the following years? How was Christmas experienced and what did it mean, if anything, to those fighting a bitter war? Soldiers’ letters, memoirs and diaries are certainly a good place to start for such a discussion, but this article looks to another medium. Canadian trench periodicals, written by soldiers on the front lines, offer a lively discussion of the topic given their duel purpose as a humorous escape from war’s realities and a forum for news and serious reflection. To be sure, they do not speak for every soldier and the plurality of experiences, but they do offer an alternative to the popular Christmas Truce narrative.

The trenches of the Western Front were hardly an ideal place to celebrate Christmas. Putting aside the absence of amenities, décor and family, there was also a glaring contradiction with celebrating the birth of Christ in the environment of war, especially against fellow Christians. As The Iodine Chronicle put it in December 1915, “The season of Peace and Goodwill is again upon us, and still ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ is what most strikes us.” A shared Christian culture was what allowed the Christmas Truce to occur, but every December that the fighting continued, it was a question that begged an answer.

“While we are waging a relentless war, how can we consistently celebrate the Birthday of the Prince of Peace?,” the trench journal Another Garland from the Front asked in 1916. The answer they provided was that evil was a necessary product of free will and that Christians had a duty to combat evil crimes. “We must not,” they stated, “shut our eyes to possibility of crime, even such a crime as the ambition to subjugate the world.” The Iodine Chronicle reached a similar conclusion in that “the sacredness of the cause makes up for this seeming inconsistency.”

Another Garland from the Front was a follow-up to the 1915 A Christmas Garland from the Front. The two journals, issued by the 5th Canadian Battalion, were conceived as seasonal gifts from the soldiers at the front to the Canadians at home. They had elements of a typical trench journal, containing short stories, poems, sketches, and overviews of the battalion’s actions during the war. Content could be satirical or serious but a subtle message was conveyed that the trials endured on the front was the ultimate Christmas gift. One poem, For Home Consumption, reminded readers of their hardships by joking that “I love to hear the screeching of the shells a-tearing round about.”

Others made the point more explicitly. In the introduction to the 1916 issue of Another Garland, Arthur Currie asked those who read the journal to remember “the men who are daily laying down their lives in order that ‘Peace on Earth and Good Will among Men’ may once more prevail.” For one padre of the 7th Battalion, the Canadian soldiers had likewise set an example worthy of emulation and optimism. After a “year’s discipline and trial ... of great sacrifices,” he proclaimed, “our great Empire moved by this great Christmas wish will be mighty in bringing Christ’s peace on earth.”

The holiday address to the No. 1 Canadian Field Ambulance in The Iodine Chronicle similarly invoked the sacrifice of the men as proof of Christmas spirit: “in this season of cheer ... [w]e should also remember … our gallant comrades fallen on the field of honour, those who have made the ‘supreme sacrifice’ ... have given the greatest proof of their love for their fellow men.” According to these commentators, the soldiers were not abandoning Christian values but protecting and demonstrating them.

Not all discourse was so serious. Trench newspapers were after all designed to be humorous, so as to distract from war’s brutality and sustain morale. Consider a column in the December 1915 edition of The Listening Post. “If Santa Claus had included any portion of the British Front on his programme,” it began, “we could see no earthly reason why he shouldn’t call at the business address of the 7th Battalion.” What was the author referring to exactly? According to the column, they had spent the two days before Christmas decorating the trenches: “Pte. Allwood … had been persuaded to take his old socks off the barbed wire, and replace them with the new pair he had just been issued.” They had also doubled the amount of sandbags covering their trench so that German snipers would not kill Santa Claus.

Such was the nature of the trench newspaper, where the low quality of life, the constant risk of death, and even the inappropriateness of Christmas decorations in the trenches were highlighted through satire. While some projected Christian notions of sacrifice on soldiers to keep the Christmas spirit alive in wartime, others used irony to expose the farce. The not-so-subtle message was that, despite the hardships that made a conventional Christmas impossible, the men had not lost their spirit. Perhaps this is a sentiment that can only be given justice through the trench newspaper’s typical dark humour: “Whizz-bangs, Krumps, Krumps, and such delicate attention have taught us most effectively that it is better to give than to receive.”

If the spirit of the season could find expression in the face of conflict, so too could it be celebrated in the environment of war. All joking aside, some semblance of an ordinary Christmas could be had behind the lines. As The Listening Post noted, “Adaptability is a Canadian characteristic,” and so the men of the 7th Battalion were “prepared to celebrate Christmas to the best of their necessarily limited material resources.” With the use of a hut and a small stove, officers were treated to a Christmas dinner. After announcements by the commanding officer and a toast to Canada and the Allies there was a moment of silence to honour those killed, wounded, captured or back home. Non-commissioned officers and other men of the battalion were likewise treated to a Christmas celebration thanks to the Y.M.C.A.  The No. 12th Canadian Field Ambulance described their 1917 Christmas festivities as “the jolliest time ever had in France.” Approximately 200 men gathered for a concert and feast. They were treated to theatre, music, sardines, toast and turkey, and the walls and ceilings were “camouflaged with cheery decorations” that mirrored the attitude of the men. “We were plentifully supplied with false faces, paper hats, whistles, tin-horns,” one writer recalled, “there was an unlimited amount of good humour and sparkling wit.” Some were able to escape to pleasant memories of home: “It sure reminds me of the kind [of turkey] mother used to make” was one such remark by a soldier. The effort was enough to boost the morale of the men. As their journal In & Out concluded, “We rolled into our blankets … mightily pleased with the day’s activities, and wishing that Christmas came more than once a year.”

Not all men were lucky enough to enjoy such a setting on Christmas. Nor did every soldier possess the wit and literary gifts as some of the trench newspapers contributors. Nevertheless, these snippets show some of the ways in which a domestic holiday devoted to “goodwill towards men” could be reconciled in the environment of the Western Front, and in ways very different from the example set in 1914.

HMS Tribune: Halifax's first maritime disaster is almost forgotten

(Volume 23-10)

By Bob Gordon

Founded by the Royal Navy in 1749 on the shores of a remarkable natural harbour, Bedford Basin, Halifax has been a navy town since. A challenge to the French at Fortress Louisbourg and in violation of a treaty with the Mi’kmaq, Halifax was born on the front line. It grew to become the most important Royal Navy base in the western Atlantic.

Since 1910, when the Naval Service of Canada was established (and renamed the Royal Canadian Navy one year later), the naval presence has brought a host of benefits to Halifax including infrastructure, investment and employment. Also, Halifax has often paid a price for this military significance. The massive explosion in 1917 killed over 1,900 and left 6,000 homeless. During VE-Day celebrations on May 7, 1945, rioting broke out that carried into the next day, ravaged the central business district and left three dead. Only two weeks before VE-Day, HMCS Esquimalt was torpedoed within sight of the lights of Halifax. Six months earlier, HMCS Clayoquot met the same fate on Christmas Eve 1944. In this roll call of naval tragedy, HMS Tribune is conspicuous in its absence. Despite the loss of approximately 250 lives within hailing distance of the shore, the men are unmourned. With a legitimate claim to being the largest shipboard naval disaster in Canadian history, the fate of HMS Tribune is all but forgotten.

Originally christened La Charente Inférieure of the Marine royale française when it was launched at Rochefort in 1793 during the French Revolutionary Wars, HMS Tribune was a fifth-rate frigate mounting 34 guns and eight 32-pounder carronades (some sources suggest a total of 44 barrels). At 900 tons, she was long — over 40 metres — and lean, with a draft of less than four metres and a beam of 11.5 metres. The Halifax Royal Gazette, in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, described her as “one of the finest frigates in her majesty’s service.”

A year after the frigate was launched, in 1794, the newly minted French revolutionary government determined that a vessel named after a minor river flowing into the Bay of Biscay lacked revolutionary vigour. She was more appropriately renamed La Tribune, evoking ancient Roman democracy. In mid-1796, La Tribune was under the command of Citoyen John Moulson (or Moulston), an American who had served in the French Navy for 16 years.

She was captured off the south coast of Ireland near Scilly by HMS Unicorn, commanded by Captain Thomas Williams, in June 1796. The capture was announced with glowing praise in The London Gazette on June 18, 1796: “Intrepidity and judicious Management were never more strongly manifested than in this Instance, which reflects the highest Honor on Captains Williams and Martin, and on every Individual under their Command.” Williams’s conquest earned him a knighthood. Two days later a prize crew brought La Tribune into Portsmouth Harbour and shipwrights began repairs and refitting. Additionally, all the ordinance was replaced with canon and carronade cast by the Royal Artillery at Woolwich.

The following spring, on April 29, 1797, she was rechristened HMS Tribune and brought into Royal Navy service. Captain Scory Barker was assigned to command a fortnight later. Within weeks she was briefly thrust into the limelight. In July, inclement weather prevented the courts martial of the Spithead mutineers from convening on HMS Royal William and the venue was moved to HMS Tribune. Captain Barker welcomed aboard Sir John Orde, Rear Admiral of the White, presiding, his entourage, the accused, witnesses, et al. Two days later the crew of HMS Tribune contributed to the military justice system in a less pleasant manner. They provided the witnesses to the execution of the death sentences delivered by Rear Admiral Orde.

Two months later HMS Tribune was operational. Flying the Union Jack, she set sail from Torbay on September 22, 1797 under Captain Barker. She was detailed to escort a resupply convoy to the Quebec and Newfoundland fleets. En route HMS Tribune lost track of its convoy and headed for Halifax alone, arriving in the early morning of Thursday, November 23.

Two months out and hours from port, a debate broke out between the captain and the master. Captain Barker favoured waiting for a local pilot. Reportedly, the master, John Clegg, objected vehemently arguing that “he had beat a 44-gun ship into the harbour, that he had frequently been there, nor was there any occasion for a pilot since the wind was favourable.” The fateful decision was taken to proceed immediately under the master and the Captain returned to his cabin.

The book Remarkable Shipwrecks, Or a Collection of Interesting Accounts of Naval Disasters: With Many Particulars of the Extraordinary Adventures and Sufferings of the Crews of Vessels Wrecked at Sea, and of Their Treatment on Distant Shores, which was published in Connecticut in 1813, only 16 years after the mishap, describes the moments before disaster struck: “By twelve o’clock the ship had approached so near the Thrum Cap shoals that the master became alarmed, and sent for Mr. Galvin, master’s mate, who was sick below. On his coming upon deck, he heard the man in the chains sing out, ‘By the mark five!’ ... the master ran, in great agitation, to the wheel, and took it from the man who was steering, with the intention of wearing the ship; but before this could be effected, or Galvin was able to give an opinion, she struck.” The sickening thud of the ship hitting the shoal brought the captain back on deck.

Initially, distress signals were run up and acknowledged by the nearby shore installations. Boats were dispatched to aid the stricken ship. However, the winds prevented the military boats, save one, from reaching it. Then, efforts were made to lighten the ship by dumping cannon and other heavy objects. Accompanied by a rising tide, these efforts were successful: “about half past eight o’clock in the evening the ship began to heave, and at nine got off the shoals.” Ultimately, however, freeing her from the shoal sealed the fate of the Tribune and her crew.

Afloat it was discovered the frigate had two metres of water in its hold and that the chain pumps could not keep up with the inflow. The ship was sinking. Additionally, the battering on the shoal had damaged the gudgeon and pindle, ripping the rudder from the hull. It hung lifeless and useless from the stern of the ship. Adrift and rudderless with a gale rising, the ship floated across the harbour entrance and finally ground ashore off Herring Cove on the west side of the channel.

Remarkable Shipwrecks describes the terrifying events that followed: “The scene, before sufficiently distressing, now became peculiarly awful. More than 240 men, besides several women and children, were floating on the waves, making the last effort to preserve life.” Their cruel fate was rendered bitterer still by the small, but insurmountable gap that separated them from the safety of dry land. “The place where the ship went down was barely three times her length to the southward of the entrance into Herring Cove. The inhabitants came down in the night to the point opposite to which the ship sunk, kept up large fires, and were so near as to converse with the people on the wreck.”

Earlier, a handful of officers had reached land in the jolly boat. However, Captain Barker, fearing for his career prospects, refused to proclaim the order to abandon ship. A captain in the Royal Navy knew that it was career suicide to issue such a fateful order, that he would never again receive an operational command. Consequently, the crew and passengers, hundreds of stranded souls, found themselves trapped on the floundering vessel in the dead of night with a gale rising. Throughout the night in the wind, water and chill they slowly expired.

There are conflicting reports on fatalities, calculations complicated by an inaccurate crew manifest and the presumed presence of ‘unofficial’ passengers (notably, wives and children of officers). Some sources say 14, others say only 12, aboard made it to safety. Accounts of how many were aboard range from 250 to 289. Therefore, somewhere between 235 and 275 persons died of exposure or drowned.

Late in the morning of November 24, a young Herring Cove lad rowed a dory out to the wreck and was able to draw off eight more survivors. Known to history as Joe Cracker, his real name is unknown. Cracker was Royal Navy slang for a keener or a go-getter. Nonetheless, the very existence of a lad known to history as Joe Cracker is rendered probable by the inclusion of the tale in the 1813 source, Remarkable Shipwrecks: “The first exertion that was made for their relief was by a boy thirteen years old, from Herring Cove, who ventured off in a small skiff by himself about eleven o’clock the next day. This youth, with great labor and extreme risk to himself, boldly approached the wreck, and backed in his little boat so near to the fore-top as to take off two of the men, for the boat could not with safety hold any more.”

At the time, Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn and the fourth son of George III, was resident in Halifax, serving as a major-general and commander-in-chief of the Royal Nova Scotia Regiment. The young hero was presented to the prince and Sir John Wentworth, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia. In consequence of his heroism, the 13-year-old was offered a position as a volunteer on HMS Resolution. However, the adventure was short-lived as he proved unsuitable for naval service and was soon discharged to resume his life in Herring Cove.

Nova Scotia publisher and politician Joseph Howe fancied himself a poet and once set to preserve the memory of HMS Tribune:

Acadia’s child — thy humble name

The Muse will long revere.

The wreath you nobly won from Fame

Shall bloom for many a year.

Long as the thoughts which swell’d thy breast.

The flame that lit thy eye,

Shall in our Country’s bosom rest,

Thy name shall never die!

Howe’s fervent wish that honest and innocent heroism amidst tragedy be remembered through the ages was forlorn. Today, even the young Cracker’s real name remains unknown. The small plaque on Tribune Head that recognizes his heroism states simply: “Joe Cracker, the fisher lad of 13 years who was the first to rescue survivors from the wreck of HMS Tribune in a heavy sea off the headland.” Beyond this silent invocation, the loss of some 250 souls stranded aboard HMS Tribune passes silently, forgotten.

The Tides of Memory Come In

By Alexander Fitzgerald-Black 

Words from a Second World War correspondent still resonate to this day on the true meaning of Remembrance

On November 8, 1944 the First Canadian Army completed operations to clear and secure the banks of the Scheldt estuary, opening the logistically vital port of Antwerp to Allied shipping. The port itself had been liberated over two months earlier, but it had taken tenacious fighting by Canadian, British, Polish and other Allied forces to secure its approaches. Canada’s toll for these operations amounted to 1,418 killed and 4,949 wounded, approximately fifty per cent of the casualties suffered by Allied forces in the Battle of the Scheldt.

Although the cost was high, this was arguably the Canadian Army’s most significant contribution to victory in the Second World War. Antwerp had been captured with its port facilities intact thanks to the brave efforts of the Dutch Resistance. Once its approaches were clear, the inland port became an essential node in the Allied logistical chain in Northwest Europe. The First Canadian Army — some 170,000 men organized in two corps (five divisions and two armoured brigades) — had seen hard fighting without much respite since its activation in July 1944 during the height of the Normandy battle. For its part, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had landed at Juno Beach on D-Day.

After this draining victory, which also saw the surrender of 40,000 German troops, First Canadian Army was taken out of the line for a period of regeneration. The CBC’s senior war correspondent, Matthew Halton, decided to take the opportunity to reflect on his pilgrimage to what is now the Canadian National Vimy Memorial Park. He had visited the Vimy Memorial in September 1944, after he witnessed the destruction of German forces at Falaise and the great advance following the Normandy breakout.

Halton shared his experiences with homes across Canada over the crackle of the wireless. Families of servicemen and women abroad must have been stirred by his reflections. Remembrance Day in 1944 took place as that “hard and cruel war [drew] slowly towards its bitter end.”

The Grand Alliance seemed to have Germany beaten. It wasn’t a question of whether Germany would fall, but a question of when, and at what further cost. Few probably guessed that Adolf Hitler’s armies had one last great offensive in them — Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (“Operation Watch on the Rhine”), which would become known in popular circles as the Battle of the Bulge. Once the counterattack was dealt with, the First Canadian Army would once again play a significant and costly role in the final assault on Nazi Germany and in the liberation of the Netherlands.

As Halton addressed the nation he lamented the mass destruction and death of two generations. He accurately predicted additions to cenotaphs around the country, with places like Arras, Bapaume, Ypres, and Vimy Ridge to be joined by places like Bretteville-sur-Laize, Caen, Tilly-la-Campagne, and Falaise. For Halton, these were the anthems of the doomed youth of two generations.

In this country and in others, movements have sprung up protesting Remembrance Day as perpetuating jingoistic attempts by governments and their militaries to justify conflict. The white poppy movement and its supporters make news every November 11th, some arguing that the red poppy worn by the majority of citizens glorifies war. Others counter that the red poppy is a symbol of remembrance; some find those who wear white poppies are giving offence to the nation’s veterans and others impacted by conflict.

I believe that Matthew Halton’s reflections are instructive in this debate. He asks his listeners a question that we should ask ourselves every Remembrance Day: “There’ll be mad dogs again in the future, what are you going to do?” In Halton’s day, those mad dogs were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. Arguably, the Western Allies fought alongside another mad dog: Joseph Stalin. Today’s mad dogs are the Taliban, the Islamic State, Bashar al-Assad, and, in some circles, Vladimir Putin. Canada has opposed each of these mad dogs on varying levels. 

The question Halton urges us to consider is whether our resistance to these threats — real or perceived — to world security is worth the cost. Canada’s combat death toll from Afghanistan sits at 158, while suicides of PTSD-laden veterans will continue to drive that death toll upwards.

Some argue that Canada needs to maintain its commitments to allies; if we want a seat at the table, we had better be willing to shed some blood. Halton has an answer for this too. He notes the terrible duality of war, that “splendid things come out of war, but war is a thing to be ashamed of.” Canada emerged from the Second World War as one of the world’s great, un-devastated, economies. Some scholars argue that the post-war period was a golden era in Canadian foreign relations, when this country’s middle power status carried significant weight among the major powers. But the cost of these gains was immense: over 45,000 Canadians were killed and 54,000 were wounded. Beyond these figures, it is not hard to imagine the lingering effects that PTSD had on families when loved ones were finally reunited.

Matthew Halton leaves us with a plea to “not break the faith.” He urges his listeners to move forward after the present World War in efforts to avoid a third. We haven’t broken the faith so far, at least not on the massive scale that Halton experienced twice in his lifetime. I’d like to believe that Remembrance Day has something to do with that. Its power is in forcing us to consider both sides of the paradox of war. We must thank and remember our veterans for their efforts in building the society we cherish today while, at the same time, reflecting on those who were lost in that terrible effort to build this better world.

I encourage you to listen to Matthew Halton’s words with an open mind and an open heart. I listen to the clip every November 11th. In it I find a profound understanding for the meaning of Remembrance Day, when the “tides of memory come in.” Enjoy, and Lest We Forget.