the men who won the war
The men who won the war
It was just like a championship heavyweight boxing match. For four long years, the two lumbering hulks traded blows. Year after year, round after round, slowly and methodically they wore each other down. Evenly matched, they tried every tactic they could conjur up to defeat their foe. Approximately 750,000 men from Great Britain and its’ empire had been killed thus far. Another 1.4 million were either maimed or wounded. The French nation was equally devastated. Facing them 2.7 million Germans lay dead with another 7 million wounded. The losses of men and material were utterly unprecedented in the history of warfare. Despite the monumental tally, by the spring of 1918 the two foes were ready to begin the next round with the Germans readying for the knock-out punch. Following Russia concluding their participation in the contest, they, in turn, bolstered the Axis side by enabling an injection of troops from the Eastern Front. With the melting of the winter snows in March of 1918, the invigorated Germans hammered the Allies at the Somme and along the Ainse. But, with stoic resilience the Allies withstood the blow, bent but didn’t break, stood strong, and in August of 1918, flexed their muscles and like a lion responded in a fury of violence. This offensive in response would be forever known as the 100 Day Offensive…the 100 Final Days that broke the back of the German Army.
Akin to the scorecards of prospective champions, by the summer of 1918 both challengers could showcase a list of notable victories. The Axis banners included those won on the Eastern Front in Russia, the Dardanelles in Gallipoli by their Ottoman Turkish allies, a devastating defeat of the Serbs in the Balkans followed by Austro-Hungary still successfully holding back the Italians on the front to their south along the Isonzo River Valley. It was an impressive series of wins which allowed them to focus their attention on France for the knock-out blow. The blood-soaked battle honours won by the Allies included Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Arab War, the naval mastery of the seas after the battle of Jutland and a defeat of the Bulgarian-lead troops in the Greek battle known as Salonika. The Germans were confident early in the year but after the failed Spring Offensive and the unfortunate circumstance of 2 million Yanks disembarking on the docks of Belgium and France waiting to join the fray the Brits and French saw opportunities on the horizon. By the summer of 1918, the only key battleground still under dispute was along the Western Front in France and Belgium. It was here where the final blows between prospective champions would be waged.
The initial hits leveled by the Allies against the German Axis power would come to be called the Blackest Day in the history of the war by the German High Command. After 48 months of continuous combat, on August 8th, the Allies responded. 29 British, Australian, Canadian, French and American divisions combined to blast through the weakened German front. In an ironic foreshadow to the tactics used by Germans in 1939, a force of a half million men combined and coordinated their overwhelming airpower, their devastating and differentiated myriad of artillery barrages, led by new armoured tanks brigades and followed by waves of infantry soldiers blasting a hole into the German defences. From a contest that had henceforth been a stalemate, battling over mere yards had changed to miles. This initial thrust by the confident, rested and ready allies is known as the Battle of Amiens; the first counter-punch laid in the final fury of the war.
Continuing the analogy of the war as being a contest between competing champs in the boxing ring, in September 1918 the Canadians were the proverbial leather in the glove of the allies. If Amiens was the jab that shocked and stunned the Germans, the next series of blows caused them to stumble backwards and ultimately throw in the towel. Following the decisive victory at Amiens where the Allies blew a 30km wide gap in the Hindenburg Line (line of demarcation on the Western Front separating the two sides) a steady series of victories piled up for the confident Canadians. Arras in mid August, followed by Baupaume in late, leading to Scarpe and then the battle of Drocourt-Queant in early September. Each of these victories amounted to men and material leaving the relative safety of the trenches they had long come to rely upon and into and across open fields. The static war had ended.
One key fact that is overlooked is that the Germans, while bruised and bloodied, were still ‘German soldiers’. The men huddling in the subterranean shelters, still knew how and where to set up machine gun nests and they had not forgotten how to fire them. With each step, Canadian boys and men traversing the battlefields were mown down in droves. The difference, however, between this stage and that of earlier phases of the war amounted to the impact that combined technologies and forces meant to an attack. Air superiority led to gaining accurate intelligence on the exact position and movements of opposing troops. Gunner teams situated in the rear took this intelligence, configured their armaments accordingly and exacted revenge in devastating order. A new advance in the evolution of warfare was the also just introduced, namely steel-plated armoured mechanized tanks. Shelter in a shell…equipped with cannons and machine guns. Tanks when deployed were virtually indestructible to the men emerging from their underground shelters or those manning the machine gun nests. Finally, the tanks offered shelter to the infantry. The barbed wire entanglements were no match for a squadron of tanks and the men took advantage of it. They men followed the lumbering beasts closely, easily circumventing the previously impassable obstacles, using the vehicles to protect them from the machine gun fire and thus allowing them to get a better chance of putting the remaining enemies our of commission via rifle, grenade or bayonet. Thus, in coordinated fashion the combined deployment of differentiated methods of combat allowed the Allies to transform the way war was waged, both in the attacks they were participating in and within the nature of warfare itself.
In recognition to the forms of technology now being utilized, it is important to stand in the boots of the men and boys that faced Canada from across the field of battle in the summer of 1918. This gives us a better understanding of what they saw when they emerged from their subterranean refuge. By this stage of the war, the men were exhausted. Many were younger men, mere boys aged 16, 17 or 18. Some were veteran soldiers, but most of the skilled warriors had long since been either killed or wounded and removed from the battlefield. Huddled against the side of trenches these boys watched fleets of aircraft buzzing above their positions, firing their machine guns down the length of trenches or dropping bombs upon them. Soon barrages of heavy artillery would upend huge chunks of dirt, stone or the remains of dead men and material into the air, showering the men and often burying them with debris. All the while shrapnel blasts would explode overhead sending searing not shards of razor-sharp metal every direction…slicing open stomach, disarming men, beheading soldiers. The theatre of destruction would be deafening. The resulting concussions would blow men from side to side, tossing them like toys into the air or rupturing their organs from the inside. Pinned down in their holes, sheets of machine gun bullets would cut the air above their heads forcing them to attempt to proverbially dig themselves deeper and deeper into the earth to find shelter. Then add the gas. Dirt. Debris. Shards of metal. A hurricane of bullets…then they needed to fumble through their kit to find their masks so to protect themselves from the lung-blistering gas…the final insult added to ensure all the bases were covered. For those who managed to survive, they were expected to scramble out of their holes, set up their machine guns and futilely ping them off the murmuring, belching steel beast slowing approaching their position….all the while being shot at by its’ cannon or from the rifles of assortment of men following it. The last thing they would recall seeing was the flash of the bayonet shimmering in the midday sun awaiting a belly to call home. For the German soldier in the summer of 1918…that was their plight as they looked out upon the approaching Canadians.
With the centennial anniversary of their sacrifice for those who fell, it is important to honour the unique significance of what the men who were killed in the days between September 27th and Oct 1st mean. Specifically, September 29th stands out as the day where the Canadians, the leather on the glove of the Allied brawler, finally connected with a haymaker to the chin of the Germans. It was on that day when Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff asked their leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II to initiate negotiations for an armistice. It was the day Germany tossed in the towel.
Between September 27th and Oct 1st, two great monumental punches were landed in sequence into the Hindenburg Line. The first was part of an action was initiated on the 27th, led by Canada and Canadians in a battle just on the outskirts of the French town of Cambrai called, Canal du Nord. Just to the south, a predominantly English-led attack targeted the St Quentin Canal on the 29th. The advance on Canal du Nord remains an under appreciated and relatively unknown battle in the lore of Canadian Great War history. As Ludendorff struggled to maintain the strength and resiliency of his troops in the front line, he looked to regroup his forces following the retreat after the failed Spring Offensive. Before them, his troops were responsible for fortifying and maintaining the German defences along the previously impassible and formidable Hindenburg Line. Stretching 140 kms long, it was 5.5 kms deep with 6 separate defensive lines that allowed for multiple layers of protection and offered time and space for this troops to regroup and reinforce in the event the Allies were able to negotiate a breakthrough. Opposite them along a strategic sector of the Hindenburg Line were the British First Army, consisting in the case of the advance on Canal du Nord, the Canadian Expeditionary Force. From the Canadian position, their first objective was to overcome and take the 100 ft wide dry canal bed situated on the western approach to the strategic town of Cambrai.
At 5:20am on the 27th the skies erupted in a pyrotechnic cavalcade showering a devasting array of heavy artillery, field guns, mortars and siege batteries upon the ground on the lee side of the canal. By the summer of 1918 the British and Canadian forces with the assistance and material of the newly arrived Americans were able to deliver unprecedented amount of supplies and ammunition to the front line forces. Thus, they were able to give it all and red-hot guns belched their fury upon the defending Germans. Under this situation, the canal was taken with relative ease and the Canadians rapidly moved forward to reach their defined objectives. The next stage was to secure and take Bourlon Wood, a high point protecting the Western approach to Cambrai.
In contemporary times, the landscape and approach to Cambrai was relatively open and flat with the exclusion of Bourlon Wood. Up until the summer of 1918, the area was fought over and pummeled with shells many times during the previous four years. The Germans were still able to create strong fortifications and reinforced outposts across the region. Thus, despite the employment of a myriad of armaments and tactics the Canadians were highly exposed while they moved across the land attempting to achieve their objectives. One of the key differentiators versus previous years was that the Canadian Forces now acted by seamlessly coordinating their divergent components; gunnery battalions, air force, tank battalions and the infantry battalions (both leading and reserve). Despite this enhancement of their operational strategy, as the men moved from trench to trench or shell hole to shell hole they were still walking across exposed areas leading to many casualties inflicted upon the men.
On September 29th, Allies with the Canadians leading the charge in the assault on the Hindenburg Line and the Cambrai stronghold levelled the shot that caused Ludendorf realize the futility of his cause. It was on this day when the leadership finally came to the realization they would not be able to hold the line. The breach was too deep, the defensive front too long to protect and a combination of men, material and momentum proved to Germany that the Allies were just too strong. Thus, unbeknownst to the men still following orders out in the fields, attacking key strong points and opening themselves up to certain death as they braved the steel and took on entrenched German positions, after 1516 days of battle one side finally gave up and asked for an armistice. It would take just over a month before an armistice could be signed in Mons, France officially ending the war. However, it remains important to recognize the skill, professionalism, courage and sacrifice that was exhibited during the Battle of Canal du Nord, the impact their efforts had on accelerating the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front and ultimately saving the lives of many, many men on all sides of the contest.
One thousand, one hundred and seventy-four men.
1174. That is the number of men who fought with the Canadian Expeditionary Force and are buried in the seven cemeteries situated within or on the outskirts of Cambrai France.
· Mill Switch British Cemetery – 104 men from the 116th, 42nd, 43rd, 52nd, Machine Gun Corp, PPCLI
· Haynecourt British Cemetery – 282 men from the 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th,28th, 29th, 31st, 46th, 50th, 72nd, 75th, 85th, 1st and 2nd Cnd Motor Machine Gun Brigade, 1st and 2nd Field Artillery,
· Raillencourt Communal British Cemetery – 193 men from the 3rd, 14th, 16th, 2th, 38th, 42nd, 43rd, 44th, 47th, 50th, 75th, 78th, 85th, 97th, 3rd and 4th Machine Gun Corp, RCR, PPCLI, 1st and 2nd Cnd Mounted Rifles
· Drummond British Cemetery – 85 men from the 3rd Machine Gun Corp, 42nd, 49th, 51st, 52nd, 116th, 2nd and 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, PPCLI, Canadian Light Horse
· Cantimpre British Cemetery – 205 men from 14th, 16th, 21st, 22nd,26th, 27th, 29th, 31st, 38th, 42nd, 43rd, 44th, 46th, 54th, 72nd, 75th, 78th, 87th, 116th, 1st and 4th Canadian Machine Gun Corp, PPCLI, 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, Canadian Arms Medical Corp
· Sainte Olle British Cemetery – 97 men from the 49th, 52nd, 116th, RCR, PPCLI, 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles
· Canada Cemetery – 249 men from 13th, 14th, 16th, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 27th, 28th, 49th, 52nd, 54th, 58th, 72nd, 75th, 87th, 102nd, 116th,1st, 2nd and 4th Machine Gun Corps, PPCLI, RCR
1174 Canadians rest in peace in seven cemeteries in Cambrai, France. They are all located within a 5-6 kms radius from each other. Each cemetery is meticulously maintained. The grass is cut perfectly. The flowers are neatly trimmed and groomed. From Woodstock to Toronto, from Uxbridge to Beaverton, Calgary to Killarney to Canuk, Saskatchewan, men from Chicago, Detroit, New York and Pittsburgh, from cities, towns, villages and hamlets dotting the length of the North American continent enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and rest in perpetuity in these cemeteries. Some fought for years on the front lines. Some were wounded, recovered and rushed back to the front to make it just in time for the big push. Many others went from the landing crafts to the front, directly to their deaths…their first tastes of warfare ending up being their last. 100 years ago today and 38 days from the war’s ultimate cessation, 1174 men, representing the leather in the glove, died, were buried and await your visitation in the seven cemeteries of Cambrai France. Remember them.
Resources included
- Crossing the Channel, Combined Arms Operations at the Canal-du-Nord, September-October 1918, David Borys (http://www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/3-Borys-Canal-du-Nord.pdf).