Canada's 100 Days
A Remembrance Day Reflection
On the 11th hour of the 11th month of the 11th day, everything stops in Canada.
In communities across the country, people gather to pay their respects to those who served or fell in the numerous wars of the last century. In my little town of Cobalt, the Legion calls out the names of the nearly 100 men who died in the two main world wars – young men from a town that is so small that we don’t even have stop lights.
Every community in this country experienced similar losses. Remembrance Day holds significant power in Canada because we sacrificed so many to free others.
I have written several essays about the Second World War, but I have rarely written about the First World War. I think it is because of my Grandmother, Jenny Boyd.
My Granny was traumatized by the war and spoke about it all the time.
She never got over all the young “boys” — neighbours, cousins, school mates from her working-class neighbourhood in Dundee who were slaughtered or disfigured in battles like Loos, the Somme and Ypres. Jenny had a deep hatred for the “politicians who send young boys to die.”
But there was one story my Granny liked to tell. Over a cup of tea, she would tell me and my sister Kathleen of a time when the Scottish soldiers were so close to the German lines that they used to talk to one another at night. When food supplies became scarce on the German side, the Scots would throw over cans of beans. The Germans had some very fine jewellers who would take the tin and mould beautiful rose rings, and send them back over to the Scots.
I have never read this in any book, but my Granny told me those rings were prized possessions by the young women of Dundee.
Canada’s first appearance in the war was on one of its darkest days.
On April 22, 1915, the untested Canadian volunteers were in the trenches at Ypres when the Germans launched the first chlorine gas attack. No one knew what was happening. There were no gas masks. The Allied line quickly crumbled as men either died from burning lungs or were forced to flee the deadly clouds.
But the Canadians held their ground.
Thanks to solid high school chemistry training, some recognized the smell of chlorine and knew that ammonia would neutralize it. The word went up and down the trenches to urinate into handkerchiefs. When the Germans launched what they thought would be an easy assault, they were met by Canadians who held urine-soaked rags over their faces as they fought back. The entire Ypres line would have collapsed had it not been for those very stubborn troops.
The Canadians may not have been the “spit and polish” regulars preferred by the British generals, but they quickly gained a reputation on both sides of the trenches as men that you didn’t mess with.
The memory of that long and horrific war has faded with the passing of the decades. Canadians are taught the story of how we stormed the heights at Vimy Ridge, but little is known about the role Canadians played in ending the war.
The popular version is that the war ended because the Americans arrived. The way the story is told, the “doughboys” showed up in 1917, and with their vast numbers and superior weapons, they turned the tide and ended the stalemate.
Well, yes and no.
At the beginning of 1918, the Germans launched a thunderous attack across the Western Front, and it was feared that the Allies might not be able to hold. By early summer, that offensive had come to a halt. At this point the Canadian Corps came out of their trenches and hit the German army with a relentless series of assaults.
Between August and November 1918, the Canadians led the way in battle after battle, breaking through at Amiens, the Drocourt Line, and breaching the Hindenburg Line, as well as freeing Vinciennes and ultimately liberating Mons, Belgium. During that time, the Canadians took on 47 German divisions and never wavered.
By early November, the Germans had nothing else to throw at the advancing allies; German generals Ludendorf and Hindenburg knew they could go no further. They surrendered in the field rather than see the allies fight their way onto German soil.
In Germany, the notion that the greatest army in the world had been defeated in such a short time was simply unbelievable. It led to all manner of conspiracies, such as the Nazi’s claim that Germany had been “stabbed in the back by Jews and liberals.” How else to make sense of the total collapse of the army in such a short time?
But one had only to look at the battlefield hospitals and cemeteries behind the Canadian lines. Over 45,000 Canadians were lost in just 100 days. The immensity of their bravery and sacrifice can be seen in the rolls of honour. Of all the Victoria Crosses awarded to Canadians since the Boer War to today, over half were awarded in those 100 days.
The Canadians returned home with a new sense of nationhood. But the loss had been horrendous. Legion halls and cenotaphs were established across the country to commemorate the boys who never returned home.
There was also anger about the huge cost in lives. It led to a decades-long bitter battle between Sam Hughes, former Minister of Defence and General Arthur Currie over whether those casualties were justified.
In this time of national stress and threat, I have been thinking of the immense sacrifice of the final 100 days. In some ways, it would be easy to be jingoistic and paint this as a great example of when Canadians “went over the boards.”
But then I think of my aged Granny sitting in her kitchen with a cup of tea, still mourning the “boys” in Flanders.
The lesson that I take from Canada’s 100 days is that as the world becomes increasingly unstable and dangerous, Canadians need to remember the cost that other generations were forced to pay so we could live in peace and freedom.
Whether it was on the North Atlantic, bombing runs over Berlin, at Ortona, Falaise, the Scheldt, the Netherlands, Korea, Medak Pocket, or Kandahar, young Canadians always showed up and did their part.
And more.
They did it to free other people. But they also did it so that a new generation wouldn’t have to go through what they suffered. That is the meaning of Remembrance Day: to protect and preserve that legacy.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.
Jenny. Rose rings from bean cans. Urine-soaked cloth in battle. In the morning. Remembrances. What gifts you gave us this day, Charlie Angus, Jenny of Dundee’s grandson!
Thank you, Charlie, for reminding us that most of the lives lost were young men, some just boys. My granny told of her uncles who, at ages 16 and 17, died in France for our freedom. My grandfather fought, as did his father, but they both came home. My great aunt Helen was a nurse in France. She came home, but it wasn't until her sister, Jean, died, that I even knew they'd been part of the war.
Both my grandmothers had victory gardens, where they grew produce in the back yard. My maternal grandmother knitted and rolled bandages, socks, vests, balaclava, etc. Everyone dreaded the postman turning up off schedule, often with a telegram saying a husband, father, brother, or son was killed or injured.
Lest we forget. Always in our memories.