Read Online Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 by Gwynne Dyer - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gwynne Dyer
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responsibilities ever cast upon British people, that there exists within the borders of this Province at least 5,000 men, physically fit, and from whom a bare 800 have displayed sufficient courage and patriotism to unsheath the sword in defence of their homes?
M. Frink, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, June 29, 1915
Prince Edward Islanders might be “Loyalist” by tradition, but by 1914 they had been there long enough to notice which continent they lived in, and they did a lot less volunteering than British Columbians. As for the one big dip in the curve, Quebec—as Laurier said in Parliament,defending the French Canadians’ evident reluctance to die for Britain: “Enlistment [varies inversely] with the length of time that the men have been in the country.… French Canadians … have been longer in the country than any other class of the community.”
Q. Were you excited at the time, about going to war?
Oh yes, it was an adventure, you know. We were all a bunch of young people, eh? I was about the youngest in the crowd, but I took it as an adventure, you see. Because the story was that we’d never see the war, because it would be all over by the time we got to England.
Leslie Hudd, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canadian Army
After three months of training in England in the winter mud of Salisbury Plain, the Canadians began to move to France. The first unit to enter the trenches, in January 1915, was “Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry” (named after the daughter of the governor general). It was a special battalion made up mainly of ex-British regulars and Canadian veterans of the Boer War, which had been raised and equipped with $100,000 donated by Captain A. Hamilton Gault, a Montreal millionaire and militia officer who had fought in South Africa. (Gault served in France with the battalion himself, and eventually lost a leg in battle.) But even the large number of experienced soldiers in the PPCLI were at a loss for how to deal with this very new kind of battlefield, with its barbed wire and machine guns and crushing artillery barrages.
Of course you have read about the trenches in the papers. Well, our battalion has had four spells in them. Three or four days is usual. No charges made or repulsed, but we have had a number of casualties.…
Our trenches are from 75 to 120 yards from the German trenches. Wise lads, too. The first night in, they called out to knowif we were Canadians. How are things on Hastings Street? They also sang an English song or two.
The English Tommies that were here last fall are the ones who had it bad. We have come to trenches all prepared and drained, and in some places, paved with boards, brush, galvanized iron or even bricks. There are dugouts built and floored with straw.
The cooking and smoking, with a little would-be witticisms with Fritzies across the way … while away the tedious hours.
Jairus Maus (Paris, Ontario) Enlisted in PPCLI in Vancouver, January 1915
At the Forks of the Grand
, vol. 2
During the wettest English winter in living memory, the Canadian troops had already got rid of some of the more useless bits of equipment foisted on them by the political patronage that infested the Canadian militia organization (such as boots that disintegrated in the wet). But when the battalions of the First Canadian Division began to cross over to France in mid-February, their men were still carrying the Ross rifles that were Sam Hughes’s pride and joy. He’d been warned by the British army that they were excellent target rifles but useless for sustained fire in combat—but nobody could ever tell Sam Hughes anything. The Canadians first saw heavy fighting at Ypres in March:
How the Germans knew a bunch of green Canadians were going to take over this part of the Ypres front, I don’t know, but … they opened up on us, and that was our first baptism of fire as a unit.
So the troops on our right, the British, put up this rapid fire with their Lee-Enfields. They
M. Frink, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, June 29, 1915
Prince Edward Islanders might be “Loyalist” by tradition, but by 1914 they had been there long enough to notice which continent they lived in, and they did a lot less volunteering than British Columbians. As for the one big dip in the curve, Quebec—as Laurier said in Parliament,defending the French Canadians’ evident reluctance to die for Britain: “Enlistment [varies inversely] with the length of time that the men have been in the country.… French Canadians … have been longer in the country than any other class of the community.”
Q. Were you excited at the time, about going to war?
Oh yes, it was an adventure, you know. We were all a bunch of young people, eh? I was about the youngest in the crowd, but I took it as an adventure, you see. Because the story was that we’d never see the war, because it would be all over by the time we got to England.
Leslie Hudd, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canadian Army
After three months of training in England in the winter mud of Salisbury Plain, the Canadians began to move to France. The first unit to enter the trenches, in January 1915, was “Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry” (named after the daughter of the governor general). It was a special battalion made up mainly of ex-British regulars and Canadian veterans of the Boer War, which had been raised and equipped with $100,000 donated by Captain A. Hamilton Gault, a Montreal millionaire and militia officer who had fought in South Africa. (Gault served in France with the battalion himself, and eventually lost a leg in battle.) But even the large number of experienced soldiers in the PPCLI were at a loss for how to deal with this very new kind of battlefield, with its barbed wire and machine guns and crushing artillery barrages.
Of course you have read about the trenches in the papers. Well, our battalion has had four spells in them. Three or four days is usual. No charges made or repulsed, but we have had a number of casualties.…
Our trenches are from 75 to 120 yards from the German trenches. Wise lads, too. The first night in, they called out to knowif we were Canadians. How are things on Hastings Street? They also sang an English song or two.
The English Tommies that were here last fall are the ones who had it bad. We have come to trenches all prepared and drained, and in some places, paved with boards, brush, galvanized iron or even bricks. There are dugouts built and floored with straw.
The cooking and smoking, with a little would-be witticisms with Fritzies across the way … while away the tedious hours.
Jairus Maus (Paris, Ontario) Enlisted in PPCLI in Vancouver, January 1915
At the Forks of the Grand
, vol. 2
During the wettest English winter in living memory, the Canadian troops had already got rid of some of the more useless bits of equipment foisted on them by the political patronage that infested the Canadian militia organization (such as boots that disintegrated in the wet). But when the battalions of the First Canadian Division began to cross over to France in mid-February, their men were still carrying the Ross rifles that were Sam Hughes’s pride and joy. He’d been warned by the British army that they were excellent target rifles but useless for sustained fire in combat—but nobody could ever tell Sam Hughes anything. The Canadians first saw heavy fighting at Ypres in March:
How the Germans knew a bunch of green Canadians were going to take over this part of the Ypres front, I don’t know, but … they opened up on us, and that was our first baptism of fire as a unit.
So the troops on our right, the British, put up this rapid fire with their Lee-Enfields. They
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