Words At Large

The Somme: July to November 1916
Within hours of going over the top, tens of thousands of the more than 750,000 troops – including more than 700 Newfoundlanders – lay dead and wounded within yards of their own trenches. Weeks of bloody and frustrating fighting followed. The Canadians joined the offensive in mid-September. Thanks to their use of the creeping barrage, produced by hundreds of artillery pieces, on September 15, the Canadians were able to quickly capture German positions near Courcellete. On November 11, they took Regina trench: a week later they took Desire Trench. The Canadians lost more than twenty-four thousand me on the Somme

Vimy: April 9, 1917
The first great Allied victory, the taking of Vimy Ridge by the Canadians, was the product of long and careful preparation. Maps were given to small units and every man practiced on a mock-up of the ridge. In the weeks leading up to the attack, one million shells landed on the ridge, pulverizing the German trenches, while sappers dug “subways” towards the ridge, allowing thousands of soldiers to enter the battle halfway into no-man’s land, where they joined thousands of others advancing behind a creeping barrage. The Canadians moved so quickly that in some places they were in the enemy trenches before the Germans could come out of their bomb shelters. More than thirteen thousand Canadians fell while taking the ridge that neither the French nor the British had been able to conquer.

Passchendaele: August to November 1917
The mud of Passchendaele, which swallowed men, horses and cannon, horrified Lieutenant-General Arthur Currie when he first saw the battlefield near Ypres. The Canadians attacked on November 26, after a four-day fusillade that destroyed German barbed wire. Central to the Canadians’ success was their use of small until tactics that allowed them to attack German strong points by flanking them. Passchendaele also saw the Canadians use the newly developed “bite and hold” tactic—the taking of positions that could be quickly fortified (and supported by guns in the rear) against the inevitable German counterattack. Currie had predicted sixteen thousand casualties; the actual number was 15,654.

The Last 100 Days: August – November 1918
In the last hundred days of the First World War, the 100,000 man-strong Canadian Corps defeated forty-seven German Divisions and advanced eighty-five miles -- the largest advance of any Allied army. The commander of the German Army, General Eric Ludendorff called the Canadian victory at Amiens: “The blackest day of the German Army.” After taking Amiens, the Canadians broke through German defences at the Drocourt-Queant Line, the Canal du Nord, Cambrai, and
Valenciennes, before ending the war at Mons on November 11. Over the hundred days, the Canadians lost almost 46,000 men.

Learn more about Canada’s involvement in the Second Battle of Ypres.
Watch a trailer for Nathan Greenfield’s Baptism of Fire.