Most of my life I’ve had a strong interest in military history. From books to documentaries, I consume as much as I can. But I recently had a realization, a few, actually.
Much of what I’ve read and watched over the years has been focused on the Second World War and other wars since then. But next to none of it has been on the First World War, or, its original, and perhaps more fitting name, the Great War.
Many years ago I read Pierre Burton’s book, Vimy, about the April 9-12, 1917 battle that has become one of Canada’s founding stories. I also have read All Quiet on the Western Front, from the German foot soldiers’ perspective of the war. But that’s been about it. I need to change that. So it was with some vigour I consumed the audiobook A World Undone by G.J. Meyer over the last month.
It’s a comprehensive tome covering the war from the angles of all participants, starting from the shot heard around the world, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austria-Hungary Empire, to the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918. Most importantly, it covered all angles of the war, not just the Western Front, which, for most Canadians, was the sum and total of the now-largely forgotten war. It went into detail on the Eastern Front as well as Gallipoli in Turkey and the numerous Balkan fronts.
Throughout all of this I listened intently for mentions of Canada’s contribution. In a 28 hour audiobook, it only warranted a sparse few minutes. Vimy Ridge, the battle of such significance to Canada, was hardly touched upon. It was part of the larger Battle of Arras.
Only in the second last chapter of 37 chapters did Canada’s contribution to the war effort garner much attention.
Meyer wrote, “The push at Arras, with Canadian troops in the lead, was another success for the Allies. They broke through everywhere they attacked. The defence seemed so porous that (German Gen. Erich) Ludendorf agreed, at last, to a pullback to the Hindenburg Line, to the surrender of everything taken in the year’s offences. His decision came too late, however, for an orderly retreat to be possible. On the British part of the front alone, during the two weeks of the withdrawal, the Germans lost 115,000 men, 470 guns and stores they had no means of replacing.
“The war had come down to a rapid succession of hard Allied blows that Germans could only do their diminishing best to contain. A disproportionately large number of these blows were being delivered by the ANZAC and Canadian Corps, which, after four years of hard fighting, remained so potent that Haig turned to them repeatedly as a battering ram with which to smash the German line. A strong case can be made that these were the best fighters of the war, their divisions the most effective on either side. This was made possible, partly (Australian Lt.-Gen.) John Monash, and partly by his Canadian counterpart, Lt.-Gen. Sir Arthur Currie.”
At Vimy, Canada’s four divisions plus one British division totalled 170,000 men. It was the first time Canada’s four divisions were put together, fighting as one in the Canadian Corps. Prior to that our troops fought piecemeal within the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) like any other BEF unit. To Canadians, this was a big deal.
The sad reality is, it wasn’t, in comparison to the size and scope of the overall war. If no one was shooting at you, i.e. 10 miles behind the front line, a man could easily walk the breadth of the Canadian portion of the front in an afternoon. This, in a front with trenches that extended from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps. Our four divisions were a rounding error in the broader order of battle, which saw, at times, more than 150 divisions on either side of the Western Front, never mind the Eastern Front or the various Balkan fronts. For Canada, it was an enormous effort, but in the meat grinder of the Great War, it didn’t amount to a lot.
Only in the past year of a lifetime of studying military history have I come to the realization of what these various wars truly were: waste. Men and material, from the moment they see action, either are degraded to the point of destruction, or nearly so. Once committed, all they become is waste in one way or another.
My late grandfather, born three weeks after the Battle of Vimy Ridge, used to ask me, “Do you want to stop a bullet?”
It’s only now, in my 40s, do I realize how profound a statement that was. For Canada and the BEF, 3,598 men stopped a bullet or artillery shell at Vimy, another 7,004 were wounded.
We won the battle, and the war, but the world wasted a generation in the process.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News He can be reached at [email protected].
