bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1989), pp. 42–44
Spearhead To Victory: Canada And the
Great War by Daniel G. Dancocks, Hurtig
Publishers, Edmonton, 1987, 240 pp.
$29.95
Modern Canadians are uncomfortable with the thought that a warrior spirit lurks in their history and heritage. The Canadian shock trooper, armed to the teeth, bayonet fixed, equipped with a sometime “no-prisoners approach” to the grim business of war, striking fear and foreboding into the hearts of enemy soldiers is an alien image.
Canadians are peacemakers or peace-mongers as George Ignatieff’s memoirs would have us be. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize; Canadian soldiers man the ramparts of peacekeeping in Afghanistan, Cyprus, the Middle East; our retired generals and admirals denounce the Government’s program to re-equip the forces; politicians weep when they talk of peace.
In 1918, this self-flattery would have struck Canadians and German troops in the trenches as bizarre. The Canadian Corps, one hundred thousand strong, victors at Vimy and Passenchedaele in 1917, was the elite formation of British forces in France and Flanders. Sir Douglas Haig, British commander, regarded the Canadians as “matchless attacking troops.” The arrival of the Corps in any sector alerted the German troops in the trenches opposite to impending attack. By 1918 in this tired old war, the Canadians had become masters of the battlefield. The Corps was commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie, sometime real estate promoter and part-time militia officer from Victoria.
Spearhead To Victory is Dancocks’ third book on Canada and the Great War. The first was Currie, a biography of the Canadian Corps commander (bout de papier, Winter, 1986) and the second, Legacy of Valour, the Canadians at Passenchedaele (bout de papier, Fall, 1987).
At the beginning of 1918, trench warfare stalemate reigned on the Western Front. Although the Americans had joined the Allies, their strength in material and manpower would take many more months to make an impact. The exhaustion of the British and French forces after the bloody battles of 1917 made them ripe for attack by the German army reinforced by a million troops released by the Russian collapse in the east. Great events were imminent; the end of trench warfare was nigh.
In a last gamble to win, the Germans launched three massive attacks in March, April and May, in an operation labelled the “Kaiserschlacht,” the Kaiser’s battle. At tremendous cost in casualties and considerable loss in territory, the allied lines held. After nearly four years of war, the German army lacked the strength for the final push; it could only hold on; its days were numbered
Spearhead To Victory begins with the preparations for the great Allied counterattack at Amiens on August 8, 1918. The Canadians would lead, flanked by the Australians. To conceal the arrival of the Corps in the Amiens sector, two Canadian battalions were sent north to Flanders with instructions to maintain a lively chatter to entertain and mislead enemy listening posts.
“God help the Bosche,” Currie remarked as he watched his troops march into battle. In three days, the Corps advanced ten miles taking over 5,000 prisoners. August 8th was labelled “the black day of the German army in the history of the war” by Ludendorff, the German commander. The Kaiser drew the obvious conclusion, telling Ludendorff that “the war could no longer be won.”
Beginning with Amiens through to the German surrender in November, the Canadian Corps was the sharp end of continuous Allied attacks which broke the enemy lines and brought the Great Warto a close. Three weeks after Amiens, the Canadian Corps attacked at Arras, towards Cambrai breaking the toughest part of the last major German defence system. A future Governor General, Georges Vanier, then a major with the 22nd battalion (the famous Van-doos) lost his leg in that battle. By November 9, the Corps had liberated Mons in Belgium. At 10.58 on November 11, two minutes before peace, Private George Price of the 28th battalion became the last Canadian killed in the Great War.
In the last chapter of Spearhead To Victory, Dancocks traces the story of the patient diplomacy of Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden to win a voice for Canada in the conduct of the war and the negotiation of peace. Beginning in 1915, Borden, the unprepossessing, dour, Halifax lawyer made it abundantly clear to London that there would a price for the sacrifice and contribution of Canada to the war effort. The steadily increasing war effort of Canada and the other Dominions made it impossible to rely on their continued support without providing them with a direct role in the conduct of the war and the preparations for peace.
By 1917, Sir Robert had led his New Zealand, South African and Australian counterparts to seats in the Imperial War Council. When an inter-allied conference in December 1918 denied separate representation to the Dominions at the Versailles Peace Conference, Borden told Lloyd George that he had not come to Europe “to take part in any light comedy.” The point was won.
Several more battles were fought by Borden and the other Dominion leaders to gain separate signatures on the Peace Treaty and separate memberships in the League of Nations and the ILO.
In 1914, the British Declaration of War automatically brought Canada into the war. In 1919, Borden, enraged at a proposed British-American guarantee to France against future German aggression informed Lloyd George that the “submission of such a proposal to our Parliament would … be wholly futile. Indeed, I am convinced that it would be bitterly resented not only by Parliament but by the vast majority of the Canadian people.” It could no longer be assumed that Canada would follow where Britain led.
The Great War was the crucible of the 20th century. It ended three empires. It made the earth tremble. The seeds for another more destructive war were laid. Dancocks reports the prescient remark of General Andy McNaughton, a future Canadian army commander on the announcement of armistice, “Bloody fools… that means that we shall have to do it all over again in another 25 years.”
It is as commonplace as untrue to say that wars do not change anything. Wars change a great deal. Sixty thousand Canadians perished in France and Flanders in the Great War. While it brought young lives and old empires to a violent end, Canada the nation emerged.
Dancocks is an accomplished historian of Canada in the Great War. It is to be hoped that he will continue. Many battles fought and won by the Canadian Corps and diplomatic struggles fought and won by Borden deserve his sensitive, readable and informative treatment.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1989), pp. 42–44. Read the rest of this issue →
