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Western Front
The Canadian Corps did its first serious training on the muddy, rainy
and cold flatlands of Salisbury Plain in England during the winter of 1914. It
would turn out to be ideal conditions to prepare the green troops for the Western
Front which was often a septic mudbath. The Canadians had their baptism by fire
at Neuve-Chapelle in the spring of 1915. The battle lasted only two days and
was preceded by the most intense bombardment the war had seen to date. But in
48 hours the Allies made a mere two-kilometre advance at the cost of more than
a thousand lives.
In mid-April, the newly baptized Canadians were sent to Ypres and were plunged
into the Ypres "salient" a dangerous bulge into enemy territory. It
was here the Germans first unleashed chlorine gas on the Western Front. The gas
attack, which followed fierce bombardment by the Germans, took a terrible toll
on the Algerians just to the left side of the Canadians. It punched a 6.4 kilometre
gap in
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Victory celebrations
at the corner of
For Canadians in 1918 the end of the war was a far more
joyous celebration than the cheering crowds that greeted its start. This crowd,
at King and Yonge Streets in Toronto, is looking forward to the end of privations
and the return of the well and wounded who had made it through the Great War. |
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