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The Second Battle of Ypres

Historian Warren Sommer recounts how Canadian troops saved the Allies from a major defeat 10 years ago this week
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The Canadian War Memorials Fund Canadian commissioned war artist Richard Jack to paint this impression of Canadian troops at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915.

Warren Sommer

Times Contributor

A century has passed since Canadians took up arms during the First World War.

Save for Confederation itself, the conflict was perhaps the most significant event in the country’s history.

Yet, as a recent nation-wide survey revealed, today’s Canadians know very little about it.

While most have heard of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, fewer than half can name the war of which it formed a part.

Although Vimy has played an important role in developing a sense of Canadian identity, its significance to the war itself can easily be overstated.

Other engagements, such as the Second Battle of Ypres, and “The One Hundred Days” that saw the bloody conflict finally come to an end, were arguably far more crucial to the war’s final outcome.

When war was declared against Germany in August 1914, thousands of Canadians volunteered for active service.

After its initial training at Valcartier, Quebec, the newly formed First Canadian Division was sent to England’s Salisbury Plain for further instruction.

Most of the men who had enlisted from Langley had been assigned to the Division’s 7th (British Columbia) Infantry Battalion.

By February 1915, the Canadians were deemed ready for their first encounter with the enemy. After landing in France, the Canadians spent their first few weeks in trenches in a relatively quiet sector of the front.

In April, however, the Division was redeployed to the Ypres Salient, a bulge in the Allied line that encompassed those few square miles of Belgian territory that the Germans had failed to occupy.

Even then the Salient was becoming synonymous with death.

Soldiers approaching the once magnificent but  increasingly ruinous city were constantly assailed by enemy shelling and machine gun fire.

The nauseating smell of corruption that pervaded the air was a constant reminder of the thousands of men who had already died in the city’s defence; their mutilated, decaying bodies still lay unburied in No Man’s Land months after they had fallen.

The Canadians’ first few days in the Salient were fairly uneventful, the troops having spent much of their time east of the city, constructing barbed-wire entanglements and repairing damaged trenches, all the while keeping their heads low to avoid enemy shelling and small arms fire.

On the afternoon of April 22, the Canadians’ routine was abruptly interrupted.

A massive German artillery barrage initially directed at the French trenches toward their left soon swung round to fall on the Canadians as well.

Soldiers who happened to glance upward observed that the sun had acquired an eerie, greenish tint.

Those who looked across No Man’s Land were puzzled to see a yellowish-green cloud slowly making its way toward the Allied trenches.

Then, it seemed, all hell broke loose.

Canadian soldiers in reserve were among the first to realize the full extent of what was happening. A trickle of terrified French and Algerian troops fleeing from the front lines quickly became a flood, many of the retreating soldiers vomited, gasped for air, and clutched their throats as they cried, “Gaz, gaz!.”

Even the least bilingual of the Canadians quickly realized the gravity of the situation.

The French colonial troops had borne the brunt of the German gas attack (the first in history), the blinding, suffocating fumes having eaten away at their lungs and forced them to abandon their positions.

In a matter of minutes a great gap was rent in the Allied lines, leaving the Canadians susceptible to encirclement and the city of Ypres and the Channel ports beyond, open to capture.

Amid the confusion, a few Canadian officers took action, moving their troops to block the German advance. For several days the battle ebbed and flowed as the vastly outnumbered Canadians resisted the enemy onslaught, thereby providing fresh British troops time to move forward to re-establish the Allied defenses.

On the morning of April 24, the Germans released their poisonous gas once again, this time directly on the Canadians.

Men covered their faces with urine-soaked handkerchiefs in a desperate effort to neutralize its effects.

Machine gun bullets “fell like spray from a watering can,” as the Canadian casualties began, quite literally, to pile up.

North Otter farmer Valentine Llewelyn Gratrex Davies was but one of the hundreds of men of the 7th Battalion lost to the action.

His friend, Private Carter, put on a brave face as his wrote to Davies’ brother: “He died like so many other of our boys — like a soldier and a gentleman, doing his duty and at his post to the last. It was a noble death, and a great consolation to all who loved him and will miss him.”

Despite appalling losses, the Allied line had held.

In the weeks that followed, praise for the Canadian contribution was near-universal. London’s Evening Standard proclaimed that the Canadians had “shown themselves to be of the finest fighting stuff in the world.”

The British commander-in-chief observed that the Canadians’ “conduct was magnificent and . . . saved the situation.”

Yet close to 2,000 Canadians had been killed in a matter of days. Over twice that number had been wounded or taken prisoner.

The loss of so many of their comrades had been a rude awakening for the young Canadian army.

No amount of official adulation could relieve its suffering or comfort the families of those who had perished.

•••

Canadian troops ‘turned adversity into triumph’

– A joint statement by Erin O’Toole, Minister of Veterans Affairs, and Jason Kenney, Minister of National Defence.

“The Second Battle of Ypres marks a pivotal moment in Canadian military history. The bravery and sacrifice shown at Ypres forged the reputation of courageous and capable Canadian soldiers that continues to the present day.

“Ypres was a battle of ‘firsts’ for Canadians: it marked the Canadian Expeditionary Force’s first significant engagement of the First World War. Canadians also faced the horror of the first chlorine gas attacks, but they also turned adversity into triumph at Kitcheners’ Wood which marked Canada’s first victory on European soil.

“More than 2,000 Canadians gave their lives and 4,000 were wounded during the first four days of a battle that came to symbolize the shocking loss of life—the terrible cost—of the Great War on a young nation.

“Treating the wounded and dying at Ypres inspired Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae to pen the poem In Flanders Fields which, to this day, urges us to remember this sacrifice and hold the torch of remembrance high.

“Today, and every day, we honour those brave Canadians who fought—and died—during the Second Battle of Ypres.

“We hold high that torch of remembrance for all who have sacrificed in the struggle for enduring peace and freedom throughout the world.”