Canadian Brutality in WW1

[bayonetbrant]

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war

British war correspondent Philip Gibbs had a front row seat on four years of Western Front fighting. He would single out the Canadians as having been particularly obsessed with killing Germans, calling their war a kind of vendetta. “The Canadians fought the Germans with a long, enduring, terrible, skilful patience,” he wrote after the war.

The English poet Robert Graves was less charitable. In his 1929 bestseller Good-Bye to All That, he wrote “the troops that had the worst reputation for acts of violence against prisoners were the Canadians.”

Germans developed a special contempt for the Canadian Corps, seeing them as unpredictable savages. In the final weeks of the war, Canadian Fred Hamilton would describe being singled out for a beating by a German colonel after he was taken prisoner. “I don’t care for the English, Scotch, French, Australians or Belgians but damn you Canadians, you take no prisoners and you kill our wounded,” the colonel told him.

Most of the primary sources cited in this article were obtained from books or journal articles written by Tim Cook, a Canadian War Museum historian who has been particularly adept at unearthing a full and unromanticized picture of Canada’s First World War army.

However, Cook is clear that modern Canadians cannot condemn the sometimes shocking behaviour of their First World War soldiers without knowing the stress and chaos of battle. “I’m not passing judgment on these guys 90 years later,” he told Postmedia in a 2006 interview. But he did chastise prior historians for sanitizing the brutality of Canada’s war. The message is particularly resonant given that so many veterans themselves were open to having it known and remembered.

Throughout the war, stretches of the Western Front observed an unofficial “live and let live” policy between Germans and their French or British enemies. By mutual agreement, both sides agreed not to attack the other unless ordered — and would even schedule truces for meals and bathroom breaks.

There are very few recorded instances of this ever happening with Canadians. As Canadian Corps commander Arthur Currie would often boast after the war, his troops prided themselves on killing the enemy wherever and whenever they could.

“We tried to make his life miserable,” Currie said in 1919.

In one particularly cruel episode, Canadians even exploited the trust of Germans who had apparently become accustomed to fraternizing with allied units. Lieutenant Louis Keene described the practice of lobbing tins of corned beef into a neighbouring German trench. When the Canadians started hearing happy shouts of “More! Give us more!” they then let loose with an armload of grenades.

For those Germans unlucky enough to face a trench full of Canadians, one of their greatest fears was nighttime raids on unsuspecting enemy trenches.

Trench raids were the First World War at its most brutal. Hand to hand fighting in crowded, darkened chaos. Whole dugouts of sleeping Germans burned or buried alive by tossed grenades. Terrified defenders mercilessly stabbed or machine-gunned as they fled for the rear.

“There were screams of German soldiers, terror-shaken by the flash of light in their eyes, and black faces above them, and bayonets already red with blood,” wrote Phillip Gibbs of one Canadian raid. “It was butcher’s work, quick and skilful … Thirty Germans were killed before the Canadians went back.”

At the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, visitors can see a case filled with the fearsome homemade weapons that Canadians trench raiders plunged into the faces and chests of their enemy: Meat cleavers, push daggers and spiked clubs.

While all Commonwealth units were encouraged to conduct trench raids, Canadians were widely regarded as trench raiding’s most enthusiastic practitioners and innovators.

They wore thick rubber gloves and blackened their faces for maximum stealth. They crafted homemade pipe bombs and grenade catapults to increase their killing power. They continued raiding even while other colonial units abandoned the practice. “Raids are not worth the cost, none of the survivors want to go anymore,” was how one Australian officer described their abandonment of the practice.

As their skills grew, Canadian trench raiders were eventually able to penetrate up to one kilometre behind enemy lines, dealing surprise death to Germans who had every reason to believe they were safe from enemy bayonets. In the days before the attack on Vimy Ridge, trench raids of up to 900 men were hurled at enemy lines on a nightly basis. These were essentially mini-battles, except instead of holding ground attackers were merely expected to sow death, chaos and then disappear.

More than 42,000 Germans would survive their encounter with the Canadian Corps and live out the Great War as prisoners. But as soldiers’ accounts began to trickle behind the lines, it became clear that untold numbers of Germans attempt to surrender to Canadians were being met only with bayonets or bullets.

more at the link

[Barthheart]

Fucking straight. 

[bbmike]

The White House staff felt the same way about them in 1812.

[Barthheart]

 

[Sir Slash]

But the Old Geezers at the local RV Park seem like such nice people.    With their golf carts and lily white legs shining in the sun. I just wish they could speak English.