Major Canadian Battles

• Creeping Barrage: a slow creeping military attack

  • Fire continuously at positions just in front of the advancing troops
•  Arthur Currie: the commander who was knighted at the battle of Vimy Ridge because of his leadership
• Battle of Ypres - April 22 1915

  • The first battle involving Canada
  • Germans used Mustard Gas (chlorine gas) for the first time
  • Used cloths soaked in urine to combat before gas masks were invented
  • Shellfire keeps enemy troops in their bunkers and trenches and creates a cloud of smoke and dirt in the air in order to obscure the advance
• ypres contd-

  • The first time the first Canadian division had seen action and the only force to hold the line in the face of a strong attack against the enemy
  • Marked Canadians as inventive and ingenious soldiers
  • Canadians lost 6000 men but successfully stopped the Germans from moving south into France
  • The battle where “In Flanders Fields” was written by Dr. John McCrae 
• Battle of the Somme - July 1 1916

  • First battle where tanks were used by the allies
  • Canada was successful against the Germans but suffered 24,000 casualties
  • Half a million men were lost in 3 months
  • The bloodiest battle of WW1
• Battle of Vimy Ridge - April 9th 1917

  • Canadian planned assault on the impenetrable German fortified ridge
  • First battle where the Canadian corps was lead by Canadian officers
  • Made sure everyone knew where they were going and they practiced behind the lines
  • Included new ways of spotting and destroying enemy artillery, a new bomb that destroyed barbed wire, and the creeping barrage
  • Canada gained their unofficial nation identity
• Battle of Passchendaele - October 26 1917

  • Allied offensive against the Germans
  • Intended to gain dryer land on higher ground for the winter
  • Gen. Haig forced Currie to lead his troops into battle against his wishes
  • Conditions were swamp like- soldiers often sunk into mud up to their waists
  • Heavy rains made it worse, guns and artillery disappeared and many soldiers had drowned (?)
  • Overall gain was just over 6 km of farmland and the cost of 460 000 casualties on both sides