Nova Scotia at war, 1914-1919 by Brian Douglas Tennyson

Author:Brian Douglas Tennyson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing
Published: 2017-11-17T18:20:12+00:00

It undoubtedly did not hurt the Unionist cause either that the Canadian Corps was engaged in the horrendous fighting at Passchendaele during the election campaign. This battle was part of what was officially known as the Third Battle of Ypres but was actually a series of battles in which the British sought control of the ridges south and east of Ypres. The Germans were pushed back to Passchendaele Ridge, where Eric Bent earned the Victoria Cross at Polygon Wood. Bent was born in Halifax but had moved to Scotland as a child with his parents. When the war broke out, he joined the Leicestershire Regiment and was commanding its 9th Battalion as a temporary lieutenant colonel when he was killed on October 1 while leading his men. A few days later, the Canadian and Australian Corps were brought in to capture both the ridge and the village. Their starting point was virtually the same line the Canadians had defended more than two years earlier, before the first gas attacks at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915.

Arthur Currie questioned the wisdom of the assault, calculating that it would cost 16,000 casualties for an objective that was not very important. Haig—who had not even sent any of his staff officers to evaluate the situation—overruled him, of course. Currie, therefore, planned carefully as he had done at Vimy Ridge, making sure that he had ample supplies and enough artillery support, and preparing his troops thoroughly.

Even so, Will Bird of Amherst, who was there with the 42nd Battalion, complained that “the whole affair was cockeyed. We were new in the sector. None knew the terrain. None knew what defences the German had or his strength. The place after dark was a swampy wilderness with nothing to use as a guide.”51 And it rained continuously. John Angus MacNeil of Inverness later recalled that “it wasn’t raining—it was pouring down,” and “more people drowned in the shell-holes than were killed by the bullets.”52 John William MacVicar of Glace Bay later recalled that “we were in bog to our knees, and the machine gun fire and shelling was something awful.”53

Part of the horror at Passchendaele was that the Germans used mustard gas for the first time. Of the three forms of poison gas used during the war—chlorine, phosgene, and mustard—it was the most insidious and excruciating because it caused terrible pain and could take as long as a month to kill its victims. Elkanah Clements of Yarmouth told his father that the 85th “walked through nearly three miles [five kilometres] of gas with our gas masks on,” and “I…got some gas in my lungs…and it left me with a bad cough and I have lost quite a few pounds since.”54 Clements was soon sent home, developed tuberculosis in his damaged lungs, and died in the Kentville sanatorium in July 1918.

After two weeks of ferocious fighting, Passchendaele was taken on November 6. James Peter Robertson earned his Victoria Cross that day. Born in Stellarton, he had moved with his family to Medicine Hat, Alberta, where he was a miner.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.