WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.940 Welcome. Grab a comfortable seat and just settle 00:00:03.940 --> 00:00:07.339 in because the journey we are taking you on today 00:00:07.339 --> 00:00:10.179 requires a bit of mental bracing, I think. Yeah, 00:00:10.199 --> 00:00:12.759 it really does. We are pulling apart a custom 00:00:12.759 --> 00:00:15.859 tailored deep dive just for you, focusing on 00:00:15.859 --> 00:00:20.059 a set of incredibly dense. unfiltered excerpts 00:00:20.059 --> 00:00:22.460 from the Wikipedia article on the Canadian Corps 00:00:22.460 --> 00:00:24.460 during the First World War. Right. And I want 00:00:24.460 --> 00:00:27.140 to set the tone right off the bat here. If your 00:00:27.140 --> 00:00:29.100 understanding of the Western front is built on 00:00:29.100 --> 00:00:32.340 those standard narratives of, you know, static 00:00:32.340 --> 00:00:35.460 trenches, blind attrition, and homegrown farm 00:00:35.460 --> 00:00:37.759 boys just doing their duty for king and country. 00:00:37.780 --> 00:00:40.700 A romanticized version, basically. Exactly. You 00:00:40.700 --> 00:00:43.619 need to prepare to have an entire framework dismantled. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:46.280 We aren't here to look at the sanitized or mythologized 00:00:46.280 --> 00:00:48.479 version of history. I for not. We are looking 00:00:48.479 --> 00:00:51.719 at the actual mechanics of how a relatively small 00:00:51.719 --> 00:00:54.920 colonial volunteer force arrived in the mud of 00:00:54.920 --> 00:00:57.219 Europe and systematically transformed into something 00:00:57.219 --> 00:01:00.340 entirely different. It is a truly profound piece 00:01:00.340 --> 00:01:03.490 of documentation we're looking at. When you examine 00:01:03.490 --> 00:01:06.730 the actual structural and tactical history of 00:01:06.730 --> 00:01:10.230 the Corps, you are forced to look past the memorials 00:01:10.230 --> 00:01:12.810 and the poetry. The popular memory of the First 00:01:12.810 --> 00:01:14.629 World War, especially for those of us who study 00:01:14.629 --> 00:01:17.269 military history, it often gets flattened into 00:01:17.269 --> 00:01:21.090 this narrative of tragic, almost senseless slaughter. 00:01:21.310 --> 00:01:24.250 You know, lions led by donkeys, as the old phrase 00:01:24.250 --> 00:01:26.150 goes. Who knew someone knows that phrase? Exactly. 00:01:26.519 --> 00:01:29.180 But the reality of the Canadian core, as laid 00:01:29.180 --> 00:01:31.420 out in these records, reveals a dynamic that 00:01:31.420 --> 00:01:35.620 is far more complex, highly engineered, and to 00:01:35.620 --> 00:01:38.079 be completely honest, chillingly ruthless. Chilling 00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:40.640 is the right word. We are looking at an organization 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:43.420 that friend and foe alike eventually considered 00:01:43.420 --> 00:01:45.780 one of the most elite and terrifying military 00:01:45.780 --> 00:01:48.549 formations of the early 20th century. OK, let's 00:01:48.549 --> 00:01:50.349 unpack this. Let's start with the physical assembly 00:01:50.349 --> 00:01:53.310 of this machine, because even the foundational 00:01:53.310 --> 00:01:56.209 timeline of how the Corps came together defies 00:01:56.209 --> 00:01:58.230 some of the assumptions we make about how armies 00:01:58.230 --> 00:02:00.290 are built in a crisis. It really does. You look 00:02:00.290 --> 00:02:03.450 at the late summer of 1915, September specifically, 00:02:04.129 --> 00:02:06.390 the Second Canadian Division arrives in France. 00:02:06.670 --> 00:02:09.129 They join up with the First Division, and suddenly 00:02:09.129 --> 00:02:11.590 the Canadian Corps officially exists. And from 00:02:11.590 --> 00:02:14.409 there, the expansion is just rapid. Right. By 00:02:14.409 --> 00:02:16.530 December of that same year, the Third Division 00:02:16.530 --> 00:02:19.590 is brought into the fold, and by August of 1916, 00:02:19.849 --> 00:02:21.900 the Fourth Division is on the line. And that 00:02:21.900 --> 00:02:24.400 rapid expansion speaks to the sheer industrial 00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:26.460 scale of the conflict they were stepping into. 00:02:27.099 --> 00:02:29.080 Anyone familiar with the realities of the Western 00:02:29.080 --> 00:02:31.719 Front knows that a military division is not a 00:02:31.719 --> 00:02:34.460 static entity. No, definitely not. It is a living, 00:02:34.740 --> 00:02:36.960 breathing, and constantly bleeding organism. 00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:39.919 At full strength, a World War I infantry division 00:02:39.919 --> 00:02:44.460 was roughly 18 ,000 to 20 ,000 men. Wow. So by 00:02:44.460 --> 00:02:46.819 the time you have four divisions plus all the 00:02:46.819 --> 00:02:49.159 necessary logistical and artillery and medical 00:02:49.159 --> 00:02:51.810 support troops, you are looking at a massive 00:02:51.810 --> 00:02:54.889 footprint. Over 100 ,000 men essentially functioning 00:02:54.889 --> 00:02:57.310 as a self -contained city that only exists to 00:02:57.310 --> 00:02:59.770 wage war. Which makes the whole situation with 00:02:59.770 --> 00:03:02.250 the 5th Division so telling, I think. The records 00:03:02.250 --> 00:03:04.490 show they actually started organizing a 5th Canadian 00:03:04.490 --> 00:03:07.389 Division in February of 1917 in Britain. Right. 00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:10.539 It never really sees the light of day as an independent 00:03:10.539 --> 00:03:12.620 fighting force, does it? No, it doesn't. And 00:03:12.620 --> 00:03:15.580 that is a direct reflection of the brutal mathematics 00:03:15.580 --> 00:03:17.580 of attrition on the Western Front. The sheer 00:03:17.580 --> 00:03:20.879 casualty rates. Exactly. By February of 1918, 00:03:21.080 --> 00:03:23.439 the command structure looked at those rates, 00:03:23.699 --> 00:03:26.599 the thousands of men being ground up in places 00:03:26.599 --> 00:03:29.379 like Passchendaele and the Somme, and realized 00:03:29.379 --> 00:03:32.259 they simply could not sustain a fifth independent 00:03:32.259 --> 00:03:35.159 division. Manpower just wasn't there. No. So 00:03:35.159 --> 00:03:37.819 they made the pragmatic, albeit great decision 00:03:37.819 --> 00:03:41.039 to break it up entirely. The men who had trained 00:03:41.039 --> 00:03:43.699 together for a year were dispersed, fed piecemeal 00:03:43.699 --> 00:03:46.460 into the meat grinder to reinforce the depleted 00:03:46.460 --> 00:03:49.460 ranks of the existing four divisions. It's a 00:03:49.460 --> 00:03:51.819 stark reminder of the manpower crisis that constantly 00:03:51.819 --> 00:03:54.280 haunted the Allied command. But when you actually 00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:56.360 break down the demographics of that manpower... 00:03:56.360 --> 00:03:57.780 This is where it gets really surprising. Yeah, 00:03:57.780 --> 00:03:59.439 when you look at who was actually filling those 00:03:59.439 --> 00:04:01.319 ranks and absorbing those casualties, you hit 00:04:01.319 --> 00:04:04.159 the first major historical illusion. When you 00:04:04.159 --> 00:04:06.900 hear Canadian Corps, the automatic mental image 00:04:06.900 --> 00:04:09.900 is a force composed entirely of homegrown Canadians. 00:04:10.280 --> 00:04:13.960 Right. You picture ranchers from Alberta, lumberjacks 00:04:13.960 --> 00:04:16.459 from British Columbia, maybe clerks from Toronto. 00:04:16.959 --> 00:04:19.939 Exactly. But the demographic data flips that 00:04:19.939 --> 00:04:22.160 completely upside down. What's fascinating here 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:25.220 is that the force credited with forging the modern 00:04:25.220 --> 00:04:27.439 Canadian national identity on the battlefield 00:04:27.439 --> 00:04:30.879 was, for the vast majority of the war, not majority 00:04:30.879 --> 00:04:33.350 Canadian born. Chew on that for a second. The 00:04:33.350 --> 00:04:35.589 demographic reality is that the majority of the 00:04:35.589 --> 00:04:37.629 soldiers in the Canadian Corps were British -born 00:04:37.629 --> 00:04:40.209 immigrants. It wasn't until the final stretches 00:04:40.209 --> 00:04:42.810 of the conflict, as the war dragged into its 00:04:42.810 --> 00:04:45.769 twilight, that the influx of Canadian -born enlistees 00:04:45.769 --> 00:04:49.529 finally tipped the scales to a narrow 51 % majority. 00:04:49.990 --> 00:04:52.269 You really have to pause and let that sink in. 00:04:52.689 --> 00:04:55.370 For years. The troops charging over the top under 00:04:55.370 --> 00:04:57.850 the Canadian banner were predominantly guys who 00:04:57.850 --> 00:05:00.050 had been born in England, Scotland, Wales, or 00:05:00.050 --> 00:05:02.430 Ireland. They had emigrated to Canada in the 00:05:02.430 --> 00:05:04.930 years leading up to the war, seeking a new life. 00:05:05.149 --> 00:05:07.949 land or economic opportunity. It fundamentally 00:05:07.949 --> 00:05:10.790 challenges the romanticized, perhaps slightly 00:05:10.790 --> 00:05:13.949 naive narrative of a purely indigenous army marching 00:05:13.949 --> 00:05:16.910 off to define its nationhood from day one. Instead, 00:05:16.910 --> 00:05:19.949 you are looking at a force that was deeply intrinsically 00:05:19.949 --> 00:05:22.310 tied to the British Empire at its inception. 00:05:23.069 --> 00:05:25.569 These were men who felt a profound immediate 00:05:25.569 --> 00:05:28.550 connection to Britain's call to arms in 1914 00:05:28.550 --> 00:05:31.970 because Britain was literally their homeland. 00:05:32.310 --> 00:05:34.670 When the empire declared war, they weren't fighting 00:05:34.670 --> 00:05:37.069 for a distant monarch. They were fighting for 00:05:37.069 --> 00:05:39.589 the towns they grew up in. Exactly. And that 00:05:39.589 --> 00:05:42.470 initial demographic makeup completely changes 00:05:42.470 --> 00:05:45.620 how you view the cultural evolution of the Corps. 00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:48.420 You don't have a pre -existing Canadian identity 00:05:48.420 --> 00:05:51.160 being exported to Europe. You have a massive 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:53.819 group of recent immigrants thrown together with 00:05:53.819 --> 00:05:56.579 native -born Canadians. Sharing dugouts, sharing 00:05:56.579 --> 00:05:58.899 rations, and suffering through immense trauma. 00:05:59.279 --> 00:06:01.180 Right. The unique Canadian identity of the Corps 00:06:01.180 --> 00:06:03.060 wasn't brought over on the troop ships. It was 00:06:03.060 --> 00:06:05.600 forged under artillery fire. Precisely. The mud 00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:07.639 of Flanders and the chalk of the Somme acted 00:06:07.639 --> 00:06:10.259 as a crucible. The shared experience, extreme 00:06:10.259 --> 00:06:12.220 adversity and their shared frustration with some 00:06:12.220 --> 00:06:14.279 of the broader British high command decisions 00:06:14.279 --> 00:06:17.839 gradually forged a distinct cohesive identity 00:06:17.839 --> 00:06:20.399 that superseded their birthplaces. They went 00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:22.819 in as subjects of the empire and came out as 00:06:22.819 --> 00:06:25.420 soldiers of a highly specific military fraternity. 00:06:25.600 --> 00:06:28.339 Yes, a highly bonded fraternity. Which brings 00:06:28.339 --> 00:06:30.720 us to another massive historical myth regarding 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:33.240 manpower. And that's the issue of the draft. 00:06:33.819 --> 00:06:36.480 If you study Canadian political history, The 00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:40.279 conscription crisis of 1917 is an absolute earthquake. 00:06:40.680 --> 00:06:43.040 A total political disaster back home. It was 00:06:43.040 --> 00:06:45.620 a crisis that pitted English Canada against French 00:06:45.620 --> 00:06:49.560 Canada, sparked riots in Quebec, alienated farmers 00:06:49.560 --> 00:06:52.439 who needed their sons for the harvest, and basically 00:06:52.439 --> 00:06:54.959 threatened to tear the entire domestic political 00:06:54.959 --> 00:06:57.889 fabric apart. Yes it did. Given the sheer volume 00:06:57.889 --> 00:07:00.329 of that political explosion, it's incredibly 00:07:00.329 --> 00:07:02.509 easy to assume that conscripts must have made 00:07:02.509 --> 00:07:04.930 up a massive portion of the fighting force in 00:07:04.930 --> 00:07:07.370 the final years of the war. It is a very logical 00:07:07.370 --> 00:07:09.410 assumption to make if you only look at the home 00:07:09.410 --> 00:07:11.709 front politics. But when you look at the deployment 00:07:11.709 --> 00:07:14.889 statistics, the battlefield reality was radically 00:07:14.889 --> 00:07:16.730 different. The numbers tell a different story. 00:07:16.790 --> 00:07:19.350 They really do. The documentation demonstrates 00:07:19.350 --> 00:07:22.050 that the Canadian Corps was overwhelmingly a 00:07:22.050 --> 00:07:24.410 volunteer force for almost the entirety of its 00:07:24.410 --> 00:07:26.379 existence. Almost everyone chose to be there. 00:07:27.019 --> 00:07:29.459 Exactly. The political machinery of conscription 00:07:29.459 --> 00:07:32.899 moved so slowly and the logistical pipeline across 00:07:32.899 --> 00:07:36.279 the Atlantic was so long that the actual impact 00:07:36.279 --> 00:07:39.360 of drafted men on the front lines was negligible 00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:42.600 until the very end. The raw numbers really put 00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:44.959 this into perspective for you. Over the course 00:07:44.959 --> 00:07:50.480 of the entire war, and eventual 418 ,052 Canadian 00:07:50.480 --> 00:07:52.939 soldiers were sent overseas. A massive number. 00:07:52.959 --> 00:07:57.019 But out of that massive number, only 24 ,132 00:07:57.019 --> 00:07:59.540 conscripts actually made it to the trenches in 00:07:59.540 --> 00:08:02.399 France before the armistice was signed on November 00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:05.639 11th, 1918. That is a staggering revelation for 00:08:05.639 --> 00:08:07.540 anyone trying to understand the psychology of 00:08:07.540 --> 00:08:09.620 this army. You are talking about roughly five 00:08:09.620 --> 00:08:12.379 or six percent of the total overseas force being 00:08:12.379 --> 00:08:14.500 comprised of conscripts who actually saw the 00:08:14.500 --> 00:08:17.230 theater of war. Just a tiny What that means is 00:08:17.230 --> 00:08:19.569 that the ferocious fighting, the endurance through 00:08:19.569 --> 00:08:21.829 the worst winters of the century, the terrifying 00:08:21.829 --> 00:08:24.209 reputation this corps built, it was all executed 00:08:24.209 --> 00:08:26.470 almost entirely by men who had actively raised 00:08:26.470 --> 00:08:28.459 their hand and chosen to be there. And not just 00:08:28.459 --> 00:08:30.579 chosen to be there in 1914 when everyone thought 00:08:30.579 --> 00:08:33.100 it would be a grand adventure over by Christmas, 00:08:33.779 --> 00:08:37.039 men were still volunteering in 1915 and 1916. 00:08:37.320 --> 00:08:39.759 Long after the illusion was shattered. Exactly. 00:08:39.980 --> 00:08:41.659 When the casualty lists were being published 00:08:41.659 --> 00:08:43.860 in every newspaper in the country, they knew 00:08:43.860 --> 00:08:45.899 exactly what the Western Front was. They knew 00:08:45.899 --> 00:08:48.519 about the gas, the machine guns, the artillery 00:08:48.519 --> 00:08:50.879 that could vaporize a platoon, and they still 00:08:50.879 --> 00:08:53.610 stepped forward. That volunteer culture is the 00:08:53.610 --> 00:08:55.549 bedrock upon which everything else is built. 00:08:56.230 --> 00:08:58.409 When you have an organization where almost every 00:08:58.409 --> 00:09:00.649 man has raised his hand to be there, you have 00:09:00.649 --> 00:09:03.570 a baseline level of motivation and peer accountability 00:09:03.570 --> 00:09:06.750 that is incredibly difficult to replicate in 00:09:06.750 --> 00:09:09.330 a drafted army. It creates a tightly wound micro 00:09:09.330 --> 00:09:12.309 society. Fiercely loyal. But having a trench 00:09:12.309 --> 00:09:15.549 full of aggressive, motivated volunteers doesn't 00:09:15.549 --> 00:09:17.610 mean much if the generals commanding them are 00:09:17.610 --> 00:09:20.620 still fighting the last war. The history of World 00:09:20.620 --> 00:09:23.399 War I is littered with brave men being thrown 00:09:23.399 --> 00:09:25.679 away by commanders who didn't understand the 00:09:25.679 --> 00:09:27.840 modern battlefield. That is the tragedy of the 00:09:27.840 --> 00:09:30.200 war. So who was actually calling the shots for 00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:32.480 these guys? Because the evolution of their command 00:09:32.480 --> 00:09:35.379 structure is just as complex as their demographics. 00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:38.179 Initially, the Canadian Corps was entirely under 00:09:38.179 --> 00:09:40.470 British oversight. And given the demographics 00:09:40.470 --> 00:09:43.389 we just discussed, majority British -born troops 00:09:43.389 --> 00:09:45.769 and Canada's legal status as a dominion within 00:09:45.769 --> 00:09:48.669 the empire, that made perfect logical sense at 00:09:48.669 --> 00:09:50.889 the time. Who were the first commanders? Their 00:09:50.889 --> 00:09:53.710 first commander was Lieutenant General Sir E 00:09:53.710 --> 00:09:57.330 .A .H. Alderson, a British career officer who 00:09:57.330 --> 00:10:00.929 led them until 1916. He was succeeded by another 00:10:00.929 --> 00:10:03.610 British officer, Lieutenant General Sir Julian 00:10:03.610 --> 00:10:06.470 Bing, who commanded the corps through 1916 and 00:10:06.470 --> 00:10:10.009 into 1917. But it wasn't a frictionless relationship, 00:10:10.029 --> 00:10:12.230 was it? You look at the political landscape back 00:10:12.230 --> 00:10:14.909 in Ottawa, and there was massive tension regarding 00:10:14.909 --> 00:10:17.070 how these truths were being used. Very much so. 00:10:17.370 --> 00:10:19.490 The Canadian government was deeply paranoid about 00:10:19.490 --> 00:10:21.389 their divisions being broken up and scattered 00:10:21.389 --> 00:10:23.830 across the entire British Expeditionary Force, 00:10:24.350 --> 00:10:27.029 used merely to plug holes in the line. They demanded 00:10:27.029 --> 00:10:29.990 that the Corps fight together as a single unified 00:10:29.990 --> 00:10:32.830 national entity. That demand for cohesion was 00:10:32.830 --> 00:10:35.309 central to the political project of the war for 00:10:35.309 --> 00:10:37.740 the Canadian government. Prime Minister Robert 00:10:37.740 --> 00:10:40.779 Borden and his cabinet saw the military contribution 00:10:40.779 --> 00:10:43.620 as a way to assert Canadian sovereignty on the 00:10:43.620 --> 00:10:48.960 world stage. constantly collided with the practical 00:10:48.960 --> 00:10:51.639 realities of the battlefield. Exactly. And nowhere 00:10:51.639 --> 00:10:54.399 was that tension more perfectly encapsulated 00:10:54.399 --> 00:10:57.019 than in the Ross rifle controversy. Right, the 00:10:57.019 --> 00:10:59.399 Ross rifle. This is one of those technological 00:10:59.399 --> 00:11:02.159 disasters that becomes a massive political symbol. 00:11:02.840 --> 00:11:05.019 The Canadian government had insisted, out of 00:11:05.019 --> 00:11:07.279 a sense of national pride and domestic economic 00:11:07.279 --> 00:11:10.019 interest, on equipping its infantry with the 00:11:10.019 --> 00:11:12.399 Canadian -made Ross rifle instead of the standard 00:11:12.399 --> 00:11:15.100 British Lee -Inn field. And the Ross rifle was, 00:11:15.179 --> 00:11:17.759 under pristine conditions, a phenomenal weapon. 00:11:18.059 --> 00:11:20.440 It was essentially a highly accurate sporting 00:11:20.440 --> 00:11:23.500 and target rifle. It had tight tolerances and 00:11:23.500 --> 00:11:26.240 a complex straight pull bolt mechanism. A clean 00:11:26.240 --> 00:11:29.100 shooting range in Ottawa. It was arguably superior. 00:11:29.379 --> 00:11:32.240 Yes. But the Western Front was not a clean shooting 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:35.519 range. It was a hellscape of mud, grit and poorly 00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:38.440 manufactured wartime ammunition. And those tight 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:41.259 tolerances became a death sentence. The mud would 00:11:41.259 --> 00:11:44.039 get into the bolt mechanism or the slightly oversized 00:11:44.039 --> 00:11:46.379 British ammunition would expand when fired and 00:11:46.379 --> 00:11:49.570 the rifle would jam. solid. You had men in the 00:11:49.570 --> 00:11:52.190 middle of terrifying German assaults desperately 00:11:52.190 --> 00:11:55.230 trying to kick their rifle bolts open with the 00:11:55.230 --> 00:11:57.190 heels of their boots because they were seized 00:11:57.190 --> 00:12:00.159 shut. It was an absolute catastrophe. Canadian 00:12:00.159 --> 00:12:02.720 soldiers began throwing their Ross rifles away 00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:05.340 in the middle of battles, actively scavenging 00:12:05.340 --> 00:12:07.580 Lee -Enfields from the bodies of dead British 00:12:07.580 --> 00:12:09.740 soldiers just to have a weapon that would fire 00:12:09.740 --> 00:12:11.480 when they pulled the trigger. Just to survive. 00:12:12.120 --> 00:12:14.480 Right. General Alderson, to his credit, recognized 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:16.980 the disaster and pushed to have the Ross replaced. 00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:19.799 But that infuriated the Canadian politicians 00:12:19.799 --> 00:12:22.220 who had championed it. The political fallout 00:12:22.220 --> 00:12:24.440 from issues like this created an unstoppable 00:12:24.440 --> 00:12:27.840 momentum for more Canadian autonomy. The politicians 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:30.600 wanted their own men making the decisions. So 00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:33.299 you have this incredibly fraught dynamic. The 00:12:33.299 --> 00:12:35.639 Canadians are taking massive casualties. The 00:12:35.639 --> 00:12:38.019 politicians back home are screaming for a unified 00:12:38.019 --> 00:12:40.600 command and national independence. And the British 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:42.779 high command is trying to manage a coalition 00:12:42.779 --> 00:12:46.679 war. That's a powder keg. Finally, in 1917, the 00:12:46.679 --> 00:12:49.879 pressure valve releases. General Bing gets promoted 00:12:49.879 --> 00:12:52.279 up to command the British Third Army, and he 00:12:52.279 --> 00:12:55.870 is succeeded by General Sir Arthur Curry. Curry 00:12:55.870 --> 00:12:57.830 had been commanding the 1st Canadian Division 00:12:57.830 --> 00:13:00.570 and he makes history by becoming the very first 00:13:00.570 --> 00:13:03.210 Canadian to command the entire Canadian Corps. 00:13:03.669 --> 00:13:05.570 Arthur Curry is one of the most fascinating figures 00:13:05.570 --> 00:13:08.639 of the war. He wasn't a British aristocrat or 00:13:08.639 --> 00:13:11.240 a career soldier born into the military elite. 00:13:11.480 --> 00:13:13.240 No, he was a real estate developer, right? Yes, 00:13:13.460 --> 00:13:15.700 a former schoolteacher and real estate developer 00:13:15.700 --> 00:13:18.139 from Victoria, British Columbia, who had come 00:13:18.139 --> 00:13:20.960 up through the militia system. When he took command, 00:13:21.100 --> 00:13:23.519 he found himself walking an incredibly dangerous 00:13:23.519 --> 00:13:25.940 political tightrope. Because the expectation 00:13:25.940 --> 00:13:29.850 back home was absolute. The moments a Canadian 00:13:29.850 --> 00:13:32.669 is put in charge, the political machine in Ottawa 00:13:32.669 --> 00:13:35.549 wants a total purge. They want it to be a purely 00:13:35.549 --> 00:13:37.970 Canadian show. Canadian commanders, Canadian 00:13:37.970 --> 00:13:41.009 staff officers, Canadian logistics. Exactly. 00:13:41.389 --> 00:13:43.429 The political desire for national independence 00:13:43.429 --> 00:13:47.009 was deafening. But Curry was, above all things, 00:13:47.330 --> 00:13:50.009 deeply pragmatic and utterly committed to the 00:13:50.009 --> 00:13:52.269 survival of his men. He knew what he was up against. 00:13:52.490 --> 00:13:55.049 He looked at the undeniable battlefield reality. 00:13:55.250 --> 00:13:58.860 He was fighting a massive industrial highly technical 00:13:58.860 --> 00:14:01.840 war. To execute the kind of operations required 00:14:01.840 --> 00:14:04.820 on the Western Front, he needed the vast resources, 00:14:05.080 --> 00:14:07.820 the institutional memory, and the highly specialized 00:14:07.820 --> 00:14:10.120 expertise of the British military machine. You 00:14:10.120 --> 00:14:12.179 couldn't just throw that away? No, he could not 00:14:12.179 --> 00:14:14.580 afford to sever those ties just to satisfy a 00:14:14.580 --> 00:14:16.480 political talking point back home. So how does 00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:18.679 he manage that? Because keeping British guys 00:14:18.679 --> 00:14:20.820 in charge while Canadian volunteers are the ones 00:14:20.820 --> 00:14:22.960 dying in the mud seems like a great way to get 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:25.190 yourself fired by the Prime Minister. He managed 00:14:25.190 --> 00:14:27.929 it through sheer stubbornness and by producing 00:14:27.929 --> 00:14:32.289 undeniable results. Curry explicitly refused 00:14:32.289 --> 00:14:34.750 to embrace nationalism for nationalism's sake. 00:14:35.169 --> 00:14:37.490 If a British officer was doing a highly effective 00:14:37.490 --> 00:14:40.649 job, Curry flatly refused to relieve him of duty 00:14:40.649 --> 00:14:42.990 just to slot a less experienced Canadian into 00:14:42.990 --> 00:14:45.269 the role. It was a strict meritocracy. Absolutely. 00:14:45.570 --> 00:14:48.009 He retained successful British officers in crucial 00:14:48.009 --> 00:14:50.470 positions until fully trained battle -tested 00:14:50.470 --> 00:14:52.409 Canadians were actually ready to replace them 00:14:52.409 --> 00:14:54.779 without a drop in operational quality. And when 00:14:54.779 --> 00:14:56.379 you look closely at the command structure, even 00:14:56.379 --> 00:14:58.580 deep into 1917, when the Corps is supposedly 00:14:58.580 --> 00:15:01.600 this independent national symbol, the reality 00:15:01.600 --> 00:15:04.820 behind the curtain is very much a hybrid operation. 00:15:05.019 --> 00:15:07.539 Yes, it is. The records show that while the frontline 00:15:07.539 --> 00:15:09.700 leadership was shifting, Canadians were commanding 00:15:09.700 --> 00:15:13.279 seven of the 12 infantry brigades by 1917. The 00:15:13.279 --> 00:15:15.720 logistical and organizational brains of the outfit 00:15:15.720 --> 00:15:18.840 were still heavily British. The staff officers 00:15:18.840 --> 00:15:21.820 are the unsung and often unloved architects of 00:15:21.820 --> 00:15:24.500 any army. They're the men who figure out how 00:15:24.500 --> 00:15:26.960 to move a hundred thousand men in the dark, how 00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:29.240 to supply them with millions of rounds of ammunition, 00:15:29.659 --> 00:15:31.960 how to coordinate the delivery of thousands of 00:15:31.960 --> 00:15:34.720 tons of rations, and most importantly, how to 00:15:34.720 --> 00:15:37.500 orchestrate the complex artillery fire plans. 00:15:37.779 --> 00:15:40.399 The real heavy lifting of war. The data shows 00:15:40.399 --> 00:15:43.019 that British regulars remain the staff officers 00:15:43.019 --> 00:15:45.779 of the divisions, and British officers held two 00:15:45.779 --> 00:15:47.879 -thirds of the senior appointments across the 00:15:47.879 --> 00:15:49.940 infantry, artillery, and corps headquarters. 00:15:50.580 --> 00:15:52.720 Out of the absolute highest tier of command, 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:55.360 only four of the most senior appointments were 00:15:55.360 --> 00:15:57.539 held by Canadians. And we really need to emphasize 00:15:57.539 --> 00:15:59.539 who some of these British officers were, because 00:15:59.539 --> 00:16:01.659 they weren't just random bureaucrats sent over 00:16:01.659 --> 00:16:04.940 from London. The records specifically name men 00:16:04.940 --> 00:16:07.580 like Alan Brooke and William Ironside. Yes. For 00:16:07.580 --> 00:16:10.059 anyone who knows their world II history. Those 00:16:10.059 --> 00:16:12.980 names carry massive weight. Absolutely. Alan 00:16:12.980 --> 00:16:15.759 Brooke was a major of the Royal Artillery who 00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:18.720 was instrumental in planning the highly complex 00:16:18.720 --> 00:16:21.539 barrages for battles like Vimy Ridge. William 00:16:21.539 --> 00:16:24.139 Ironside was a brilliant staff officer managing 00:16:24.139 --> 00:16:26.759 logistics and intelligence. Both of these men 00:16:26.759 --> 00:16:30.519 survived the war? Both survive, rise to the absolute 00:16:30.519 --> 00:16:33.460 pinnacle of the military establishment, and eventually 00:16:33.460 --> 00:16:36.730 become field marshals. Alan Brooke would go on 00:16:36.730 --> 00:16:39.409 to be the chief of the Imperial General Staff, 00:16:40.309 --> 00:16:42.230 essentially Winston Churchill's top military 00:16:42.230 --> 00:16:45.049 advisor during the Second World War. It's incredible 00:16:45.049 --> 00:16:47.919 to think about. You have these Future titans 00:16:47.919 --> 00:16:50.600 of the British military basically cutting their 00:16:50.600 --> 00:16:52.899 teeth, refining their tactical doctrines, and 00:16:52.899 --> 00:16:54.679 perfecting the art of industrialized warfare 00:16:54.679 --> 00:16:57.600 by organizing the artillery and logistics for 00:16:57.600 --> 00:17:00.159 the Canadian frontline troops. It creates a phenomenally 00:17:00.159 --> 00:17:02.799 lethal blend. You have the aggressive, tightly 00:17:02.799 --> 00:17:05.000 bonded Canadian infantry hitting the trenches 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:07.180 with a viciousness born of their volunteer culture, 00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:09.960 and they're being backed up by the absolute top 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:13.200 -tier elite British logistical planning. It is 00:17:13.200 --> 00:17:15.460 entirely reasonable to extrapolate that this 00:17:15.460 --> 00:17:18.799 pragmatic hybrid command structure was the true 00:17:18.799 --> 00:17:21.779 secret to the Canadian core effectiveness. Curry 00:17:21.779 --> 00:17:24.660 recognized that by blending the frontline tenacity 00:17:24.660 --> 00:17:27.240 of his infantry with the institutional mathematical 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:30.019 expertise of the British staff officers, he could 00:17:30.019 --> 00:17:32.720 build a military machine that was far greater 00:17:32.720 --> 00:17:36.500 than the sum of its parts. Competence was prioritized 00:17:36.500 --> 00:17:39.079 above all else. And because they prioritized 00:17:39.079 --> 00:17:41.819 competence and actual battlefield effectiveness 00:17:41.819 --> 00:17:44.579 over over political optics, this command structure 00:17:44.579 --> 00:17:47.079 laid the groundwork for something that is truly 00:17:47.079 --> 00:17:49.599 revolutionary in the context of World War I. 00:17:50.220 --> 00:17:52.299 It completely changed how the Corps approached 00:17:52.299 --> 00:17:54.859 the very concept of warfare. A total paradigm 00:17:54.859 --> 00:17:56.880 shift. It didn't just fight. They learned how 00:17:56.880 --> 00:17:59.019 to fight better than almost anyone else. This 00:17:59.019 --> 00:18:01.180 is a crucial shift in perspective. You have to 00:18:01.180 --> 00:18:03.519 stop looking at the Corps as simply a larger 00:18:03.519 --> 00:18:05.539 group of men with rifles and start looking at 00:18:05.539 --> 00:18:08.599 them as a highly sophisticated, adaptive organization. 00:18:08.759 --> 00:18:11.279 Tell me about Godfrey's analysis. The records 00:18:11.279 --> 00:18:14.039 reference an analysis by the historian Godfroy 00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:17.660 from 2006, which argues that the Canadian Expeditionary 00:18:17.660 --> 00:18:20.640 Force worked ceaselessly to convert all of its 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:23.099 available resources, both political capital and 00:18:23.099 --> 00:18:25.799 physical material, into concentrated fighting 00:18:25.799 --> 00:18:28.119 power. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:18:28.819 --> 00:18:31.339 If you consume mainstream media about World War 00:18:31.339 --> 00:18:33.700 I, the cliché image is burned into your brain. 00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:37.069 A whistle blows. An officer with a pistol points 00:18:37.069 --> 00:18:40.710 forward and thousands of men walk slowly, mindlessly 00:18:40.710 --> 00:18:42.990 into the teeth of interlocking machine gun fire. 00:18:43.190 --> 00:18:45.910 The tragic walk to oblivion. And they do it day 00:18:45.910 --> 00:18:48.150 after day, year after year, because the generals 00:18:48.150 --> 00:18:50.730 sitting in comfortable chateaus miles behind 00:18:50.730 --> 00:18:53.789 the lines are too stubborn or too unimaginative 00:18:53.789 --> 00:18:56.569 to change their tactics. That is the enduring 00:18:56.569 --> 00:18:59.609 tragic myth of the First World War. And while 00:18:59.609 --> 00:19:02.029 there is certainly truth to the horrific blunders 00:19:02.029 --> 00:19:05.210 of early battles like the Somme in 1916, it is 00:19:05.210 --> 00:19:08.109 a massive oversimplification of how the war actually 00:19:08.109 --> 00:19:10.549 evolved. The Canadian Corps, particularly under 00:19:10.549 --> 00:19:13.630 Curry's leadership, operated in stark contrast 00:19:13.630 --> 00:19:17.210 to that stereotype of rigid, unimaginative slaughter. 00:19:17.500 --> 00:19:21.299 They developed a unique, almost obsessive organizational 00:19:21.299 --> 00:19:24.859 commitment to exploiting every single opportunity 00:19:24.859 --> 00:19:27.640 for learning. It wasn't just a top -down dictation 00:19:27.640 --> 00:19:29.420 where a general reads a book and tells the men 00:19:29.420 --> 00:19:32.480 what to do. It was a core -wide activity. It 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:35.359 permeated every level of the organization, from 00:19:35.359 --> 00:19:37.720 Arthur Curry at headquarters right down to the 00:19:37.720 --> 00:19:39.559 private soldier freezing in a listening post 00:19:39.559 --> 00:19:42.849 in no man's land. The way they operated is highly 00:19:42.849 --> 00:19:45.430 analogous to a modern tech company constantly 00:19:45.430 --> 00:19:47.829 iterating on a software product based on user 00:19:47.829 --> 00:19:49.970 feedback. But the stakes are infinitely higher. 00:19:50.289 --> 00:19:53.410 Exactly. In their case, the product was survival, 00:19:53.609 --> 00:19:56.190 the objective was victory, and the feedback loop 00:19:56.190 --> 00:19:59.890 was, quite literally, written in blood. The documentation 00:19:59.890 --> 00:20:02.990 details a very specific methodical process. They 00:20:02.990 --> 00:20:05.170 would test a new doctrine, a new piece of equipment, 00:20:05.230 --> 00:20:07.690 or a new tactical formation in a limited engagement. 00:20:08.069 --> 00:20:10.309 Perhaps a small trench raid or a minor skirm 00:20:10.309 --> 00:20:13.380 - over a ruined farmhouse. And the debriefing 00:20:13.380 --> 00:20:16.619 process was rigorous. If a squad went out and 00:20:16.619 --> 00:20:19.079 tried a new way of cutting barbed wire or a new 00:20:19.079 --> 00:20:21.059 method of coordinating a Lewis machine gun with 00:20:21.059 --> 00:20:23.759 a rifle section, they didn't just pat themselves 00:20:23.759 --> 00:20:26.319 on the back if they survived. They analyzed it. 00:20:26.420 --> 00:20:28.940 Thoroughly. If it proved effectual, they would 00:20:28.940 --> 00:20:31.259 formally document it, refine it, and scale it 00:20:31.259 --> 00:20:33.839 up. The staff officers we talked about earlier 00:20:33.839 --> 00:20:36.180 would take those frontline lessons and integrate 00:20:36.180 --> 00:20:38.460 them into the battle plans for entire divisions. 00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:41.380 And the corollary to that is equally important. 00:20:41.460 --> 00:20:44.809 If it felled, it was ruthlessly discarded. If 00:20:44.809 --> 00:20:47.250 a tactic was ineffective, or if it cost too many 00:20:47.250 --> 00:20:50.130 lives without a proportional tactical gain, they 00:20:50.130 --> 00:20:52.630 did not stubbornly repeat it out of a sense of 00:20:52.630 --> 00:20:55.390 tradition. They adapted. Following every engagement, 00:20:55.549 --> 00:20:57.470 they recorded the lessons learned, and then, 00:20:57.589 --> 00:20:59.809 crucially, they actively disseminated that new 00:20:59.809 --> 00:21:01.930 knowledge across all the other units in the Corps. 00:21:02.670 --> 00:21:04.849 A lesson learned by the 1st Division on a Tuesday 00:21:04.849 --> 00:21:07.210 was being taught to the 4th Division by Friday. 00:21:07.450 --> 00:21:09.910 They were constantly updating their own operating 00:21:09.910 --> 00:21:13.069 system. And the results of this corporate -style 00:21:13.279 --> 00:21:15.900 iterative learning process weren't just theoretical. 00:21:16.579 --> 00:21:18.920 They led directly to some of the most famous, 00:21:19.420 --> 00:21:22.380 pivotal, and complex victories of the entire 00:21:22.380 --> 00:21:25.720 war. Operations that required unimaginable coordination. 00:21:26.099 --> 00:21:29.940 Exactly. Take Vimy Ridge in April 1917, for example. 00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:33.259 Vimy Ridge is the quintessential example of this 00:21:33.259 --> 00:21:36.200 doctrine in action. Arthur Curry referred to 00:21:36.200 --> 00:21:39.609 it as the grandest day the Corps ever had. It 00:21:39.609 --> 00:21:42.130 wasn't just a victory of bravery, it was a masterpiece 00:21:42.130 --> 00:21:44.730 of scientific warfare. He used the creeping barrage, 00:21:44.869 --> 00:21:47.769 right? Yes. They relied heavily on highly advanced 00:21:47.769 --> 00:21:50.430 artillery tactics, specifically the creeping 00:21:50.430 --> 00:21:53.349 barrage. This was a tactic where a curtain of 00:21:53.349 --> 00:21:55.369 artillery fire was dropped just ahead of the 00:21:55.369 --> 00:21:58.509 advancing infantry, moving forward at a meticulously 00:21:58.509 --> 00:22:01.829 calculated rate, say 100 yards every three minutes. 00:22:01.910 --> 00:22:04.180 That requires incredible timing. The infantry 00:22:04.180 --> 00:22:06.579 had to walk dangerously close behind this wall 00:22:06.579 --> 00:22:09.079 of exploding shells using the dust and destruction 00:22:09.079 --> 00:22:11.819 as cover to jump into the German trenches before 00:22:11.819 --> 00:22:13.920 the defenders could emerge from their deep dugouts. 00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:16.940 And to make that work, the level of communication 00:22:16.940 --> 00:22:19.579 and trust had to be absolute. And they didn't 00:22:19.579 --> 00:22:22.539 just trust the officers. They gave ordinary enlisted 00:22:22.539 --> 00:22:25.920 soldiers detailed maps and specific terrain objectives. 00:22:26.180 --> 00:22:28.359 That was highly unusual at the time. Prior to 00:22:28.359 --> 00:22:31.319 VME, if an officer was killed, the attack often 00:22:31.319 --> 00:22:33.039 stalled because the men didn't know where to 00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:35.720 go. At Vimy, because of this learning doctrine, 00:22:36.380 --> 00:22:39.220 every private knew the broader plan. If the lieutenant 00:22:39.220 --> 00:22:42.059 went down, the sergeant took over. If the sergeant 00:22:42.059 --> 00:22:44.480 went down, a corporal knew exactly which machine 00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:47.259 -gun nest needed to be flanked. That decentralization 00:22:47.259 --> 00:22:49.480 of knowledge is a hallmark of a mature learning 00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:52.160 organization. And this process culminated in 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:54.940 the summer of 1918, during what became the final 00:22:54.940 --> 00:22:57.740 decisive phase of the war. The Battle of Almia. 00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:01.339 August 8th, 1918. This is the moment the machine 00:23:01.339 --> 00:23:03.700 operates at absolute peak efficiency. A master 00:23:03.700 --> 00:23:06.680 class in combined arms. The Canadian Corps, alongside 00:23:06.680 --> 00:23:10.059 the Australian Corps, spearheaded a massive combined 00:23:10.059 --> 00:23:13.279 arms offensive. They utilized tanks, aircraft, 00:23:13.900 --> 00:23:15.980 sophisticated artillery sound ranging to wipe 00:23:15.980 --> 00:23:19.079 out German guns, and highly mobile infantry tactics. 00:23:19.480 --> 00:23:22.019 And they hit the German lines so hard, so fast, 00:23:22.140 --> 00:23:24.960 and so deeply that the psychological impact was 00:23:24.960 --> 00:23:28.099 devastating. The success at Amiens was so profound 00:23:28.099 --> 00:23:30.640 that it broke the will of the German High Command. 00:23:31.339 --> 00:23:33.819 General Erich Ludendorff, the effective supreme 00:23:33.819 --> 00:23:36.299 commander of the German military, famously recorded 00:23:36.299 --> 00:23:38.880 August 8th as the Black Day of the German Army. 00:23:39.059 --> 00:23:41.480 The Black Day. When the absolute leader of the 00:23:41.480 --> 00:23:44.380 enemy forces officially designates the specific 00:23:44.380 --> 00:23:47.019 day you attack them as the darkest, most hopeless 00:23:47.019 --> 00:23:49.480 day in his army's history, there is no greater 00:23:49.480 --> 00:23:51.619 validation of the Canadian tactical doctrine. 00:23:52.140 --> 00:23:54.420 And they didn't stop. Amiens kicked off what 00:23:54.420 --> 00:23:57.579 is known as Canada's 100 days. From August 8th 00:23:57.579 --> 00:24:00.000 until the armistice on November 11th, the Canadian 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:02.640 Corps acted as the vanguard. the tip of the spear 00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:05.019 for the allied push driving relentlessly eastward 00:24:05.019 --> 00:24:07.359 crossing canals taking fortified towns and fighting 00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:09.799 all the way to mons belgium where the war ended 00:24:09.799 --> 00:24:13.539 it is an incredible trajectory of military evolution 00:24:13.539 --> 00:24:17.279 they figured out how to maneuver and win in an 00:24:17.279 --> 00:24:19.400 environment that had spent years proving that 00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:21.599 maneuver and victory were impossible they cracked 00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:24.460 the cup but and we must transition carefully 00:24:24.460 --> 00:24:26.180 here because we really need to emphasize this 00:24:26.180 --> 00:24:30.029 point This relentless adaptation, this total 00:24:30.029 --> 00:24:32.890 uncompromising commitment to effectiveness above 00:24:32.890 --> 00:24:37.349 all else, came with a profound moral cost. Yes, 00:24:37.349 --> 00:24:40.049 it did. It didn't just make them elite. It fostered 00:24:40.049 --> 00:24:42.390 a culture on the battlefield that was incredibly 00:24:42.390 --> 00:24:45.970 dark, inherently brutal, and utterly terrifying 00:24:45.970 --> 00:24:48.339 for anyone facing them. This is where we have 00:24:48.339 --> 00:24:50.660 to strip away the romance entirely. Because the 00:24:50.660 --> 00:24:52.519 innovation and the effectiveness we just praised 00:24:52.519 --> 00:24:55.220 were intrinsically linked to a level of ruthlessness 00:24:55.220 --> 00:24:57.579 that is deeply uncomfortable to acknowledge today. 00:24:57.680 --> 00:24:59.960 Very uncomfortable. The adaptive aggressive approach 00:24:59.960 --> 00:25:02.440 shaped a reputation that was widely recognized 00:25:02.440 --> 00:25:05.220 by the enemy. German commanders didn't just respect 00:25:05.220 --> 00:25:07.980 the Canadians, they actively feared them. They 00:25:07.980 --> 00:25:11.230 categorized them as elite shock troops. The intelligence 00:25:11.230 --> 00:25:13.690 reports from the German side are telling. The 00:25:13.690 --> 00:25:16.069 records note that German commanders would routinely 00:25:16.069 --> 00:25:18.490 monitor the movement of Canadian units behind 00:25:18.490 --> 00:25:21.670 the Allied lines. They tracked them like a storm 00:25:21.670 --> 00:25:23.869 coming. If their intelligence indicated that 00:25:23.869 --> 00:25:26.190 the Canadians had been secretly moved opposite 00:25:26.190 --> 00:25:28.549 a specific sector of the German trench line, 00:25:29.009 --> 00:25:31.470 the German command would instantly shift heavy 00:25:31.470 --> 00:25:34.509 reinforcements to that sector. They knew that 00:25:34.509 --> 00:25:36.710 the presence of the Canadian Corps meant an attack 00:25:36.710 --> 00:25:38.730 was imminent and they knew it was going to be 00:25:38.730 --> 00:25:41.509 characterized by extreme violence and tactical 00:25:41.509 --> 00:25:44.349 sophistication. And the Canadians deliberately 00:25:44.349 --> 00:25:47.309 cultivated that psychological terror. They didn't 00:25:47.309 --> 00:25:50.130 want the enemy to feel safe for a single second. 00:25:50.519 --> 00:25:53.079 For instance, the Canadian Corps practically 00:25:53.079 --> 00:25:55.859 pioneered and perfected the use of large -scale 00:25:55.859 --> 00:25:59.119 trench raids. For anyone unfamiliar, a trench 00:25:59.119 --> 00:26:01.339 raid wasn't a major offensive designed to capture 00:26:01.339 --> 00:26:03.539 territory or break the line. It was something 00:26:03.539 --> 00:26:06.369 much more intimate and terrifying. A trench raid 00:26:06.369 --> 00:26:09.809 was a localized, highly planned nighttime incursion 00:26:09.809 --> 00:26:12.769 into the enemy trenches. A specialized team of 00:26:12.769 --> 00:26:15.670 men would blacken their faces with burnt cork, 00:26:15.970 --> 00:26:19.009 strip off any identifying insignia, and arm themselves 00:26:19.009 --> 00:26:21.650 not with standard rifles, but with close quarters 00:26:21.650 --> 00:26:25.230 weapons. Revolvers, mills bombs, sharpened entrenching 00:26:25.230 --> 00:26:27.690 tools. Brass knuckles and homemade trench clubs 00:26:27.690 --> 00:26:30.490 studded with hobnails. They would silently slip 00:26:30.490 --> 00:26:32.930 across no man's land, cut through the barbed 00:26:32.930 --> 00:26:35.390 wire, and drop into the German trenches. in the 00:26:35.390 --> 00:26:38.130 dead of night. The objective was sheer terror. 00:26:38.269 --> 00:26:40.529 They would collapse dugouts, kill as many men 00:26:40.529 --> 00:26:42.690 as possible in frantic hand -to -hand combat 00:26:42.690 --> 00:26:44.970 in the dark, maybe grab a terrified prisoner 00:26:44.970 --> 00:26:47.289 or two for intelligence interrogation, and then 00:26:47.289 --> 00:26:49.490 vanish back into the mud before the German artillery 00:26:49.490 --> 00:26:51.990 could respond. It was pure psychological warfare. 00:26:52.210 --> 00:26:55.509 Imagine the toll of sitting in a freezing waterlogged 00:26:55.509 --> 00:26:57.710 trench, knowing that at any given moment, a team 00:26:57.710 --> 00:26:59.950 of heavily armed men might silently drop from 00:26:59.950 --> 00:27:02.789 the parapet, slaughter your entire squad, and 00:27:02.789 --> 00:27:06.140 disappear. to completely shatter the morale and 00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:08.740 the nervous systems of the enemy soldiers. But 00:27:08.740 --> 00:27:11.440 the historical documentation details tactics 00:27:11.440 --> 00:27:14.420 that go even further, crossing from aggressive 00:27:14.420 --> 00:27:17.500 infantry action into calculated psychological 00:27:17.500 --> 00:27:20.400 warfare and deceptions that are, quite frankly, 00:27:20.839 --> 00:27:24.059 genuinely horrifying. Truly grim. This raises 00:27:24.059 --> 00:27:26.759 an important question about how we reconcile 00:27:26.759 --> 00:27:29.359 the honorable history we want to remember with 00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:31.660 the deeply cruel history that actually happened. 00:27:31.700 --> 00:27:34.240 The text provides a specific anecdote from a 00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.119 book called A Canadian Who Went, detailing an 00:27:37.119 --> 00:27:40.339 incident near the Ypres salient. The Canadians 00:27:40.339 --> 00:27:43.279 in a particular sector realized that the German 00:27:43.279 --> 00:27:46.119 soldiers opposite them were suffering from severe 00:27:46.119 --> 00:27:48.259 supply shortages. They were essentially starving 00:27:48.259 --> 00:27:50.480 in their trenches. The desperation was palpable. 00:27:50.680 --> 00:27:53.099 So the Canadians began throwing tins of corned 00:27:53.099 --> 00:27:56.059 beef over the parapet across no man's land and 00:27:56.059 --> 00:27:57.980 into the German trenches. You have to picture 00:27:57.980 --> 00:28:01.069 the scene. Desperate, hungry men seeing high 00:28:01.069 --> 00:28:03.509 -quality rations landing at their feet, they 00:28:03.509 --> 00:28:05.690 would inevitably cluster around, perhaps calling 00:28:05.690 --> 00:28:07.950 out in gratitude thinking this was a moment of 00:28:07.950 --> 00:28:10.450 shared humanity or pity from their enemy. But 00:28:10.450 --> 00:28:13.009 it wasn't pity. They weaponized the food. Once 00:28:13.009 --> 00:28:15.230 they had thrown enough tins over to lure the 00:28:15.230 --> 00:28:17.069 starving German soldiers out of their dugouts 00:28:17.069 --> 00:28:18.869 and cluster them together in the open trench 00:28:18.869 --> 00:28:21.849 trying to grab the beef, the Canadians immediately 00:28:21.849 --> 00:28:24.170 followed up the food with a concentrated barrage 00:28:24.170 --> 00:28:28.569 of live primed grenades. The trap. The documentation 00:28:28.569 --> 00:28:31.930 literally refers to these packages as gifts from 00:28:31.930 --> 00:28:35.789 hell. It is a chilling sociopathic example of 00:28:35.789 --> 00:28:38.750 exploiting a basic human vulnerability hunger 00:28:38.750 --> 00:28:41.509 for a tactical kill. And this was not an isolated 00:28:41.509 --> 00:28:43.970 incident of dark deception. No, it wasn't. The 00:28:43.970 --> 00:28:46.309 records also discuss how they exploited the lingering 00:28:46.309 --> 00:28:48.890 cultural sentiment of the famous Christmas truces. 00:28:49.529 --> 00:28:52.069 We all know the stories from 1914, where British 00:28:52.069 --> 00:28:54.190 and German troops cautiously stepped into no 00:28:54.190 --> 00:28:56.930 man's land to exchange gifts and play football. 00:28:57.180 --> 00:29:00.140 The moment of peace in the madness. But by 1915, 00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:02.640 the Canadians had arrived and the mood had darkened 00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:05.559 considerably. When German soldiers called out 00:29:05.559 --> 00:29:07.980 seasonal greetings across the wire, hoping for 00:29:07.980 --> 00:29:10.480 a brief localized truce to perhaps bury their 00:29:10.480 --> 00:29:13.420 dead or just enjoy a moment of peace, the Canadians 00:29:13.420 --> 00:29:16.000 responded with concentrated, sustained machine 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:18.380 gun fire. I mean, how are we supposed to process 00:29:18.380 --> 00:29:21.410 that? If you look, the global stereotype of a 00:29:21.410 --> 00:29:23.950 Canadian today is someone who is overwhelmingly 00:29:23.950 --> 00:29:27.190 polite, apologetic, a diplomatic peacekeeper. 00:29:27.289 --> 00:29:30.269 Right. But the reality in the trenches of 1915 00:29:30.269 --> 00:29:33.910 and 1916 was that these men were uncompromising, 00:29:34.210 --> 00:29:37.069 hyper -violent shock troops who would completely, 00:29:37.069 --> 00:29:40.069 utterly abandon any pretense of Victorian fair 00:29:40.069 --> 00:29:42.400 play. To understand it, you have to understand 00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:44.500 what Victorian fair play meant and why it died 00:29:44.500 --> 00:29:47.599 in Flanders. Prior to World War I, the British 00:29:47.599 --> 00:29:50.119 military ethos was still heavily influenced by 00:29:50.119 --> 00:29:53.259 a romanticized, almost chivalric code of conduct. 00:29:53.599 --> 00:29:55.519 The idea that war was a gentleman's endeavor, 00:29:55.579 --> 00:29:57.839 that you fought cleanly, offered quarter and 00:29:57.839 --> 00:30:00.720 respected a defeated foe. But you cannot apply 00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:03.400 a 19th century gentleman's code to 20th century 00:30:03.400 --> 00:30:05.619 industrialized slaughter. Right, because chivalry 00:30:05.619 --> 00:30:07.799 doesn't exist when you are suffocating from chlorine 00:30:07.799 --> 00:30:10.819 gas or when a high explosive buries your best 00:30:10.819 --> 00:30:13.140 friend alive in a collapsed dugout. Exactly. 00:30:13.380 --> 00:30:15.839 You take a volunteer heavy composition man who 00:30:15.839 --> 00:30:18.200 actively chose to leave their homes, who are 00:30:18.200 --> 00:30:20.980 deeply fiercely bonded to one another, and you 00:30:20.980 --> 00:30:24.279 subject them to the absolute brutalizing, dehumanizing 00:30:24.279 --> 00:30:26.440 conditions of a war of attrition. It changes 00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:28.279 them fundamentally. They lived with corpses, 00:30:28.579 --> 00:30:31.660 they watched men drown in mud. In that environment, 00:30:31.819 --> 00:30:34.000 the traditional civilized rules of engagement 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:36.880 are stripped away incredibly quickly. The only 00:30:36.880 --> 00:30:39.400 morality that remains is the morality of survival. 00:30:39.759 --> 00:30:42.119 Keeping the men next to you alive and destroying 00:30:42.119 --> 00:30:45.019 the enemy by any means necessary, no matter how 00:30:45.019 --> 00:30:48.019 cruel. Which, naturally and inevitably, leads 00:30:48.019 --> 00:30:50.599 us to the darkest, most controversial aspect 00:30:50.599 --> 00:30:53.039 of the Canadian court legacy that these records 00:30:53.039 --> 00:30:55.619 force us to confront. The treatment of prisoners. 00:30:56.160 --> 00:30:58.519 Historian Tim Cook refers to this as the politics 00:30:58.519 --> 00:31:01.210 of surrender. It is a subject that was largely 00:31:01.210 --> 00:31:04.009 ignored, sanitized, or swept under the rug for 00:31:04.009 --> 00:31:06.569 decades in post -war Canadian historiography. 00:31:06.769 --> 00:31:09.690 It's the silent secret. But the unvarnished documentation 00:31:09.690 --> 00:31:13.029 is explicit. The execution of surrendering German 00:31:13.029 --> 00:31:15.549 soldiers was a widespread recognized practice 00:31:15.549 --> 00:31:18.529 among Canadian frontline troops. It is incredibly 00:31:18.529 --> 00:31:20.490 hard to hear, especially when we want to view 00:31:20.490 --> 00:31:23.349 these men purely as heroes. But we have to look 00:31:23.349 --> 00:31:26.490 objectively at the motivations the records provide. 00:31:26.680 --> 00:31:29.980 Why were they doing this? It wasn't simply blind, 00:31:29.980 --> 00:31:32.759 chaotic bloodlust. No, it wasn't. It was driven 00:31:32.759 --> 00:31:36.980 by a very complex, very grim mix of battlefield 00:31:36.980 --> 00:31:40.920 logistics, safety concerns, and pure visceral 00:31:40.920 --> 00:31:43.579 revenge. If we connect this to the bigger picture 00:31:43.579 --> 00:31:45.559 of how they fought, particularly during those 00:31:45.559 --> 00:31:47.779 nighttime trench raids we just discussed, you 00:31:47.779 --> 00:31:50.880 begin to see the dark logic of it. In the context 00:31:50.880 --> 00:31:53.759 of a raid, taking prisoners was a massive, often 00:31:53.759 --> 00:31:56.410 fatal, logistical liability. Walk us through 00:31:56.410 --> 00:31:58.289 that. Why is taking a prisoner so dangerous? 00:31:58.769 --> 00:32:01.029 Imagine you are part of a 10 -man raiding party. 00:32:01.450 --> 00:32:04.089 You are deep inside a labyrinth of enemy trenches 00:32:04.089 --> 00:32:06.329 in the pitch black. You have accomplished your 00:32:06.329 --> 00:32:08.930 objective, caused chaos, and now you have to 00:32:08.930 --> 00:32:11.250 navigate your way back out, slip through the 00:32:11.250 --> 00:32:13.269 gaps in the barbed wire, and cross hundreds of 00:32:13.269 --> 00:32:15.329 yards of no man's land without being illuminated 00:32:15.329 --> 00:32:18.049 by a flare and cut down by a machine gun. It's 00:32:18.049 --> 00:32:21.150 terrifying. If you try to escort three terrified, 00:32:21.450 --> 00:32:23.730 uncooperative German prisoners back with you, 00:32:24.009 --> 00:32:27.380 your speed is halved. And the noise. A prisoner 00:32:27.380 --> 00:32:30.839 might stumble or intentionally shout out to alert 00:32:30.839 --> 00:32:33.200 the German sentries in the next traverse. If 00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:36.019 a flare goes up and they try to run, your entire 00:32:36.019 --> 00:32:39.500 rating party is exposed. Precisely. In that hyperlethal 00:32:39.500 --> 00:32:42.380 environment, a prisoner is a threat to the survival 00:32:42.380 --> 00:32:45.609 of your unit. So the brutal, instantaneous calculus 00:32:45.609 --> 00:32:47.910 made by sergeants and corporals in the dark was 00:32:47.910 --> 00:32:50.730 often simply to eliminate the risk by eliminating 00:32:50.730 --> 00:32:53.490 the men trying to surrender. A bullet or a bayonet 00:32:53.490 --> 00:32:55.589 thrust was safer than trying to march them back. 00:32:55.849 --> 00:32:58.670 But it wasn't always just cold logistics. The 00:32:58.670 --> 00:33:01.509 documentation makes it clear that a massive component 00:33:01.509 --> 00:33:04.470 of this violence was driven by revenge and that 00:33:04.470 --> 00:33:06.910 revenge was heavily fueled by the potent atrocity 00:33:06.910 --> 00:33:09.509 propaganda circulating in the trenches. The propaganda 00:33:09.509 --> 00:33:11.970 was incredibly powerful. The records highlight 00:33:11.970 --> 00:33:15.549 a very specific pivotal event, the 1915 rumor 00:33:15.549 --> 00:33:18.069 of the Crucified Canadian. The Crucified Canadian 00:33:18.069 --> 00:33:20.430 is a fascinating study in wartime psychology. 00:33:20.940 --> 00:33:24.079 In the spring of 1915, during the chaotic fighting 00:33:24.079 --> 00:33:27.579 around Ypres, a story began to spread like wildfire 00:33:27.579 --> 00:33:30.140 through the Allied trenches. The rumor claimed 00:33:30.140 --> 00:33:32.440 that German soldiers had captured a Canadian 00:33:32.440 --> 00:33:35.900 soldier and, in a deliberate act of barbaric 00:33:35.900 --> 00:33:38.880 mockery, had literally crucified him, pinning 00:33:38.880 --> 00:33:42.259 him to a barn door or a tree with bayonets driven 00:33:42.259 --> 00:33:44.680 through his hands and feet. And the Wikipedia 00:33:44.680 --> 00:33:49.140 records explicitly note that this rumor was definitively 00:33:49.140 --> 00:33:51.289 debunked. It was a complete fiction. There's 00:33:51.289 --> 00:33:53.230 no historical evidence that this ever happened. 00:33:53.410 --> 00:33:55.529 None at all. But truth doesn't matter in a trench. 00:33:55.950 --> 00:33:58.569 The men on the front lines fully, entirely believed 00:33:58.569 --> 00:34:01.410 it at the time. And that belief had devastating, 00:34:01.710 --> 00:34:04.289 tangible consequences. The story tapped into 00:34:04.289 --> 00:34:06.789 the deepest fears and the primal rage of the 00:34:06.789 --> 00:34:09.150 Canadian troops. Because they believed without 00:34:09.150 --> 00:34:11.190 a shadow of a doubt that the Germans were committing 00:34:11.190 --> 00:34:13.570 these sadistic, barbaric acts against their brothers, 00:34:13.969 --> 00:34:16.730 the Canadians felt morally justified in abandoning 00:34:16.730 --> 00:34:18.769 the rules of war themselves. It gave them a dark 00:34:18.769 --> 00:34:21.619 permission. The rumor fueled a horrific cycle 00:34:21.619 --> 00:34:24.780 of reprisals. If they are crucifying our boys, 00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:27.739 why should we accept their surrender? That became 00:34:27.739 --> 00:34:30.739 the operating logic. Quarter was routinely denied. 00:34:30.920 --> 00:34:33.360 We have to confront the reality of the primary 00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:36.280 sources that historians like Tim Cook have unearthed 00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:39.380 from archives and diaries. The text specifically 00:34:39.380 --> 00:34:41.960 mentions an officer, Lieutenant R .C. Germain. 00:34:42.139 --> 00:34:44.880 This isn't a secondhand rumor. This is a man 00:34:44.880 --> 00:34:47.820 writing openly about his own actions. His own 00:34:47.820 --> 00:34:50.579 diary. He documented bayoneting, surrendering 00:34:50.579 --> 00:34:53.280 prisoners, casually and graphically describing 00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:55.900 putting a foot of cold steel through them. The 00:34:55.900 --> 00:34:58.559 phrasing is terrifying in its casualness. A foot 00:34:58.559 --> 00:35:01.119 of cold steel. And the most important context 00:35:01.119 --> 00:35:02.880 here is that Lieutenant Germain wasn't writing 00:35:02.880 --> 00:35:05.179 this as a secret confession of a war crime he 00:35:05.179 --> 00:35:07.960 was trying to hide. He was documenting an accepted 00:35:07.960 --> 00:35:10.480 normalized reality of their specific war. It 00:35:10.480 --> 00:35:13.219 was just Tuesday. Exactly. The culture of the 00:35:13.219 --> 00:35:14.860 Corps had evolved to a point where executing 00:35:14.860 --> 00:35:17.079 a surrendering enemy in a trench was not viewed 00:35:17.079 --> 00:35:19.539 as a crime, but as a grim necessity of their 00:35:19.539 --> 00:35:22.099 environment. But as we process all this darkness, 00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:25.199 we have to hold two seemingly contradictory facts 00:35:25.199 --> 00:35:28.420 in our heads simultaneously to grasp the full 00:35:28.420 --> 00:35:30.980 picture. The records also point out that despite 00:35:30.980 --> 00:35:33.619 this deeply ingrained widespread practice of 00:35:33.619 --> 00:35:36.219 executing prisoners, the Canadian Corps still 00:35:36.219 --> 00:35:39.639 managed to capture 42 ,000 German soldiers over 00:35:39.639 --> 00:35:42.789 the course of the war. That duality is the absolute 00:35:42.789 --> 00:35:44.809 essence of the First World War combatant and 00:35:44.809 --> 00:35:47.570 particularly the Canadian soldier. You have a 00:35:47.570 --> 00:35:50.690 force capable of vast disciplined military success, 00:35:51.090 --> 00:35:53.929 a force capable of immense bravery, executing 00:35:53.929 --> 00:35:56.690 massive complex combined arms offensives like 00:35:56.690 --> 00:35:59.389 Emian, and systematically capturing tens of thousands 00:35:59.389 --> 00:36:01.530 of enemies when the operational logistics allowed 00:36:01.530 --> 00:36:03.190 for it. Right, when they could safely do it. 00:36:03.429 --> 00:36:06.369 But simultaneously, those exact same men were 00:36:06.369 --> 00:36:09.190 fully capable of intimate, chilling, close quarters 00:36:09.190 --> 00:36:11.860 execution when the chaos of a trench raid or 00:36:11.860 --> 00:36:14.079 the rage of a perceived atrocity demanded it. 00:36:14.420 --> 00:36:16.800 It makes you realize how the sanitized, heroic 00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:20.059 post -war narratives we are fed, the noble clean 00:36:20.059 --> 00:36:22.980 sacrifice for freedom, do a massive disservice 00:36:22.980 --> 00:36:25.800 to the actual traumatic complex reality these 00:36:25.800 --> 00:36:28.340 veterans live through. The brutality wasn't an 00:36:28.340 --> 00:36:30.539 anomaly, and it wasn't a mistake committed by 00:36:30.539 --> 00:36:33.460 a few bad apples. It was a fully integrated part 00:36:33.460 --> 00:36:36.300 of their survival mechanism and their tactical 00:36:36.300 --> 00:36:39.070 effectiveness. Which forces us to consider the 00:36:39.070 --> 00:36:41.630 psychological aftermath. What happens to the 00:36:41.630 --> 00:36:43.949 human mind when it is required to normalize that 00:36:43.949 --> 00:36:45.889 level of violence and then is suddenly asked 00:36:45.889 --> 00:36:48.750 to stop? Let's step back from the tactical reality 00:36:48.750 --> 00:36:51.210 of the trenches and look at the immense, staggering 00:36:51.210 --> 00:36:54.190 human cost and how this entire world -shattering 00:36:54.190 --> 00:36:56.889 experience was digested by the culture that eventually 00:36:56.889 --> 00:36:59.030 welcomed them back. The statistics on the toll 00:36:59.030 --> 00:37:01.369 are sobering to the point of being almost incomprehensible. 00:37:01.610 --> 00:37:04.070 The records state that the total fatal battle 00:37:04.070 --> 00:37:05.889 casualties for the Canadian Corps during the 00:37:05.889 --> 00:37:11.869 war was 56 ,638 men. Over 56 ,000 dead. And to 00:37:11.869 --> 00:37:14.030 put that into perspective, the documentation 00:37:14.030 --> 00:37:16.510 breaks down the percentages. That figure represents 00:37:16.510 --> 00:37:19.409 13 .5 % of all the men who were sent overseas 00:37:19.409 --> 00:37:23.130 and 9 .26 % of every single man who enlisted 00:37:23.130 --> 00:37:25.860 in Canada. So what does this all mean? It means 00:37:25.860 --> 00:37:28.619 that nearly 1 in 10 men who signed up, who walked 00:37:28.619 --> 00:37:30.880 into a recruiting office believing in King and 00:37:30.880 --> 00:37:33.730 Country, never came back. They were buried in 00:37:33.730 --> 00:37:36.369 the mud of France and Belgium. And for the ones 00:37:36.369 --> 00:37:38.710 who did survive, the documentation describes 00:37:38.710 --> 00:37:42.210 a surreal homecoming. In 1919, they returned 00:37:42.210 --> 00:37:45.110 to Canada to massive, jubilant, welcoming crowds 00:37:45.110 --> 00:37:47.610 in cities across the country. Parades and confetti. 00:37:47.789 --> 00:37:50.070 They were hailed as conquering heroes, the men 00:37:50.070 --> 00:37:52.550 who had proven Canada's worth, the shock troops 00:37:52.550 --> 00:37:54.389 of the empire who had put their young nation 00:37:54.389 --> 00:37:57.130 on the world map. But try to imagine the profound 00:37:57.130 --> 00:37:59.590 internal cognitive dissonance of that moment. 00:37:59.869 --> 00:38:02.170 You are a veteran standing on a parade float 00:38:02.170 --> 00:38:05.250 in Toronto or marching down the street in Halifax. 00:38:05.530 --> 00:38:07.989 Confetti is raining down, brass bands are playing 00:38:07.989 --> 00:38:10.670 patriotic marches, and politicians who have never 00:38:10.670 --> 00:38:12.869 heard a shot fired in anger are giving grand 00:38:12.869 --> 00:38:15.789 speeches about your noble crusade and your immaculate 00:38:15.789 --> 00:38:17.989 heroism. And you just have to stand there and 00:38:17.989 --> 00:38:21.309 smile. But inside your head, you are carrying 00:38:21.309 --> 00:38:24.170 the darkest, most visceral secrets imaginable. 00:38:24.510 --> 00:38:27.369 You know about the politics of surrender. You 00:38:27.369 --> 00:38:30.150 remember tossing corned beef tins to lure starving 00:38:30.150 --> 00:38:33.050 men into a grenade blast. You know exactly what 00:38:33.050 --> 00:38:35.610 Lieutenant Germain meant by a foot of cold steel, 00:38:36.030 --> 00:38:38.320 because you probably held the rifle. The psychological 00:38:38.320 --> 00:38:41.500 trauma, the moral injury, must have been unimaginably 00:38:41.500 --> 00:38:44.519 isolating. They were carrying the crushing weight 00:38:44.519 --> 00:38:47.159 of a no quarter combat environment, yet they 00:38:47.159 --> 00:38:49.920 were entirely surrounded by a civilian population 00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:53.300 that had absolutely no framework, no vocabulary, 00:38:53.420 --> 00:38:56.280 and frankly, no desire to understand what they 00:38:56.280 --> 00:38:58.739 had actually done to survive or what had been 00:38:58.739 --> 00:39:01.079 done to them. They just wanted the myth. The 00:39:01.079 --> 00:39:04.039 civilians wanted heroes. The veterans were haunted 00:39:04.039 --> 00:39:07.329 men. It's no wonder that this profound disconnect 00:39:07.329 --> 00:39:10.570 deeply penetrated Canadian culture, particularly 00:39:10.570 --> 00:39:12.449 finding its voice in literature as the nation 00:39:12.449 --> 00:39:14.409 tried to process the trauma over the following 00:39:14.409 --> 00:39:17.590 decades. The documentation mentions several really 00:39:17.590 --> 00:39:20.570 fascinating literary examples that show how this 00:39:20.570 --> 00:39:22.989 history echoed through time. For instance, it 00:39:22.989 --> 00:39:25.190 brings up Lucy Maud Montgomery. Most people around 00:39:25.190 --> 00:39:27.230 the world know her strictly as the author of 00:39:27.230 --> 00:39:30.070 Anne of Green Gables, but she wrote a book called 00:39:30.070 --> 00:39:33.440 Rilla of Ingleside. Rilla of Ingleside is an 00:39:33.440 --> 00:39:36.400 incredibly important cultural artifact. Published 00:39:36.400 --> 00:39:39.360 in 1921, it is one of the only contemporary Canadian 00:39:39.360 --> 00:39:41.679 novels written from the perspective of the home 00:39:41.679 --> 00:39:44.559 front as the war was actually happening. It tracks 00:39:44.559 --> 00:39:47.460 the agonizing weight of women in a small community, 00:39:47.980 --> 00:39:49.880 watching the casualty lists in the newspapers, 00:39:50.179 --> 00:39:52.780 dreading the arrival of the Telegraph Boy. It 00:39:52.780 --> 00:39:55.079 processes the anxiety and the shifting social 00:39:55.079 --> 00:39:57.719 roles in real time. And the Wikipedia excerpt 00:39:57.719 --> 00:39:59.460 specifically notes something very interesting 00:39:59.460 --> 00:40:02.050 about Rilla. It mentions that the novel is notable 00:40:02.050 --> 00:40:04.570 for being one of the first literary texts to 00:40:04.570 --> 00:40:08.329 mention the Gallipoli campaign and the ANZACs, 00:40:08.489 --> 00:40:11.210 the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Why 00:40:11.210 --> 00:40:13.650 is that inclusion significant? It demonstrates 00:40:13.650 --> 00:40:16.349 the profound shared cultural trauma of the British 00:40:16.349 --> 00:40:19.590 Empire. Canada was bleeding in Flanders. Australia 00:40:19.590 --> 00:40:20.989 and New Zealand were bleeding on the beaches 00:40:20.989 --> 00:40:23.710 of Gallipoli and Turkey. Montgomery's inclusion 00:40:23.710 --> 00:40:26.170 of the ANZACs shows how the war was connecting 00:40:26.170 --> 00:40:28.960 the far -flung dominions of the empire. through 00:40:28.960 --> 00:40:32.480 a shared experience of colossal colonial bloodletting. 00:40:32.699 --> 00:40:35.360 The grief was universal across the empire. The 00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:37.599 grief in a Canadian farmhouse was identical to 00:40:37.599 --> 00:40:40.079 the grief in the Australian outback. And then 00:40:40.079 --> 00:40:42.800 the records move from the immediate contemporary 00:40:42.800 --> 00:40:45.639 processing of the war to the later more cynical 00:40:45.639 --> 00:40:48.579 reflections. It highlights Robertson Davies' 00:40:48.880 --> 00:40:51.619 highly acclaimed 1970 novel, Fifth Business. 00:40:52.380 --> 00:40:54.360 A massive part of that book is devoted to the 00:40:54.360 --> 00:40:57.559 protagonist, Dunstan Ramsey, and his deeply traumatic 00:40:57.559 --> 00:40:59.800 experiences as a soldier in the Canadian Corps. 00:41:00.010 --> 00:41:02.429 Fifth Business is brilliant because it explicitly 00:41:02.429 --> 00:41:05.570 attacks the myth -making. Dunstan Ramsey loses 00:41:05.570 --> 00:41:08.369 his leg at Passchendaele, wins the Victoria Cross, 00:41:08.469 --> 00:41:11.369 but he refuses to embrace the role of the immaculate 00:41:11.369 --> 00:41:14.630 hero. He views the medal and the heroic narrative 00:41:14.630 --> 00:41:17.289 imposed on him by his hometown as a burden and 00:41:17.289 --> 00:41:20.849 a lie. Davies uses the novel to explore the lingering 00:41:20.849 --> 00:41:23.610 scars of the war and the hypocrisy of how society 00:41:23.610 --> 00:41:25.969 remembers conflict. And on the complete opposite 00:41:25.969 --> 00:41:27.969 end of the tonal spectrum, but dealing with the 00:41:27.969 --> 00:41:30.630 exact same trauma, the documentation mentions 00:41:30.630 --> 00:41:33.409 Donald Jack's bandy papers. This is a series 00:41:33.409 --> 00:41:35.369 of novels that processes the history through 00:41:35.369 --> 00:41:37.889 dark, absurdist humor, dealing with the sheer 00:41:37.889 --> 00:41:40.489 bureaucratic lunacy of the war and the absurdity 00:41:40.489 --> 00:41:43.269 of surviving it. Literature served as the necessary 00:41:43.269 --> 00:41:45.989 vehicle for the nation to process a monumental 00:41:45.989 --> 00:41:49.190 shift in its identity. The war changed Canada 00:41:49.190 --> 00:41:52.650 irrevocably. It went from being a quiet colonial 00:41:52.650 --> 00:41:55.010 afterthought into a nation that had engineered 00:41:55.010 --> 00:41:57.909 and fielded one of the most terrifyingly effective, 00:41:58.510 --> 00:42:00.929 aggressively ruthless military machines in the 00:42:00.929 --> 00:42:03.369 world. The loss of innocence. But that coming 00:42:03.369 --> 00:42:06.309 of age was purchased at an incredibly steep moral 00:42:06.309 --> 00:42:09.849 and human cost. Literature bridges the gap between 00:42:09.849 --> 00:42:12.940 the cheering of oblivious crowds of 1919 and 00:42:12.940 --> 00:42:15.699 the silent localized nightmares of the veterans. 00:42:16.099 --> 00:42:18.260 Which brings us to the end of our deep dive today 00:42:18.260 --> 00:42:20.420 to summarize the massive amount of ground we've 00:42:20.420 --> 00:42:22.719 covered from these Wikipedia records. The Canadian 00:42:22.719 --> 00:42:25.579 Corps wasn't just a group of brave homespun farm 00:42:25.579 --> 00:42:27.880 boys who marched off to do their duty. They were 00:42:27.880 --> 00:42:30.980 a highly engineered relentlessly adaptive war 00:42:30.980 --> 00:42:33.539 machine. Unquestionably. Their undeniable battlefield 00:42:33.539 --> 00:42:36.199 effectiveness was born from pragmatic unsentimental 00:42:36.199 --> 00:42:38.280 leadership that valued competence over political 00:42:38.280 --> 00:42:40.579 optics, a corporate -style learning doctrine 00:42:40.579 --> 00:42:43.679 that tested and iterated tactics and blood, and 00:42:43.679 --> 00:42:46.199 a brutal unflinching willingness to cross deeply 00:42:46.199 --> 00:42:48.420 held moral lines in the mud of the Western Front. 00:42:48.739 --> 00:42:50.860 It is a history that absolutely demands we look 00:42:50.860 --> 00:42:53.480 at it with clear eyes without the rose -tinted 00:42:53.480 --> 00:42:56.659 glasses of patriotism. And as we wrap up, I want 00:42:56.659 --> 00:42:59.360 to leave you with one final, unmentioned thread 00:42:59.360 --> 00:43:02.000 to pull on, something to mull over on your own 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:04.840 time. What's that? Think back to that debunked, 00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:08.739 crucified Canadian rumor of 1915. It was a complete 00:43:08.739 --> 00:43:12.699 fiction, a ghost story. Yet because it was believed, 00:43:12.940 --> 00:43:17.300 it fueled horrific, very real reprisals, executions, 00:43:17.800 --> 00:43:20.010 and the denial of quarter. It makes you wonder 00:43:20.010 --> 00:43:22.869 about the nature of truth in a crisis. It forces 00:43:22.869 --> 00:43:25.670 you to consider a terrifying dynamic. In the 00:43:25.670 --> 00:43:28.349 fog of war, or frankly in any high -stakes modern 00:43:28.349 --> 00:43:30.789 conflict of information, how much of our reality 00:43:30.789 --> 00:43:33.610 and the extreme, irreversible and sometimes violent 00:43:33.610 --> 00:43:36.409 actions we justify taking because of it is entirely 00:43:36.409 --> 00:43:38.469 shaped by the fictions we simply choose to believe. 00:43:38.670 --> 00:43:41.309 That is a heavy, incredibly vital question to 00:43:41.309 --> 00:43:43.650 sit with. Thank you for joining us on this custom 00:43:43.650 --> 00:43:45.510 tailored deep dives. We hope this has shifted 00:43:45.510 --> 00:43:47.989 your perspective. Keep questioning the established 00:43:47.989 --> 00:43:50.170 narratives, keep digging into the raw historical 00:43:50.170 --> 00:43:53.050 sources, and most importantly, never settle for 00:43:53.050 --> 00:43:55.050 the sanitized version of history. We'll catch 00:43:55.050 --> 00:43:55.550 you next time.