The Not-So-Nice Canadians of World War I

18. WWI’s Most Enthusiastic Users of Poison Gas

Another theory has it that Canadian soldiers were particularly peeved about, and never forgave the Germans for, their first use of poison gas in 1915. Canadian forces had been especially hard hit when that new horror was introduced to warfare. In due course, the Canadian Corps became the Western Front’s most enthusiastic user of poison gas. As one Canadian historian put it about the war’s last months, “[w]e like to think of Canada as pure, but Canadians gassed everything that moved whenever they could“. Another Canadian historian put it more succinctly: “if we could have killed the whole German Army by gas, we would gladly have done so“.

17. Origins of a Deadly Beef: The Crucified Canadian

The Canadian forces’ path to becoming WWI’s meanest warriors began with an atrocity story that made the rounds in 1915. Witnesses at the frontline near Ypres, Belgium, reportedly saw the corpse of a Canadian soldier who had been crucified, his limbs pinned to a tree or barn door with bayonets. The story of the “Crucified Canadian” infuriated Canada’s fighting men. They developed a vendetta against Germans that lasted through war’s end and well beyond. In reality, none of the “Crucified Canadian” account was true. However, that did not matter. What mattered was that Canadian soldiers believed that it was that true, were convinced that it had actually happened, and acted accordingly.

16. Un-Romanticizing the Past

Canadian War Museum historian Tim Cook has unearthed a full and often un-romanticized picture of Canada’s WWI army. He is clear, however, that modern readers should not condemn the sometimes shocking behavior of WWI Canadian combatants without understanding the shock, stress, and chaos of the First World War’s frontlines. As he put it in an interview, “I’m not passing judgment on these guys 90 years later“. However, he did criticize earlier historians for skipping over and sanitizing the brutality of Canadian soldiers in that war. Especially since many veterans were not shy about it, but were quite open to having their conduct known and remembered.

15. Live-and-Let-Live Informal Truces in the Trenches

Of all their WWI enemies, German soldiers were most wary of Canadians, whom they referred to as “unpredictable savages“. Troops from other nations, at least absent active offensives in progress, often adopted a live-and-let-live attitude towards their foes across no man’s land. As the conflict dragged on, seemingly without end, and casualties mounted, war weary frontline soldiers often implemented informal truces and unspoken codes with equally war weary soldiers in opposite trenches. In some sectors, it was accepted that both sides would keep local attacks and raids to a minimum. Sometimes, it was seen as good manners for soldiers who knew their artillery was about to start a barrage to fire warning shots, so their foes could take shelter. Such little things kept casualties down and made life in the trenches just a bit more bearable. Not so Canadian soldierss, who, as kids today might say, “had no chill!“

14. Canned Corned Beef and Grenades

Unlike soldiers of other nationalities, Canada’s WWI soldiers had no chill, and seemed eager to spill as much German blood as possible. For example, occasional acts of kindness between enemies were not unknown in the trenches, and some peaceful exchanges and trade took place across no man’s land. On one occasion, Canadian soldiers tossed canned corned beef into the trenches of starving Germans. The hungry Germans were accustomed to fraternization with soldiers from other nations. They were lulled into believing that the troops across no man’s land from them were generous chaps, and grew accustomed to scrambling to snatch food cans tossed into their trenches. When the Germans shouted “More! Give us more!” the Canadians tossed grenades, knowing that their famished foes, expecting food, would rush towards them.

13. The No Chill Canadians

As seen above, throughout much of the Great War, numerous sectors of the Western Front, at least some of the time, observed an unofficial “live and let live” policy between Germans and their French or British enemies. Understandably, many war-weary soldiers reasoned that war was already hard, so why make it harder that it need be? It was tacitly agreed along stretches of the frontline that neither side would attack the other unless ordered. There were even small gestures such as scheduling local ceasefires so both sides could eat their meals and use the latrines in peace. Such behavior was almost unheard of where Canadians were present. Canadian Corps commander Arthur Currie boasted after the war that his men prided themselves on slaughtering their foe the enemy wherever and whenever they could. As he put it in 1919, “[w]e tried to make his life miserable“.

12. Lack of Canadian Christmas Spirit

Around Christmas, 1914, five months into WWI, the Western Front witnessed a series of informal ceasefires initiated by frontline soldiers. That Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, German, British, and German soldiers in many sectors came out of the trenches and met in no man’s land. They mingled, exchanged seasonal greetings, talked, swapped food and souvenirs, and in at least one sector, played a soccer match. The following Christmas of 1915 was the first with the Canadian Corps in the front lines. In a trench near Ypres, Germans, hoping for a repeat of the previous year’s ceasefire, invited the Canadians over to a party. German soldiers poked their heads above the parapets and yelled “Merry Christmas, Canadians!” while waving a box of cigars as a proffered present. A Canadian sergeant responded by opening fire, and cut down at least two of the merrymakers.

11. Fighting the Germans “With a Long, Enduring, Terrible, Skillful Patience“

The lethal Canadian reaction to the Germans’ Merry Christmas! was par for the course. By war’s end, Canadians had earned a reputation as crack soldiers who could win battles and seize objectives that others could not. They also earned a reputation for exceptional ferocity and brutality in a war noted for ferocity and brutality. English poet Robert Graves, who spent much of the war in the front lines, recalled in his 1929 bestseller Good-Bye to All That, that “the troops that had the worst reputation for acts of violence against prisoners were the Canadians“. British reporter Philip Gibbs saw all there was to see on the Western Front. More charitable, he noted that the Canadians had a vendetta against the Germans, and were more obsessed with slaughtering them than any other Entente combatants. As he put it, “The Canadians fought the Germans with a long, enduring, terrible, skillful patience“.

10. Canadians From the German Perspective

In response to the Canadians’ exceptional ferocity towards them, the Germans came to fear, loathe, and hold in contempt the Canadian Corps, whom they saw as unpredictable brutes and savages. One Canadian who had been captured recalled that he was singled out and beaten up on orders from a German colonel. As the colonel put it, “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“.

9. Frightful Nighttime Raids

Germans unfortunately placed in trenches across no man’s land from Canadians were particularly fearful of nighttime raids. Such raids embodied WWI at its rawest and most ferocious, as the dark of night suddenly erupted into combat and mayhem in the trenches. Sleeping soldiers awoke to terror, to be mangled by explosives, mercilessly stabbed, shot, or machine gunned in the back as they fled in panic to the rear. Hand to hand fighting in crowded, darkened chaos. Whole dugouts of sleeping Germans burned or buried alive by tossed grenades. As a reporter described one Canadian raid, “[t]here 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 … It was butcher’s work, quick and skilful … Thirty Germans were killed before the Canadians went back“.

8. Canadian Enthusiasm for Trench Raiding

All Commonwealth forces were encouraged to raid enemy trenches, but Canadians in particular earned a reputation as the war’s most enthusiastic, innovative, and ferocious trench raiders. They kept on raiding even after other Commonwealth troops eventually stopped. As one Australian officer described it, “Raids are not worth the cost, none of the survivors want to go anymore“. Not so the bloody minded Canadians, who continued to raid German trenches until war’s end. To approach their foes as stealthily as possible, Canadians blackened their faces, and wore thick rubber gloves. For enhanced lethality, they crafted grenade catapults and homemade pipe bombs. When they reached and came face to face with their foes, they often employed fearsome homemade weapons such as spiked clubs, meat cleavers, and push daggers.

7. The War’s Most Skillful Trench Raiders

Canadians eventually became the war’s most skillful trench raiders. As the war progressed, some Canadian raiders grew skillful enough to reach nearly a mile behind enemy lines. There, they inflicted lethal mayhem on surprised Germans who believed themselves safe from direct contact. In the runup to the attack on Vimy Ridge in 1917, Canadians launched raids of up to 900 men at German trenches every night. They were exceptionally deadly affairs that amounted to mini battles in their own right, conducted in the dark of night, which only enhanced horror of combat. Only difference was that, rather than hold their ground, the raiders aimed to slaughter, sow death and chaos, and otherwise visit mayhem upon the enemy before they disappeared.

6. Canadian Treatment of German Prisoners

Canadians believed the “Crucified Canadian” myth, and that Germans routinely committed such atrocities upon prisoners. Unsurprisingly, they responded by often brutalizing surrendering Germans, whom they mistreated as retaliation for what they believed to be German mistreatment of captive Canadians. To be sure, over 42,000 Germans survived after they surrendered to Canadians. However, it became clear from numerous frontline accounts that many Germans who tried to surrender to Canadians were killed out of hand by bayonets or bullets. For example, a 2006 study revealed dozens of accounts of Canadians who slaughtered German prisoners. They did so in fits of rage, as payback, or for mere expediency because they disliked the hassle of escorting them to prisoner collection points in the rear.

5. The Slaughter of Captives

Surrendering Germans were most often killed after the capture of an enemy position whose seizure involved the loss of comrades. As one Canadian lieutenant put it, “[a]fter losing half of my company there, we rushed them and they had the nerve to throw up their hands and cry, ‘Kamerad.’ All the Kam-erad they got was a foot of cold steel thro them“. Some captured Germans were murdered in cold blood. For example, one Canadian slipped a live grenade into the greatcoat pocket of a prisoner. Some were slain in fits of rage, as a Canadian who lost it after a friend’s death at Vimy Ridge wrote: “Once I killed my first German with my bayonit my blood was riled, every german I could not reach with my bayonit I shot. I think no more of murdering them than I usted to think of shooting rabbits“.

4. Bragging About Brutality Towards Prisoners

Some Canadian commanders ordered their men to take no prisoners. A sixteen-year-old private was told before an attack in 1916 “I don’t want any prisoners“. Another veteran recalled being told before the attack on Vimy Ridge, “Remember, no prisoners. They will just eat your rations“. It did not take long before Canadians were known as the “no mercy” soldiers of the Western Front. A reputation enhanced by Canadian boasts of their bloody mindedness. One soldier bragged “the Germans call us the white Ghurkha“, in reference to the ferocious Nepalese soldiers who fought for Britain. A soldier wrote in a letter to his father, “[y]ou will very seldom now hear of the Canadians taking prisoners, they take them to some quiet spot and then it is a case of the dead may march“.

3. Putting Canadian Brutality in Perspective

To be fair, stories of executed prisoners were common in all WWI armies, and Canadian soldiers were not the only ones who brutalized surrendering foes. Moreover, the Canadians, unlike the Germans, had a near spotless record when it came to the treatment of civilians. Also, the reputation earned by Canadians for slaying prisoners had much to do with the fact that Canadians often served as shock troops, in the first wave of attacks. The most dangerous time for surrendering soldiers is the first few moments of surrender, when captured by enemies whose blood is up, passions are high, and who might have just lost comrades in the assault. Canadians were disproportionately placed in first wave attacks, which placed them in disproportionate contact with surrendering Germans in such volatile circumstances.

2. The Mental Price

Brutality affects, most of all, the brutalized victims. However, it often also affects those who commit such acts. Thousands of WWI veterans returned to Canada with what we would nowadays term post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. What ate most at some was not what had been done to them, but what they had done to others in split seconds of rage and vengeance, that left them with a lifetime of regret. One soldier endured the war’s bloodiest hells, but what bothered him the most was the execution of two captured Germans. It was decided that there was no time to escort them to a POW collection point, so straws were drawn to see who would slay them. Another veteran was scarred for life by the execution of a dazed German who had been trying to surrender, but who had forgotten to drop his rifle.

1.     A War “Without Chivalry and Magnanimity, and Sometimes Without Mercy“

In 1919, Canadian Corps commander Arthur Currie bluntly described how it had been: “War is simply the curse of butchery, and the men who have gone through, who have seen war stripped of all its trappings, are the last men that will want to see another war“. Canadians had gone to France to win and end a war, and it was conventional wisdom at the time that it would do nobody any good to fight with half measures, instead of go all out in order to finish the job as quickly as possible. Canadian Victoria Cross winner Cy Peck put it most succinctly: “The Great War was one of ferocity, without chivalry and magnanimity, and sometimes without mercy“.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Cook, Tim – At the Sharp End, Volume One: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914-1916 (2016)

Cook, Tim – No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War (1999)

Heritage of the Great War – The Unproven Story of the Crucified Canadian

History Collection – 16 Forgotten or Lesser Known WWI Facts

Journal of Military History, Volume 70, Number 3, July 2006 – The Politics of Surrender: Canadian Soldiers and the Killing of Prisoners in the Great War

National Post, November 12^th, 2018 – The Forgotten Ruthlessness of Canada’s Great War Soldiers

Ponsonby, Arthur – Falsehood in War Time: Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War (2005)

Roads to the Great War – Canada’s Golgotha or the Legend of the Crucified Soldier