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The Not-So-Nice Canadians of World War I

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2024 15 min

Canadian - A WWI Canadian recruitment poster — A WWI Canadian recruitment poster. Library and Archives, Canada

4. Bragging About Brutality Towards Prisoners

Many German captives were slaughtered by Canadians, but many more were treated humanely. Canadian War Museum

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“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.