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“.
