A day for the Canadian army?

by John Thompson

08/11/03

Once again, August 6^th and 9^th have come with the annual breast-beating about the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Like we care…

For one, I am among the tens of millions of people who are alive today because of the atom bombings — my father was earmarked as an infantryman for the Canadian Division assigned to the conventional invasion of Japan. Also, the first Imperial Cabinet meeting where the Japanese decided to throw in the towel occurred the evening after Nagasaki was nuked — so atom bombs (and the massive Soviet invasion of occupied China) are what got them to reach for the white flag.

Still, every year, the atom bombings are commemorated — to the exclusion of everything else (barring the Holocaust) that happened in the wars of the 20^th Century. Frankly, given the abysmal instruction of Canadian history nowadays, maybe it is time to use early August to mark another anniversary. How about August 8^th?

If nudged about our Army in the First World War, many Canadians might recall Vimy Ridge — where the Canadian Corps surged up in a carefully prepared surprise attack to grab a defended chalk ridge that tens of thousands of French and British soldiers had died trying to wrest from the Germans earlier. But who knows about our even more impressive victory on August 8^th, 1918?

On August 8^th at Amiens, The Canadian Corps and the Australian Corps did something that had never before been done on the Western Front — they punched through the entire German defence line (four separate trench systems) in a single day, and were running around in the German rear shooting at generals and sacking their supply dumps at day’s end. In a war where tens of thousands of lives and weeks could be spent to push ahead a couple of miles, the Canadian pushed seven miles deep into German lines in one day.

This rupture was so complete, that German historians of the war still call this their most catastrophic day in it; and their leaders recognized after this attack that defeat was inevitable. August 8^th also marks the beginning of the period that we once referred to as "Canada’s 100 Days", a series of attacks that saw the Canadian Corps relentlessly pushing the Germans back in some of the most efficient and deadly attacks of the war.

In the Second World War, early August is also significant for Canadians. In Sicily in 1943, the 1^st Canadian Division was busy fighting in the central mountains, repeatedly outflanking German positions and earning a formidable reputation in German intelligence reports (who described the Canadians as "elite mountain infantry", "aggressive" and expert at night fighting). By August 8^th, the Axis forces on Sicily were starting to fall back to Messina for an evacuation to the Italian mainland.

While many remember D-Day, June 6^th, 1944, and the fact that the Canadians had a beach of their own at Normandy — some people even recall that the Canadians penetrated further into France than any other landed force that day. What is seldom remembered is the savage fighting that occurred over the next ten weeks.

The Canadian Divisions in Normandy took the brunt of it, enduring the highest casualties of any Allied formations in France — primarily because the Germans knew the Canadian reputation and took pains to keep their most elite troops, the Waffen SS Panzer divisions, opposite them. The SS took horrific casualties from the Canadians too — only 500 men of 12,000 from the 12 SS Hitlerjugend made it out of Normandy.

On August 8^th, 1944, Patton was beginning his showboat drive through nigh-undefended parts of France while other American troops were fending off the German panzer counterattack at Mortain (robbed of much of its teeth because of their mauling earlier at British and Canadian hands). Meanwhile, the Canadians were clawing their way south to Falaise after overrunning much of the thick belt of defence lines south of Caen in a surprise night attack. The stage was being set for the worst German defeat of the war and, again, the Canadians were central to it.

Then there are all the other August 8ths in South Africa, during the First and Second World Wars, in Korea, in Cold War Germany, or watching the Green Line in Cyprus, patrolling the Sinai, or clearing mines in Bosnia and Croatia. There is this August 8^th 2003, with Canadian troops in Afghanistan again, keeping an eye out for the Taliban and Al Qaeda once more.

Isn’t this legacy worth remembering every year?

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca