A Worthwhile Mission: Securing the Channel Ports

Posted on by CBF Students - Étudiants FCCB

After an informative and emotional four days of studying the First World War, the focus of our tour switched to the Canadian contribution in the Second World War. As part of this shift we stood on the hills overlooking the coast of the French Channel Ports. Although picturesque today, save for the poor weather which finally greeted our group after a warm and sunny start to the tour, the landscape of the Channel Ports was once the site of hard-fought battles in which the Allies experienced “surprisingly tenacious” resistance on the part of the Germans. Capturing these objectives, which were held by the Germans until September 1944, was necessary for the Allies to supply their Eastward advance towards Germany (and in the process liberate Belgium and the Netherlands.) The task of doing so was entrusted to the Canadian Army. And a large portion of the Ports were entrusted to only the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. Today we focused on those Ports which 3rd Division successfully took over the month of September 1944, albeit after enduring many obstacles and incurring high casualties. These were Boulogne, Cap Gris Nez and Calais.

However, the Germans constructed heavily fortified bunkers complete with strong gun batteries throughout these Port cities to maintain these crucial holdings. In September 1944 Hitler declared the German garrisons stationed in the Channel ports to hold their positions at all costs, designating the Ports as fortresses. Therefore, the bunkers are the physical representatives of the challenging objectives that the Canadians were expected to break through. Many of these bunkers have been preserved and our group was able to visit a number of them today. Standing on the landscape today and witnessing the fortifications established by the Germans, it is easy to understand the necessity of the Channel Ports, but most importantly, what a task it must have been to break through the German defences to secure them.

Contemporary and modern memory of the mission to capture the Channel Ports remains conflicted. Both during the war and into today it continues to be questioned whether the mission to capture the Channel Ports was a worthwhile one. The British were quick to criticize the slowness of the Canadians to capture the three ports, which they considered to be minor tasks that could each be taken within a day. Others have suggested that by the time the Channel Ports actually became operational, ports further East such as Antwerp could have alternatively been used to supply the Allied advance. This latter criticism insinuates that the battle was more costly than strategically important. Despite these criticisms, I believe that the battles for Boulogne, Cap Gris Nez and Calais say much more about the preparedness, commitment and resourcefulness of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. Three Brigades of 3rd Division managed to take three ports and capture 30,000 German soldiers with fewer in each subsequent battle than the one before.

Being able to put the battles into physical perspective by reading the land itself as a primary source and viewing remnants of the German defenses, I was able to gain a much greater appreciation for the hard-fought efforts of Canadian soldiers. This has been my experience on the tour thus far and I look forward to gaining a greater comprehension of the geography and obstacles that Canadian and other Allied soldiers were forced to combat during the Two World Wars.

Rachael Ward

A Different Kind of Remembrance

Posted on by CBF Students - Étudiants FCCB

Hello from the beautiful French countryside, it is strange to think that almost 100 years ago the First World War had desecrated the landscape that now seems so serene,and that just 70 years ago the same land was in the throes of the Second World War. You can read about it in a text book and look at photographs but it becomes very real when you physically see the grave site of an ancestor that served, when you are inside of a german built bunker or walking through a trench dug by Canadians. It is especially poignant that one is able to pull shell fragments, bullets and grenades from the soil in which corn and canola now grow.

Today we visited La Coupole which is a German built bunker from the Second World War, it is now a museum located in Northern France. It was intended as a site from which to launch V2 rockets into England, however rocket launching from the site never came to full fruition before the end of the war. It is interesting that the museum advertises it as “the outcome of the Second World War could have been decided here.” We were talking today and we determined that this would not have been much of a game changer had it been fully operational because the payloads it would have delivered were similar to those delivered by bomber command, and strategic bombing has been proven to have been rather ineffective. The technology simply did not exist for bombing to have been accurate enough for the ends to justify the means.

In this museum there was a large portion dedicated to the French resistance as well as the victims of the Holocaust which we have not seen in any museums thus far. We wear poppies on remembrance day to commemorate and acknowledge the sacrifice made by our soldiers, and we often discuss the importance of remembrance so I would like to draw attention to an interesting project done by some middle school students in Whitwell Tennessee. In 1998 teachers in Whitwell were trying to teach their students about the Holocaust, its magnitude, and its devastation. They discovered that the paper clip was invented in Norway, and that During World War II, the Norwegians had worn paper clips on their clothes to demonstrate their opposition to Nazism and anti-Semitism. The teachers and students decided to start the Paper Clips Project, asking for donations of paper clips in order to collect six million, each one representing a victim of the Holocaust. The six million paper clips were sent to the students with accompanying letters, many of which recounted the stories of loved ones lost during the Holocaust. The children used the paperclips to build a memorial and in the process learned about racism, diversity, tolerance, and freedom. Education as such is what makes a difference in the world, and in the spirit of “educate, commemorate, remember” I would encourage people to watch the documentary “Paper Clips” in order to learn more about the Holocaust and the goals of the Paper Clip Project. Even something as simple as a paper clip can turn into a symbol of education and remembrance.

Life on the Battlefields

Posted on by CBF Students - Étudiants FCCB

Reading about the battles of the First World War in a musty textbook is one thing; discussing it as you as you stand on the spot where it all unfolded is another. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing these first few days in France.

While it’s been getting easier and easier to grasp the chronology and the details of the battles we’ve been looking at, I’m still struggling to wrap my head around the everyday experiences of the Canadian men and women who served here in France. As we drive through the tranquil French countryside, it’s hard to imagine that one day, not so long ago, the rolling canola fields and blue skies were filled with zigzagging trenches, muddy soldiers, and the incessant din of battle.

canola

Today began and ended with two stops that raised even more questions for me about what it must have felt like to fight on these very battlefields. What were the thoughts, motivations, and fears of each soldier?

We began at the Wellington Quarry, where large sections of the tunnels dug by the British Army, particularly the New Zealand Tunnelling Company, have been preserved. The tunnels connected original chalk quarries beneath the city of Arras, and were used by the Allied forces during the Battle of Arras in April of 1917.

We walked through tunnels named after the cities in Australia and Britain, past etchings in the walls of soldiers’ sweethearts back at home, and up the very stairs that some of the 20,000 men had climbed out of at 5:30am on the morning of battle. It was hard to fathom what they must have felt as they prepared to storm the German trenches, just as I struggled to imagine the conditions that the men survived in underground during the days leading up to the Battle of Arras. Where did they find the physical and mental strength to go on?

stairs

At the end of our day, as we made our way home from dinner, we stopped at Devonshire Cemetery, just outside of Mametz. As we gathered around the cemetery entrance, Geoff began reading us a particularly moving poem called ‘Before Action,’ written by Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson who fought with the 9th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment. His last stanza reads:

I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say good-bye to all of this; –
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.

IMG_0780

Hodgson only lived to see one more sunset before he died on the morning of July 1st at the Battle of the Somme. He, along with 160 of his comrades, was buried in the Devonshire cemetery. His last written words are haunting and speak to the fact that many soldiers had reconciled themselves with the inevitability of death. Hodgson’s poem certainly provides a raw portrait of the destruction and loss that soldiers faced.

Though I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to fully grasp the personal experience and toll of war, each day I spend on the battlefields brings me a little bit closer to understanding the experiences of men on the front lines in World War I.

Heather Whiteside
13 May 2015

Au revoir

Posted on by CBF Students - Étudiants FCCB

Second Lieutenant H.C. Farnes died at the age of 22 on 6 July 1917, with only two words carved neatly into his grave marker. The inscription was simple, two words only…but the most stirring ones often are – “Au revoir.”
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We began the day in Arras, France at the Wellington Quarry (la Carrière Wellington) Museum to those who lived under the city during the First World War, specifically the New Zealand Tunneling Company. Here we received an outstanding guided tour of the quarry 20m underground.

Following this, we made our way to the Dury Memorial, just outside Dury, France. This specific memorial honours the Canadian Corps during the August 1918 breakthrough of the DQ-Line (Drocourt-Quéant Line) around Arras, which led the Canadian Corps to the Canal du Nord, during Canada’s final Hundred Days offensive*. The monument was simple yet powerful, serene in its placement among the fields of France.

While here, we had the pleasure of learning about the evolution of Canada’s Army and its reputation from the beginning of the war (“savages from the north”) to the end of the war (“Vanguards” or “Shock troops of the British Empire”) from our friend and colleague Sébastien Picard. The weather was beautiful for us while Geoff Hayes and David Patterson explained and demonstrated where the 4th Canadian Division was coming from and why, and what other Canadian divisions were doing close to our position. They do a particularly good job at putting us inside their heads and bringing it closer to reality.

The change in how the war is waged is remarkable. Canadians no longer have three months to prepare for an attack. Heck, they are lucky if they get three weeks…but we didn’t need three months, anymore. While success was measured in metres for most of the war, the Canadian divisions are measuring theirs in kilometres now. The final months of the war are a completely different kind of war than what was fought over the past four years – a toned down version of World War II.

From there, we stopped for a bio-break before having lunch at the Canal du Nord, another major site of a Canadian offensive during our Hundred Days. It started late September 1918, where the Canadian soldiers had to make their way across the very narrow canal passage, which was extremely difficult as enemy combatants fired from all angles. The plan was bold, and Canadian General Curry had to run it by multiple officers who thought it was too risky, as explained by fellow CBF historian and traveller Deanna Foster, before he could follow through with it.

Next, we took the very, very, very, very (read: VERY) scenic route to the Toronto CWGC Cemetery outside of Amiens, France. At this cemetery, and the two places mentioned already, Deanna Foster gave the rest of the group a breakdown of Canada’s role in the Hundred Days Offensive, including the Battles for Amiens, the DQ-Line, and the Canal du Nord. She explained the significance of each battle both for Canada and the greater war effort. Being at each individual cemetery or monument where much of the battle took place certainly helped put these histories into perspective.

As a final end note, we stopped by a local cemetery to find a soldier for Katie Beaudette, where she gave a moving presentation on her soldier. She ended the presentation with a well-deserved toast of rum (of the variety he would have had available to him).

Au revoir,
Brandon Strnad

*There exists some meaning behind naming this successful offensive, spearheaded by the Canadians, Canada’s Hundred Days – the first “Hundred Day” campaign refers to Napoleon’s journey from France to the Battle of Waterloo, as from his landing to that last fateful battle, it was indeed Napoleon’s Hundred Days.