Marking 100 years since the end of the First World War
The same bugle that signalled the end of the First World War in Belgium will sound in Edmonton at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11 to mark the end of hostilities 100 years ago.
“The Mons Bugle’s call marked the end of one of the deadliest conflicts in human history,” said Capt. Rick Dumas, adjutant of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment (4th Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry).
The Mons Bugle is on display at the Loyal Edmonton Regiment Military Museum in the Prince of Wales Armoury’s Heritage Centre. It sounds at Remembrance Day services annually when a Loyal Edmonton Regiment member plays the Last Post (signalling the day’s end) and Reveille (it’s a new day).
The military and civilian casualties in the 1914-18 war was about 40 million, with an estimated 15 million to 19 million deaths and some 23 million wounded military personnel.
Some nine million to 11 million military personnel lost their lives and about eight million civilians died, including about six million due to famine and disease.
Conflict historian Richard Darroch says Canadian troops quickly established a fearsome First World War reputation and the Germans gave them a special name: storm troops.
“The Canadians were consistently victorious on the battlefield, despite the fact that the British high command used them as cannon fodder,” Darroch says. “Time and again they achieved seemingly impossible tasks after everyone else had tried and failed.”
While allies fled, Canadians held the line at Ypres, Belgium, in April 1915 during the war’s first gas attacks. Officers ordered their men to urinate on their puttees or handkerchiefs and wrap them round their noses and mouths.
“The ammonia checked the worst effects of the chlorine and Canadian Corps troops fought on,” Darroch said. “They foiled a determined German effort to achieve a decisive breakthrough. Right then and there they started building a reputation as hard fighters.”
In Edmonton, popular former mayor William Griesbach signed up at the outbreak of hostilities. He was an officer in the Alberta Dragoons and the Dragoons volunteered as a unit.
In December 1914, Griesbach was given command of the justformed 49th Battalion (Edmonton Regiment) and some 1,000 men were recruited in eight days.
The unit arrived in France on Oct. 9, 1915, and took part in battles that included Vimy Ridge, Arras, the Third Battle of Ypres and the liberation of Mons, Belgium.
“Unlike most British officers, who did not treat their men well, Griesbach was liked by his soldiers,” said David Haas, an Edmonton playwright and former lawyer with 10 years regular army service and 15 years as a reservist.
In 1917, the much-decorated Griesbach was promoted to brigadier-general and assigned command of the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade of the 1st Canadian Division.
The Canadians from Aug. 8, 1918 spearheaded the allied pursuit of the retreating Germans, known as Canada’s Hundred Days Offence.
Credit was given to Canada’s “dream team” of senior leaders, Sir Arthur Currie, a part-time soldier from B.C. whose main background was real estate, and his boss, Lord Julian Byng, later the Governor General to Canada.
Both despised the tactics of British high command, whose frontal assaults seemed to do little but create “forests of headstones,” as Darroch described it.
The duo developed effective ideas, such as increasing the number of guns on their frontage; having the assaults using training mock-ups; perfecting the “creeping barrage” fire by using aerial reconnaissance and encouraging platoon commanders to use initiative and attack in loose formations.
“Many of the Canadian troops had come from farms and had never met anyone from another province,” Haas said. “Their newfound spirit of being Canadian enhanced morale.”
But in defeating parts of 47 German divisions and cracking seemingly impenetrable positions, the Canadian Corps sustained more than 45,000 casualties. It was not only the highest casualty rate of the war, but the worst in subsequent Canadian military history.
According to Statistics Canada, of the 4,050 who served with the 49th Battalion (Edmonton Regiment), 977 were killed in action.
The war ended when Canadians retook Mons, the town the British were forced to retreat from at the start of the war.
It was a coal-mining town whose resources had been used for four years to field Germany’s war effort.
“Capturing Mons at the end of the war was hugely symbolic,” Haas said. “It was to have been the German gateway to Paris and the coast, where Commonwealth troops were arriving.”
Word spread among troops on Nov. 11, 1918, that a ceasefire had been set for 11 a.m. Sadly, Canadian Private George Price, 25, of the 29th (Northwest) Battalion, was shot by a sniper near Mons and died at 10:58, two minutes before the armistice ending the war took effect.
Every night for a nearly a century, the bugle has played The Last Post at Belgium’s Menin Gate in Ieper-Ypres in honour of the 55,000 Commonwealth soldiers killed in action and who have no known grave. They include 6,940 Canadians.