Ypres at 100: A poem, a flower and Canadian identity

For Canada, the First World War really started on April 23-24, 1915. Until then, Canadian troops had been engaged in limited skirmishes and lost a few hundred lives.

But on that and the following days to early May, in what became known as the Second Battle of Ypres, Canadian troops experienced some of the worst hand-to-hand combat and most horrendous casualties of the whole war.

More than 6,000 casualties with 1,000 dead meant that the Canadians suffered very heavy losses. One historian has appropriately entitled his book about this battle, "Baptism of Fire."

After the first weeks of August 1914, when the German military charged through Belgium but could not take Paris, the western front quickly became a stalemate. Soon both sides dug in, figuratively and actually.

Trenches became the norm for the defensive war that ensued along a line stretching from the Belgian coast to Switzerland. By Christmas 1914, the war was not only not over, as anticipated, but both sides were seeking ways to overwhelm the dug-in positions of their opponents.

Artillery pounded from behind each side to disrupt and weaken the defensive lines as well as to destroy warning wires and lines of communication. The system of trenches became a dense network comprising mostly three roughly parallel rows with communication and supply trenches running roughly at right angles.

One soldier who fought at Ypres tried to explain it to his brother in June 1915.

“If one could only see the vast extent of country that has to be covered or that endless line of trenches which seem to stretch both on the left and right almost to nowhere," he wrote. "Then, one would fully understand the stiff proposition that has to be faced as at night-time when all along the firing line (both ours and the enemy’s), you see Star shells go up for miles and miles along that seeming endless line.”

Near the Belgian village of Ypres, in the province of Flanders, both sides sought to break the stalemate. The Ypres salient consisted of a curve about 25 kilometres long.

The Germans held the higher ground while French and British troops were reinforced or replaced by Canadian battalions along an approximately four-kilometre section.

The Canadians had gathered and trained at Valcartier, Que., and then in October 1914 had shipped out to England. On Salisbury Plain, they trained further in musketry, trench warfare, bayonet charges and night reconnaissance.

They were physically well prepared by the time they shipped to France and moved to the front in Flanders. They had already experienced endless rain, cold, mud and strenuous marches carrying 60-pound packs.

What they were not prepared for was the smell of decaying corpses, the flying pieces of bodies, the sprouting of blood from ears, the time without food or knowing whether one was returning to one’s own trenches or that of the enemies’ in the dark.

On April 15, before the battle, a member of the Canadian 5th Battalion reported, writing about relieving some French units, on the horror.

“Just over the parapet about 40 yards away lay over 300 dead Germans, who had been lying there since last October and when the sun rose, believe me, the stench was simply awful," he wrote. "Also in our trench there were hundreds of German and French just buried about a foot deep and you could not dig to improve the trench without striking a dead body.”

On April 22, the Germans initiated an attack because they wanted to be sure that no troops would be shifted eastward to help the Russians on their second front. They employed a huge artillery barrage and then released gas before attacking the Allied positions.

The French retreated because of the gas and the Germans started to advance though some of their own troops were caught in the gas that the wind had not moved quickly enough.

Many authors claim that this was the first use of poisonous gas, but in fact the French had unsuccessfully tried to employ it during the fall of 1914 as had the Germans on the eastern front. However, this was the first major battle wherein gas made a difference, serving as a psychological weapon as much as a military one.

The Canadians had to try to fill the gap left by the retreating French, as well as to stem the German advance.

“It is the bloodiest battle of the war, worse than Mons (where the British had their first serious engagement in September 1914). We were mowed down like wheat," one soldier reported. "... We had to advance over a level field for about a thousand yards with not so much as a blade of grass to hide behind. It was simply murder."

Another wrote, “People at home have no idea what a modern battle is like, but take it from me, it is simply hell on earth.”

Repeatedly soldiers used the term “hell” because they could not find more precise words to describe their experiences of groping about in the dark, with flares and shells whizzing by, no food for days, and heavy packs to drag along.

When wounded, they listed what they lost: knives, razors, cigarette cases and even souvenirs like German helmets and insignia. We only learn the latter by reading diaries, letters home or to siblings.

Although in late 1914, these soldiers had wanted desperately to fight “the Huns [slang for Germans]”, after this first battle, some were not so sure. Indeed, some began to fear the Germans, as well as to hate them.

“The Germans are just as thick now as they were last fall. They must grow them on trees," One soldier wrote to his mother and family in May 1915. "They don’t care how many gets killed, they just keep coming on as if they were a mob at a bargain sale.”

What occurred starting with Ypres for some combatants was a slow process of disillusionment with the war’s purpose and conditions. Most would continue to “do their bit,” but fatalism slowly replaced enthusiasm — the war stopped being an adventure.

The legacy of Ypres for Canadians appears in many ways. One relates to a stretcher bearer named Norman Bethune from Gravenhurst. He would participate in many more wars though he claimed he hated war. Wounded in his left leg by shrapnel at Ypres, he returned to Canada to continue his medical education and would eventually develop important instruments to help repair war damage to the human body.

He provided medical aid during the civil wars in Spain and China. Though more remembered in China than Canada, Ypres left its mark on Bethune, as it did on so many soldiers who discovered the reality of war is far different from its heroic portrayal.

A legacy from Ypres stronger than the horror, though, is undoubtedly a poem written in honour of a chum killed during the fighting. On May 3, 1915, John McCrae, a medical corps member of the Canadian artillery brigade wrote a simple poem, one of thousands written by soldiers during this conflict.

Known to all school children as “In Flanders Fields,” it was not published until December 1915, then slowly attained recognition and made the red poppy the symbol of remembrance for the dead.

What should we remember as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Second Battle of Ypres? Certainly, we should not celebrate the war and its battles, but instead should reflect on lives not lived, on bodies maimed and on minds twisted.

Dieter K. Buse is professor emeritus, history, Laurentian University and has prepared a book on a Canadian family’s experiences during the First World War.