The fighting in April, in which the Canadians played so glorious a part, cannot, of course, be described with precision of military detail until time has made possible the co-ordination of all the relevant diaries, and the piecing together in a narrative both lucid and exact of much which is confused and blurred.[[1]]
Map of Ypres and area
The battle which raged for so many days in the neighbourhood of Ypres was bloody, even as men appraise battles in this callous and life-engulfing war. But as long as brave deeds retain the power to fire the blood of Anglo-Saxons, the stand made by the Canadians in those desperate days will be told by fathers to their sons; for in the military records of Canada this defence will shine as brightly as, in the records of the British Army, the stubborn valour with which Sir James Macdonnel and the Guards beat back from Hougoumont the Division of Foy and the Army Corps of Reille.
The Canadians wrested from the trenches, over the bodies of the dead and maimed, the right to stand side by side with the superb troops who, in the first battle of Ypres, broke and drove before them the flower of the Prussian Guards.
Looked at from any point, the performance would be remarkable. It is amazing to soldiers, when the genesis and composition of the Canadian Division are considered. It contained, no doubt, a sprinkling of South African veterans, but it consisted in the main of men who were admirable raw material, but who at the outbreak of war were neither disciplined nor trained, as men count discipline and training in these days of scientific warfare.
It was, it is true, commanded by a distinguished English general. Its staff was supplemented, without being replaced, by some brilliant British staff officers. But in its higher and regimental commands were to be found lawyers, college professors, business men, and real estate agents, ready with cool self-confidence to do battle against an organisation in which the study of military science is the exclusive pursuit of laborious lives. With what devotion, with a valour how desperate, with resourcefulness how cool and how fruitful, the amateur soldiers of Canada confronted overwhelming odds may, perhaps, be made clear even by a narrative so incomplete as this.
The salient of Ypres has become familiar to all students of the campaign in Flanders. Like all salients, it was, and was known to be, a source of weakness to the forces holding it; but the reasons which have led to its retention are apparent, and need not be explained.
On April 22nd the Canadian Division held a line of, roughly, five thousand yards, extending in a north-westerly direction from the Ypres-Roulers railway to the Ypres-Poelcappelle road, and connecting at its terminus with the French troops.[[2]] The Division consisted of three infantry brigades, in addition to the artillery brigades. Of the infantry brigades the first was in reserve, the second was on the right, and the third established contact with the Allies at the point indicated above.