The fight of the Canadians at Langemarck and St. Julien in April, 1915, makes such a battle story as has sufficed, in other nations, to inspire song and tradition for centuries. In the words of Sir John French, the Canadians, by holding their ground when it did not seem humanly possible to hold it, “saved the situation,” kept the enemy out of Ypres, kept closed the road to Calais, and made a failure of German plans that otherwise were about to be successful.
The Canadian soldiers have indeed shown that they are second to none. They were put to as supreme a test as it would be possible for any army to meet with, for they fought overwhelming numbers under conditions that seemed to ensure annihilation. They fought on, and failed neither in courage, discipline, nor tenacity, although thousands of them fell.
The story of their unflinching heroism was told by Sir Max Aitken, the record officer serving with the Canadian division in France:
“The recent fighting in Flanders, 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 relevant facts, and the piecing together in a narrative both lucid and exact of much which, so near the event, is confused and blurred. But it is considered right that the mourning in Canada for husbands, sons or brothers who have given their lives for the Empire should have with as little reserve as military considerations allow the rare and precious consolation which, in the agony of bereavement, the record of the valor of their dead must bring, and indeed the mourning in Canada will be very widely spread, for the battle which raged for so many days in the neighborhood 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.
A REMARKABLE PERFORMANCE
“The Canadians have wrested the trenches over the bodies of the dead and earned 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 organization in which the study of military science is the exclusive pursuit of laborious lives.
“With what devotion, with a valor how desperate, with resourcefulness how cool and how frightful, the amateur soldier of Canada confronted overwhelming odds, may perhaps be made clear, even by a narrative so incomplete as the present.
“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 Thursday, April 22, 1915, the Canadian division held a line of roughly five thousand yards, extending in a northwesterly direction from the Ypres-Roulers railway, to the Ypres-Poekapelle road, and connecting at its terminus with the French troops. 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.