The Canadian Corps: Great War Commands

A recent book on the Canadian Corps is now available in PDF format in a free download from the Regimental Rogue. Hopefully this is the start of a good thing !

The 1st. Battalion

Yes I have been researching the 1st. Battalion with the idea of writing a history of this unit. Why? Perhaps the simplest reason is that no history of the 1st. Battalion has ever been written. Mind you, the 18th. Battalion which was recruited from Southwestern Ontario as well also does not have a published history. This somewhat makes them unique of all the other 48 Battalions (1) that saw active service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the Great War. One Battalion at a time.

There is more documentation available now than ever before.We will see the 100th. Anniversary of the end of the First World War on November 11, 2018. Library and Archives Canada has released a huge amount of material from attestation papers to unit diaries. There is a great deal more that needs to be made available. John Babcock was the last man standing from all who served in the C.E.F. There are no more remaining.

1st. Battalion, Salisbury, England, 1915. Library and Archives Canada.

Canadian memory of the Great War over the last 90 odd years has been shaped then re-evaluated, and re-evaluated again. Once again historians are looking at the war. Opinions on how the battles changed, and defined Canadian nationalism, has been hotly debated over the last few years.The debate goes on.

What is known is that Canada, and particularly the 1st. Battalion, paid a butcher’s bill from 1915 until November 11, 1918. In a country of 7 to 8 million people Canada enlisted around 620,000 men and women into the Canadian Corps. That figure does not count those who served in Imperial services. The highest percentage of casualties were of course “the poor bloody infantry”.  There was no more dangerous spot to be in than in the infantry.

The 1st. Battalion holds the dubious distinction of being the single most devastated battalion in the Corps. From the spring of 1915 to 1918 6,449 of the rank and file passed through the battalion.(2) If we take battalion strength as 1,000 men that means that the 1st. Battalion was destroyed six times through the war. Of course, a statement like this is not always accurate as the battalion was not ever wiped out in one battle as were the Newfoundlanders. Instead this represents a constant bleeding of manpower as the war dragged on.

When you read an outline of the battalion you can understand why kids tend to fall asleep during history class. There must be more to it than that!

(1) There were many more than 50 battalions recruited; however, Currie resisted  re-organizing the Corps into an Army with more and smaller divisions in favour of larger divisions within the existing Corps. So newer battalions were broken up as reinforcements for the 50 active frontline battalions.
(2) Tim Cook, “Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting The Great War 1917-1918”, Viking Canada 2008, p. 614.

Flags of the 1st. & 18th. Battalions in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, Ontario.

Cooking For An Army

There is a great deal of information out there on the “sharp end”.  That is to say the infantryman in battle. So articles on other aspects of military life tend to catch my eye. As any great general knows supply can be the most difficult part of a campaign. This was one of the things that the Canadian Corps became very good at. This excerpt from the “Dutton Advance. Feb. 1917” caught my eye:


4,000 lbs. fresh meat and bacon
1,200 lbs. beans
1,500 loaves of bread
65 bags of potatoes
1,400 lbs. of sugar
400 lbs of coffee
100 lbs. of tea
300 gallons of milk
500 lbs. of butter
500 lbs. of oatmeal
Some of the staples provided  for a battalion en route Camp Borden, Ont., to Halifax, N.S.


“The Grand Trunk commissary car is the largest  traveling kitchen ever devised. It is eighty feet long, has a full sized hotel range ten feet in length, steam cooking apparatus, and sixty foot refrigerator space and store room capacity for many tons of provisions. Eight cooks work in it without confusion, while a passageway running the whole length of the car allows the military waiters to pass on their way to and from the coaches. When a battalion entrains the Commissary Department is always the subject of keen interest among the men in khaki. The military cooks are for the time being out of action. The comfort of the men, so far as diet is concerned, depends upon the railway’s crew, in charge of a specially chosen steward.  The system of service is explained to the soldiers by the steward at the first meal on the train. The non-commissioned officer in each coach appoints his own waiters. Punctually, as the minute hand of the watch reaches the meal hour the waiters from the first car on the train and the last car walk through to the commissary. The cooks have been preparing for hours and everything is ready and piping hot. Along the great counter is spread the various portions of the meal. It is breakfast time and the morning menu calls for oatmeal porridge, meats, potatoes, bread and butter, jam,, and coffee. Two men take the big trays of meats and potatoes, another the bread, already sliced and buttered, another the porridge, another the coffee and so to the end. As soon as the first two coaches have been supplied two more squads of waiters arrive until all are served. Within fifteen minutes every man on the train is busy with his meal. Serving over twelve hundred men in fifteen minutes without fuss or furore means organization and that is the secret of this railway’s method of handling the problem. The rule is that every man shall be amply supplied and nothing delights the cook more than to see the boys relish some favourite dish so well that that they come back for “more”. Three fine meals a day make happy interludes on the long rail journeys. The appreciation of the officers and men for the service given makes the hard work necessary in carrying out the task a pleasure to the men concerned.”

I would not doubt that many soldiers in the trenches probably looked back at their train trips with some nostalgia.

After The Great War- Controversy

The first controversy was begun by American Brigadier Henry Reilly who argued that the Great War was won by the United States. The second is ongoing and revolves around Sir Douglas Haig and the effectiveness of British officers during the war.

Needless to say, British and Canadian officers viewed Reilly’s views as “moonshine” (Kenneth Radley, We Lead Others Follow: First Canadian Division 1914-1918 p.365). There have been some comparisons between the American performance during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and the Canadian Corps during the 100 days. It shows the difference between a unit that benefited from training, experience, and the hard fighting of the previous years to a unit that had the numbers but lacked the experience.

Category                                      Meuse-Argonne       100 Days    

Number of troops engaged              650,000              105,000
Duration of operation(days)                 47                      100 
Maximum advance(miles)                    34                       86 
German divisions defeated                   46                       47 
Casualties suffered  for
Every German division                       2,170                    975
Total battle casualties                      100,000                47,830
Prisoners captured                            16,000                31,537
Guns captured                                     468                      623
Machine-guns captured                     2,864                   2,842
Trench mortars captured                     117                      336

There seems to be a re-evaluation on-going around Sir Douglas Haig and the British officer corps. For Canada this re-evaluation seems to center on the fact that in 1915 most of the senior officers(especially the staff officers) were British, and a large percentage of the infantrymen were as well. The English born recruits were largely veterans who had served in English regiments.  They provided the early stiffening that was needed in the First Division through 1915. By all accounts the Canadians were lucky in the officers that they received. Particularly in Sir Julian Byng. He was not a Colonel Blimp in any way.

Some Background Before We Go Any Farther (part 1)

Before I go any further perhaps I should use the nest couple of blogs to set some background information for those who are not familiar with what I could call ”military speak”. We will start with the abbreviations which you will run into.  When one thinks of the Corps one tends to think of the  “sharp end”  - the infantryman. By 1918 there was more involved than simply pointing the infantryman towards the enemy and yelling charge.


2IC     second in command
A         Administration/Administrative
A & Q    Administration & Quartermaster
AA & QMC  Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General
ACI      Army Council Instruction
ADC   Aide-de-Camp
ADMI   Assistant Director of Military Intelligence
ANZAC    Australia New Zealand Army Corps
APM    Assistant Provost Marshall
ASC   Army Service Corps
BEF   British Expeditionary Force
BGGS  Brigadier-General General Staff
BM   Brigadier Major
BMGO    Brigade Machine-Gun Officer
C-in-C   Commander-in-Chief
CB   Commander of the Bath
CCRC  Canadian Corps Reinforcement Camp
CE   Canadian Engineers
CEF   Canadian Expeditionary Force
CFA  Canadian Field Artillery
CGS  Chief of the General Staff
CIGS   Chief of the Imperial General Staff
CMG  Commander of the Order of St. Michael & St. George
CO   Commanding Officer
CRA  Commander Royal Artillery
CRE  Commander Royal Engineers
DA & QMC  Deputy Adjutant  and Quartermaster General
DAAG  Deputy Assistant Adjutant  General
DAC  Divisional Ammunition Column
DMGO  Divisional Machine-Gun Officer
DSO  Distinguished Service Order
FOO  Forward Observation Officer
FSR  Field Service Regulations
G/GS  General Staff
GHQ   General Headquarters
GOC (GOsC)  General Officer(s) Commanding
GOCRA  General Officer Commanding Royal Artillery
GSO1 General Staff Officer (1st grade)
GSO2  General Staff Officer (2nd. grade )
GSO3  General Staff Officer (3rd. Grade)
HE  High Explosive
HQ  Headquarters
IGT  Inspector-General Training
IO  Intelligence Officer
LO Liaison Officer
LOB  Left out of Battle
MC  Military Cross
MGGS  Major-General General Staff
MO  Medical Officer
NCO  Non-Commissioned Officer
NDHQ  National Defense Headquarters
OC   Officer Commanding
OP  Observation Post
OR(s)  Other Rank(s)
p.s.c.  passed staff college
Q/QM  Quartermaster
RAF  Royal Air Force
RCD  Royal Canadian Dragoons
RCHA  Royal Canadian Horse Artillery
RCR  Royal Canadian Regiment
RE  Royal Engineers
RFA  Royal Field Artillery
RFC  Royal Flying Corps
RMC  Royal Military College
RUSI  Royal United States Institute
SAA  Small Arms Ammunition
SD  Staff Duties
TEWT(s)  Tactical  Exercise(s) without Troops
TO  Transport Officer
VC  Victoria Cross