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The forgotten ruthlessness of Canada’s Great War soldiers (2018)
- Waterluvian 7y agoDidn't learn about this in school. Pretty pissed at how sanitized war history was. I think Canada was in a "littlest brother of the commonwealth with a lot to prove" position. Confederation was in 1867 but we weren't really a country until much later. We couldn't even declare war on our own. Just went wherever England went.
- Naga 7y agoCanada was actually the big brother of the Commonwealth. It was considered to be the "Eldest Daughter" of Britain. Remember, all the other dominions were in worse positions than Canada.
- DKnoll 7y agoThey did teach it, they just weren't callous enough to teach the moral judgement you've just made about the conduct of your anscestors while entire nations were trying to kill them.
- macintux 7y ago> ...entire nations were trying to kill them. That’s not what the article says. > Throughout the war, stretches of the Western Front observed an unofficial “live and let live” policy between Germans and their French or British enemies. By mutual agreement, both sides agreed not to attack the other unless ordered — and would even schedule truces for meals and bathroom breaks.
- DKnoll 7y agoThat's not what my great-great-grandfathers service record says, or the extremely long list of Canadians killed or injured in WW1. The German that shot him was probably just messing around, you're right.
- dhdidhdu 7y agoWell try reading some more.
- DKnoll 7y agoEven though you disagree with me, and probably my tone, this is a useless and unproductive comment.
- dang 7y agoPersonal attacks will get you banned here. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended?
- benj111 7y agoI don't think its quite fair to label this a personal attack, and I don't agree with it getting flagged. Your link also states "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation" Both their parent and GP were talking about reading conflicting things. Reading around to get a better sense of the truth of the matter would seem, reasonable. Of course a less pithy comment, where the meaning was clear would be best of all.
- dang 7y ago
- b_tterc_p 7y agoShould it be hard to imagine launching a war of that scale without inciting hatred of the enemy in your soldiers?
- dang 7y agoCan you please not take HN threads further into flamewar? That's in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. So is "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
- DKnoll 7y agoSorry Dan, I shouldn't have responded like that. I do think I was responding to the most plausible interpretation of what he said, but my tone was off. The comment I responded to describes Canadian history extremely inaccurately ('littlest brother of the commonwealth'), that this is wildly incorrect should be obvious to anyone educated in Canada. I like many others was taught all about Canadian exploits in WW1 and WW2, including their excellence at trench raiding, improvised weapons and feared reputation as 'shock troops.' Could be that's just Ontario (or my school district) but I'm fairly certain it's a well known part of Canadian history (at least for Canadians). Even the author of the article says we should not pass judgment given the circumstances. Have a good morning.
- checktheorder 7y agoI've always been of the opinion that Canada didn't really become a country until the Suez canal crisis. That was the first time that we took a principled stand on the world stage in defiance of the highly immoral actions of our mother country. We didn't merely quietly disagree with Britain and abstain from public comment. We loudly and publicly lead the international effort against Britain and its allies, and helped peacefully resolve the situation. Mentioning the Suez crisis is actually relevant to this discussion. The architect of the Suez peace, Canadian foreign affairs minister Lester Pearson, had spent his First World War career (and nearly the entire duration of that war) as a volunteer field medic. He spent his formative young-adult years seeing the immediate aftermath of modern battles that result when leaders fail to engage in good-faith diplomacy.
- nerdponx 7y agoI wonder why this came to be. At first my theory was that they were upset at being dragged across the ocean to fight a war they had nothing to do with, leading to a kind of personal vendetta against Germany for starting it. But that doesn't make much sense, because evidently the Australians didn't have the same reaction, and as I understand it the average German soldier was not much invested in their cause. I know that American soldiers only showed up at the end of the war, but did they have a similar reaction to the Canadians?
- jboles 7y agoI’m not sure how much it counts for, but the federation of Australia was barely 13 years old at that time. Furthermore it’s flag was also the Union Jack. When WW2 rolled around, the point was moot, with offensive forces literally on the doorstep - Darwin was bombed, and there were submarines inside Sydney’s harbour.
- Naga 7y agoThe Canadian flag was also the Union Jack until 1965!
- arcticbull 7y agoCanada had its own flag in addition to the Union Jack between 1868 and 1965. A fairly typical British colonial flag - similar to British Hong Kong [1, 2], Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony, etc. - with the Union Jack in the canton (upper-left quadrant) against a red background with a coat of arms in the bottom-right varying based on who was part of Canada at any given time. [3] [1] Illustration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959–1997)#/media/File:Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959–1997).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959–1997)#... [2] During Protests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959–1997)#/media/File:Protesters_waving_the_Hong_Kong_colonial_flag_in_front_of_China_liaison_office_in_Hong_Kong_02.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959–1997)#... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Canada#/media/File:Canadian_Red_Ensign_(1957–1965).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Canada#/media/File:Can...
- rexarex 7y agoCanadian here, I never learnt this in class. What a shame.
- hackermailman 7y agoThey also don't teach where Can soldiers fought Croatia during the Balkans mess of the 1990s because both sides denied it happened https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Medak_Pocket https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Medak_Pocket
- jacobush 7y agoOther downplayed and denied stuff happened in the Balkans during these times. I know of for instance Swedish officers having "telecommunications problems" when ordered by home command to stand down and let a hospital be taken. They "never received" that order and stood their ground.
- redis_mlc 7y agoFor those who don't know what a mess it was in the Balkans in the 90s, this should give you some idea: - at times non-American Generals were in charge of the UN forces. So what did they do? They moved their country forces to the rear, and sent "coalition" forces into battle. The reason was that any casualties (even 2 or 3 dead) would be a political crisis at home (true across most European nations.) - the Albanian underground had to import a 50 cal AA gun from the US. What for? To shoot at UN helicopters attacking their citizens. And guess what ... it worked - the UN stopped flying helicopters after their ground search for it failed. (Think about it for a second - who else had helicopters to shoot down besides the UN?) - the US did an airstrike on the Chinese Embassy ... because they were relaying radio signal traffic to local forces fighting the UN. This caused a major international incident, but nobody seriously denies ... that the Chinese were involved in radio signal intercepts for locals. - The UN agreed to cease-fires with enemy forces and allowed them to enter refugee camps and hospitals. Guess what happened next. Good on the Swedes ... there wasn't much courage going around at the time.
- carrozo 7y agoIs the ‘polite Canadian’ (“Sorry!”) trope perhaps an overcompensation for this? Or am I creating an urban legend?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- peteretep 7y agoPoliteness and bloodlust often go hand in hand, cf the Brits and the Japanese
- bilbo0s 7y agoThat's unfair. Everyone is polite, and "bloodthirsty" at different times. The Swiss, the French, the Kenyans, the Mauritians, the Indonesians, the Chileans, literally everyone on earth. Every nation and every human is faced with that dichotomous state of being. British are no more polite, or bloodthirsty than Americans. Japanese are no more polite, or bloodthirsty than Canadians or Koreans. What you allude to is a very human failure, and is present in every society on earth.
- jjtheblunt 7y agoI wonder where that comes from: outside Canada, a perception I'm aware of is a country big on marketing itself but ironic in its realities: clubbing seals for fur, biggest exporter of asbestos to third world countries, shamelessly, sponsor of trophy hunts on Canadian soil, and so on. Very confusing set of seemingly contradictory facts? I don't know how to think of it.
- wolco 7y agoCanada is a country of contradictions found by two different very different groups of people. Canada is a compromise and only exists because of will and tolerance and compromise. Everything makes logical sense with details. Native populations through treaties have the right to hunt. Canada wanting to manage populations sets limits. This creates a lotto system. Winners sell them to big game US hunters and the tribe gets the profit. The asbesto mines are in the French part of Canada which makes shutting them down politically difficult. Canada is a collectiom of different people who figured out how to get along.
- jasonhansel 7y ago> Tim Cook, the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum. In an alternate universe...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- DenisM 7y agoIn the “War and Peace” there is a passage reading “having quickly finished off the injured, soldiers cleared out the gate so the [transport] could pass unimpeded”. Read this a few times, and then return to the rest my comment... ... execution of wounded prisoners did not even warrant a whole sentence. That’s literally all Tolstoy wrote about it. I don’t think he was callous, I think at the time it was the norm and didn’t warrant a mention except in this case the unpleasant task was delaying the transport. ^ citing from memory ^^ this is the Napoleonic war of 1812. At least 100 years later the brutality deserved mention.
- BurningFrog 7y agoMaybe back then killing the injured was mostly an act of mercy. There was no one coming to heal them. Modern medicine wasn't invented. They were spared hours of slow death.
- DenisM 7y agoNope. The rest of the book showed plenty of the wounded being treated (however well, still not killed). And this was in Moscow just as it was conquered - plenty of places to treat and there were enough inhabitants in the city who would see to it. But even if you’re right, don’t you think it deserved more than half-sentence?
- BurningFrog 7y agoOK, just trying some contrarian speculation, as I do.
- vinceguidry 7y agoAs someone who also often engages in contrarian speculation and is often wrong about it, my advice to you is to thank the person with the correct perspective for sharing it. If they are sufficiently civilized, they will thank you for adding to the discussion even though it was wrong. For your purposes, it would be more useful to recognize when you're doing this kind of probably-wrong analysis and make the relevant qualifying announcements in your post. It's useful to do, it's even more useful when done in a self-aware fashion. Particularly, it makes it easier for the person with the correct understanding to share it without feeling like they're pissing into the wind. My new favorite phrase is, "correct me if I'm wrong here, but..."
- AlexCoventry 7y agoIn Goodbye Darkness, William Manchester tells similar stories of Southerners: > The Marine Corps had always recruited a disproportionate number of men from the South, where the military traditions of the early 1860s had never died. Later I met many Raiders like that, and Coffey was typical: tall, lanky, and fair haired, with a mad grin and dancing, rain-colored eyes full of shattered light. They were born killers; in the Raider battalions, in violation of orders, they would penetrate deep behind Japanese lines at night, looking for two Nips sacked out together. Then they would cut the throat of one and leave the other to find the corpse in the morning. This was brilliant psychological warfare, but it was also, of course, extremely dangerous. In combat these Southerners would charge fearlessly with the shrill rebel yell of their great-grandfathers, and they loved the bayonet. How my father's side defeated my mother's side in the Civil War will always mystify me.
- rangibaby 7y agoWarriors win fights, logistics win wars, or something like that
- watwut 7y ago> How my father's side defeated my mother's side in the Civil War will always mystify me. Strategy, logistics, own warriors who were not actually cowardly either and did actually fought and killed too. Also, military discipline is an advantage overall I heard. Soldiers eager to break it in order to get to few kills are oftentimes less of an advantage.
- jt2190 7y ago> At the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, visitors can see a case filled with the fearsome homemade weapons that Canadians trench raiders plunged into the faces and chests of their enemy: Meat cleavers, push daggers and spiked clubs. I saw similar items at the RCR museum in London, Ontario years ago. Definitely worth a visit. http://www.thercrmuseum.ca/en-ca/ http://www.thercrmuseum.ca/en-ca/
- staticautomatic 7y agoMy German grandfather was born in an internment camp on Vancouver Island, not unlike what the Americans did to the Japanese in WWII.
- ncphillips 7y agoIIRC Canada also had Japanese internment camps on the west coast
- goodcanadian 7y agoThere was some interment of Germans during WWI, and of Japanese during WWII.
- rebuilder 7y agoWW1 just boggles the mind. The sheer slaughter that came from armies trying to adapt to the new reality of mass warfare and new weaponry seems incomprehensible, maybe because of how coldly logical it was. You read these accounts of charges on fortified machine gun positions across flat fields, the only cover being the mounds of bodies that eventually piled up, and you wonder how anyone could go into that. I've been wondering how the story of Sleeping Beauty would play out if she'd gone to sleep in, say, 1846 or so, waking up just after the end of WW2. Imagine a royal family held in a time capsule emerging to demand their kingdom back from people who've just gone through the absolute hell raised by the collapse of the old monarchies, twice. What would that fairy tale look like?
- trevyn 7y ago>you wonder how anyone could go into that They Shall Not Grow Old sheds some visceral light on this — soldiers are very intentionally funneled through a process taking them from normal life to the front line in a way that makes the next step the natural, logical thing to do in that situation, and by the time the full gore of the front line fighting is realized, they are partially acclimated to it, and partially pushed from behind into the melee. It’s a calculated psychological trip.
- lostlogin 7y agoThe podcast Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin is fantastic too. I thought I had a general idea of what happened in WW1, I was very wrong.
- kkarakk 7y agoYou know how people today generally can't wrap their head around data driven results and AI generated photography/AR lenses? They treat it like magic or as not relevant to them. Now instead of a smartphone, it's an automatic belt fed gun being aimed at your collective imaginary ancestor - someone who's fired a bolt operated gun at best and who has only written accounts(if they can read) or verbal rumors of the effect of such weaponry. Even if they were firing it, all you would see is your gun spitting bullets out steadily and people charging at you dropping on their faces like puppets with their strings cut. It would be hard to process in the moment.
- ericd 7y agoA bit off topic, but I recommend that anyone interested in this watch They Shall Not Grow Old (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds) - it's an excellent documentary, a bit of a passion project by Peter Jackson to polish up a lot of old WW1 footage (normalized the frame rate, since it was hand cranked, colorize, and add sound - he hired lip readers and voice actors from the same regions as the filmed soldiers). It makes it seem much more relatable and real, in a way that comically-fast black and white footage really doesn't.
- macintux 7y agoAn interesting look at the film and Jackson’s selectivity: https://kottke.org/18/12/against-peter-jacksons-they-shall-not-grow-old https://kottke.org/18/12/against-peter-jacksons-they-shall-n...
- drtillberg 7y agoOther notable works describing WWI: Malins, How I Filmed the War (1920)[1][2]. Davis, Into the Silence, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest (2012)[3] [1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30285/30285-h/30285-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30285/30285-h/30285-h.htm [2] https://librivox.org/how-i-filmed-the-war-by-geoffrey-h-malins/ https://librivox.org/how-i-filmed-the-war-by-geoffrey-h-mali... [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11602442-into-the-silence https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11602442-into-the-silenc...
- nabla9 7y agoIt's a classic piece written by a Vietnam War veteran: Why Men Love War (1984) By William Broyles, Jr. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a28718/why-men-love-war/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a28718/why-men-lo... Boyles is a screenwriter who was involved in writing in the movies like Apollo 13, Cast Away, Jarhead, and Saving Private Ryan.
- visiblink 7y agoIt's a little odd to characterize these volunteers as 'Canadians,' and Cook should know it. The majority of the recruits were first-generation immigrants from the British Isles. Few native-born Canadians volunteered. So whatever was going on over there was the product of that recent immigrant experience. That's interesting in itself, but puts a different gloss on this than we might get from those who would like to say something about Canadians, the Canadian mentality, and Canadian nationality from this. Most Canadians stayed home during WWI. Most recently-arrived Brits went to Europe to fight for their country.