Wounded Canadian soldiers on their way to an aid post during the Battle of Passchendaele, November of 1917.
This series commemorates the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele and Canada's role in the First World War and its enduring legacy.
"There ain't many of us together now," wrote William Hape of the 85th Battalion, an infantry unit that drew most of its men from the Maritimes. Private Hape wrote in late February of 1918 about how most of his comrades had been killed in the relentless fighting or maimed by bullets, shells and poison gas.
Death came with little warning in the trenches of the Western Front during the First World War. Canada fielded an enormous fighting force of more than 620,000 soldiers and a few thousand nurses, and this from a country of just eight million. Of the 425,000 Canadians who went overseas during the war, about 65,000 were killed or died of their wounds. Even victories like Vimy in April of 1917 or Amiens in August of 1918 resulted in more than 10,000 casualties each.
The large-scale battles led to appalling carnage, but much of the war was characterized by long periods of boredom punctuated by brief moments of terror while serving in the trenches. After any period of time at the front, soldiers suffered from acute sleep deprivation. In the summer, the heat and flies plagued the men. In the winter, they stood in mud and slush, and worried about their feet rotting from constant wetness and lack of circulation in what was called trench foot. All year round, they scratched at body lice. When these deprivations were combined with soldiers being killed indiscriminately by snipers and shells, soldiers were pushed to the brink of exhaustion.
Some broke under the strain. About 15,000 Canadians succumbed to what was called shell shock. It was a difficult illness to diagnose. Medical officers and authorities at first thought it was a physical wound, with shell explosions causing concussions and microscopic brain lesions. It was, in some cases, but men who were not near the front also succumbed. They were suffering from what is now called stress injuries. Medical services struggled to treat the soldiers, since almost everyone at the front was worn down, traumatized and close to breaking down.
Shell-shocked soldiers suffered nightmares, stuttering, paralysis of limbs and even more severe manifestations. The treatment evolved during the war, and has gone down in history as being cruel and vicious, with some soldiers verbally and physically abused, while others were electrocuted to restore lost voices, but most often the treatment was rest close to the front. It often led to recovery, although no one kept track of men who relapsed after returning to the trenches.
While shell shock has been a focus of much postwar literature, poetry, plays and now films, perhaps the more important question was how did the vast majority of soldiers cope with and endure the strain?
Soldiers were compelled to keep fighting for a number of reasons. There was a firm hierarchy in the army. Soldiers were trained to obey and officers had military law to ensure compliance. Minor infractions could be punished heavily and with little recourse, while more significant crimes, such as striking an officer or running away from the front, could result in the death penalty. Some 25 Canadians were executed by firing squad during the course of the war. Some soldiers stayed in line with this ultimate threat held over their head, but most soldiers were not motivated by such brutal actions and complained bitterly about the Draconian punishments in private letters and diaries.
More often, officers led by example instead of coercion. The junior officers, lieutenants and captains, were killed at a higher rate than their own men because they led from the front. Throughout the war, officers were trained to exert a paternalistic care for their men – to get them food and a billet behind the lines before they took care of themselves – and most did.
There were also small rewards that reinforced the power structure. Cigarettes were important and were issued as an official ration. Everyone smoked, all day, all the time. It was one of the few pleasures and it masked the stench of unwashed bodies and rotting corpses. Strong battle rum was just as important. The overproof rum burned all the way down, but it kept soldiers going, especially in the misery of places like the Somme or Passchendaele. Officers doled out rum in the morning and at night in a ritualized process, with old hands and good men receiving more, and those in the bad books having their share withheld until they smartened up.
Other rewards included periodic leave to Britain, breaks from the front on training courses, and even gallantry medals for heroic deeds. More mundane but essential tools of morale were the crucial letters from loved ones at home and care packages filled with treats. Lieutenant John House, who broke off his studies at Queen's University as a geological engineer to enlist, wrote to a chum at home in June of 1917 that the care packages brightened the lives of the "many lads who have to live like moles."
As a shield against the strain of war, the soldiers developed their own vibrant culture infused with gallows humour, perhaps not unbefitting soldiers who lived in sites of industrialized slaughter. In and out of the front-line trenches, there was a manly jousting and ribbing among the soldiers that sometimes bordered on the callous. Soldiers joked and sang about death, as it was everywhere.
Rotting bodies jutted from the trench walls and the Canadians lost their natural revulsion to these corpses over time. "We are all used to dead bodies or pieces of men, so much so that we are not troubled by the sight of them," wrote Canadian infantryman Louis Keene. "There was a right hand sticking out of the trench in the position of a man trying to shake hands with you, and as the men filed out they would often grip it and say, 'So long, old top, we'll be back again soon.'"
Soldiers also embraced death with a fatalistic view on survival. The common phrase, "You'll get it when your number's up," was a nonchalant swipe that the soldiers' fate was likely one of death, but not to worry about it until that day came. If your number was up, or your name was on a bullet, your destiny was already written, so one might as well keep soldiering on until the end.
But the soldiers' culture was not just seeped in death. There was a vibrant oral culture where soldiers talked, chatted and spread rumours. They also sang, day and night. Singing together forged bonds within the isolated tribe in the trenches, and the manly soldiers' songs were about women, drink, the strain of the war and almost anything. They were often vulgar and sexist – which made them all the more popular with the soldiers.
The soldiers had all manner of coping mechanisms, from being sports-mad behind the lines, to putting on theatre plays that involved cross-dressing and stand-up comedians, to even publishing their own newspapers in the trenches with names like The Listening Post and The Dead Horse Corner Gazette.
The soldiers refused to be victims in the terrible war of carnage and destruction. While the losses were cripplingly high and death was ever present, soldiers clung to life. Some broke under the strain, but most endured in conditions we can scarcely believe today, 100 years later.
Tim Cook is the author of 10 books of military history, including Vimy: The Battle and the Legend (2017).