Vincent J. Curtis
25 Sept 2018
They’re all dead now.
Every last one of them. Not a
single survivor of the Great War remains.
But, a hundred years ago…
November 1-2, 1918, at Valenciennes, the Canadian Corps
fought its last major, set-piece battle.
General Currie, as was his wont, sought to minimize casualties, and
preceded the attack with an extremely heavy bombardment upon the heights of
Mont Houy, the key terrain south of the town.
When the 4th Canadian Division swept up the heights, the
German defenses of the entire Hermann Line collapsed, and the German army began
a general withdrawal eastward. The final
pursuit to Mons began.
Battle then took on a rhythm. The Germans would withdraw in the night and
the Canadian Corps would advance to contact from dawn till about noon. The advance patrols would contact the German
rearguard and halt, awaiting the artillery and main force to come up. The rest of the day was spent clearing out
the defensive posts and then consolidating by nightfall. Next day, the reserve force would pass
through the forward line in leap-frog fashion and continue the pursuit. By November 10th, the Canadian
Corps was approaching the city of Mons, the place that in August, 1914 the
British army first encountered the advancing Germans.
November 10th began as any other. The 2nd Canadian Division
approached Hyon, south of Mons. German
machine gun posts and artillery raked the advancing Canadians. By repeated and determined infantry attacks
throughout the day, supported by machine guns and the 5th Brigade
CFA, the Canadians forced their way forward.
At dusk, forward patrols reported the Germans withdrawing from Hyon, In the early morning hours of the 11th,
elements of the 2nd Canadian Division occupied Hyon and pressed on
to the Bois la Haut, good ground whose defense could have made further advance
eastward costly. Leapfrogging forces
again, elements of the 2nd Canadian Division pressed on in the night,
and in the early morning hours of the 11th reached St. Symphorien,
three miles east of Mons. At 5:30 a.m.,
the 3rd Canadian Division linked up with the 2nd east of
Mons
Word was getting around of an Armistice, to take effect at
11:00 a.m. that day. Mons itself was
entered and occupied early on the morning of the 11th. At 10:58 a.m., Private George L. Price was
killed, the last Canadian fatality of the war.
And then, it ended.
That was it. Armistice.
The war to end all wars was over.
Done. Finished. Kaput
Well, there was the business of following the Germans back into
their own territory, to make sure they did.
And then, it was the long wait to get home.
Currie was not happy at the way the war ended, believing the
Germans had not been taught a lesson, and fearing they would try again in
twenty years.
The war to end all wars, wasn’t. It’s funny, but war-fighting leadership is regarded
as not civilized enough for supreme leadership roles in peacetime.
The French political leadership between the wars was not up
to the calibre of a Clemenceau. The French
generals, Gamelin and Weygand, were not of the quality of a Ferdinand
Foch. The British political leadership
was equally feckless during the crucial period of the 1930s. Winston Churchill was in his political
wilderness.
If France had mobilized in 1936 upon the occupation of the
Rhineland by a single German battalion, Hitler would have suffered a humiliated
and probably fatal reverse. Later came
the shameful Munich agreement. President
Edward Benes of Czechoslovakia should have fought the Germans over the Sudetenland,
where all the best defensive ground and fixed Czech fortifications were. We now know that the German army was in no
condition to overwhelm the Czechs, and the fighting would have raised a
political whirlwind in Britain and France.
Finally, French leadership embarrassed their heritage of
martial élan by not vigorously attacking
Germany from the west as Germany advanced into Poland in September 1939. We now know that an immediate French
offensive would have reached Berlin without opposition because the Germans put
everything they had into Poland.
By 1940, it was too late.
A new maelstrom began – even larger than the last.
Lest we forget.
-30-
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