Edmonton Journal (Alberta), Canada
June 28, 2014 Saturday
A war of uneasy remembrance; Canada’s current popular memory of the
First World War often skirts some deeper truths
by: Robert Engen, Postmedia News
Even 100 years later there is something raw about how we remember the Great War.
First, we remember the loss. More Canadians were killed in the First
World War than in all other conflicts combined. Half a million
Canadians went overseas between 1914 and 1918; 67,000 died there, and
three times that number returned with physical and psychological
injuries.
We remember the horrors of the war: the awful conditions of trench
warfare, the deprivation, the filth and the experience of hell on the
Western Front. We remember heroism amidst this terrible backdrop, but
often portrayed in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, perseverance, and
enduring the unendurable.
We certainly remember our mistakes and tragedies. Canada’s internment
of “enemy aliens,” and particularly the foolish imprisoning of 5,000
Ukrainians, has been receiving increasing attention, as well it
should. In Halifax, 2,000 people died after a ship loaded with
munitions exploded in the harbour as the war lurched to a close.
And we remember when the Canadian Corps captured an escarpment called
Vimy Ridge in northern France in 1917. Vimy had a great deal of
symbolic importance, and today the battle is portrayed as Canada’s
“coming of age” as a nation.
We remember that Canada went to war as a colony but emerged in 1919
with a seat at the peace conference as an independent country. Often
this fact is seen as one of the war’s great achievements for Canada.
But what we choose not to commemorate about the First World War is
similarly revealing.
We don’t dwell on exactly why the war was fought – its origins boil
down to hostility between heavily-armed European neighbours, and now
it’s easy to question why 67,000 Canadians died for that. We don’t
dwell on who the enemy was, either, and whether they were in the
wrong. We don’t like to be reminded that the Battle of Vimy Ridge, for
all its symbolic importance, was a small part of a grand Allied
offensive that ended in utter disaster. And whatever national unity
may have been achieved at Vimy seems small compared to the domestic
turmoil over conscription, which was implemented in large part because
of the casualties sustained at Vimy.
Canada’s current popular memory of the Great War is uneasy. We
commemorate safe topics: loss, horror, tragedy and national unity.
But we do not talk as much about who we fought or why we fought them,
because there is a lurking fear that it was all a terrible mistake,
and not worth the cost, especially since one world war led to another.
The War of 1812 was fought to protect our colonial existence; the
Second World War was fought against the Nazis and seems self-evidently
justified. It seems harder to articulate how and why the First World
War was worth the price paid.
But the coming time of commemoration gives us the opportunity to
reflect on that unease, and also the chance to remember some of the
forgotten truths about Canada’s First World War.
Perhaps we should better recall that the Central Powers, the countries
the Allies fought against, were the aggressors, attacking other
countries with little provocation. Their armies engaged in widespread
rape, looting and mass executions against civilians in Belgium,
France, Poland, Serbia and Russia. The German army had carried out a
genocide in colonial Africa not long before, their Turkish allies
would also do so against their Armenian population, and thousands of
Ukrainian civilians died of neglect in Austrian concentration camps
between 1914 and 1917. These atrocities were all well known at the
time.
The Allies often behaved terribly as well, particularly toward their
own colonized populations. But there was no real moral equivalency.
And perhaps we need also remember how close we came to losing the war.
Vimy Ridge was a small and limited victory in April 1917. During and
after that date, British shipping was being destroyed by German
submarines faster than it could be replaced ; the Russians, so vital
to the Allied effort, were disintegrating into revolution; and almost
half the French Army was in mutiny. Victory was not inevitable.
Immediately after the Canadian success at Vimy, victory did not even
look likely.
Only Britain and its dominions, including Canada, were in any position
to save the war effort in 1917, and they attempted to do so by
relentlessly attacking, diverting German resources, soldiers and
attention from the other, more fragile fronts. The Canadians fought
two major, desperate battles at Hill 70 and at Passchendaele as part
of this effort. Hill 70 in particular has been all but forgotten, even
though that battle was one of the great victories of the war.
Canadians will soon be able to explore our wartime history in a depth
never before realized, as new narratives, stories and interpretations
come to light for the centenary. It presents an opportunity to revisit
the tragedy and triumph of this chapter in our national story. Our
sense of unease may not be resolved – perhaps it shouldn’t be. It was
a complicated war and it touched everyone in a different way. But a
new conversation needs to begin about what the First World War meant
back then, what it continues to mean to Canada today and how best we
can commemorate our part in it.
Robert Engen teaches at Queen’s University and has published
extensively about Canadian military history.
THE GREAT WAR : A SPECIAL SERIES
The First World War brought down empires, re-drew borders, left
millions dead and stole the innocence of a generation.
One hundred years later, the conflict, which was often called the
Great War, remains one of the deadliest in history – a staggering 37
million soldiers and civilians were killed in the four years of bloody
slaughter between July 28, 1914 and Nov. 11, 1918.
Historians often say the war’s first casualty was Austrian Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo 100 years ago today
triggered the political and militaristic events that would change the
world forever.
The Journal and other Postmedia newspapers across Canada are
commemorating the anniversary with The Great War, a months-long series
of stories, photographs, videos and graphics that shine a light on a
war that did not end all wars.
Today in Insight, Robert Engen provides a thoughtful essay on
Canadians’ memories of the war, J.L. Granatstein digs into Canada’s
coming of age in Europe, and David Ryning and Fish Griwkowsky flesh
out the story of how Edmonton’s Wilfrid (Wop) May and his friend and
fellow Victoria High School alum Roy Brown helped end the reign of the
Red Baron, Germany’s most dangerous flying ace.
Our coverage will continue weekly in the Insight section through the
fall. Next week, Brent Wittmeier will explore the ways in which four
years of war wrought political, social, economic and demographic
change in Edmonton. All our coverage is also available at: Postmedia.
From: Baghdasarian