Boots disintegrated in the mud, rifles jammed and there weren’t enough trucks and artillery shells. Add to that a backdrop of mistrust and cronyism as a young nation marched off to war.

Canada’s response to war in August 1914 was immediate, enthusiastic and unprecedented in scale, but its entry into the First World War also had plenty of false starts and wrong turns. No one had ever tried to build, assemble and equip a massive expeditionary force and few could foresee the logistical headaches of getting such a force overseas, let alone sustaining it on the Western Front.

Although the young nation had, amid much controversy, dispatched overseas contingents to fight in the South African War (1899-1902), it was now prepared to send a full division of more than 20,000 troops to join the British forces in France—with more to follow.

In October 1914, more than 30,000 men crossed the ocean with the first overseas contingent in one of the largest armadas ever to leave Canadian shores. By late 1915, the Canadians formed their own corps, a formation that grew to four divisions a year later. The magnitude of Canada’s contribution was, without doubt, immense. But exactly how well prepared was the nation to fight a modern global war in 1914?

And who were the first ones to join the colours?

Sam Hughes dominated centre stage in this opening act of the national war narrative. As minister of Militia and Defence since 1911, Hughes was already a larger-than-life character who had worked tirelessly to reform the Militia, although the departmental budget had already increased significantly since the South African War under Hughes’s predecessor, Frederick Borden.

Hughes delighted in locking horns with professional soldiers of the permanent force (about 3,000 strong) who comprised the core of the much larger part-time volunteer militia (more than 70,000 men across the country). A strict teetotaller, Hughes derided the regulars as ‘barroom loafers,’ needlessly preoccupied with ‘parade-square regimen.’ As far as Hughes was concerned, free-thinking Canadian volunteers, if properly trained, would be far superior to their permanent force counterparts, bound as they were by archaic military tradition and convention.

It was Hughes who cast aside the mobilization plan that had been prepared by permanent force staff before the war, opting instead to summon volunteers from across the dominion—through a sort of levée en masse—to an as yet non-existent camp at Valcartier, Que.

Hughes got results—at least at the beginning. As of the third week of August, more than 25,000 men had volunteered for overseas service. A month later, the size of the contingent swelled to 33,000. The Valcartier training area near Quebec City took shape in short order, transforming a vast scrubland into sprawling rifle ranges and a metropolis of bell tents.

The overseas contingent soon embarked for Britain, arriving in October. But while the Canadian mobilization proceeded at breakneck speed, the troops lacked much of the kit and equipment that they required to fight a modern, total war.

The Volunteers

But who were those men who rushed to join up with the first contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF)?

The question is not a simple one, since national identity in early 20th-century Canada does not easily equate with our own Canadian values in 2014. At least two-thirds of the roughly 1,500 officers in the first contingent were Canadian-born, but about the same proportion of the other ranks had immigrated to Canada from the British Isles. The significance of this ratio—two-thirds of the rankers being British born—is debatable since we do not have a clear picture of how recently these men had arrived in Canada. Yet given the influx of British immigration in the immediate pre-war period, it is possible that a meaningful number of the British-born had come to Canada as adults.

Among this group, more than a few fell on hard times in their new land, as many parts of Canada endured a difficult economic downturn in the pre-war years. In the labour market, the most recently hired were often the first to be let go. It is likely then that at least some of the British-born volunteers were simply seeking a free ticket back home to start over.

British-born men were not the only newcomers who answered the call for overseas service in 1914. Between 1901 and 1921, more than three million immigrants found their way to Canada. Some two-thirds came from Britain and the United States, but many others were from Europe. Daniel Tenaille, a 5th Battalion officer who was killed in May 1915 on the bloody fields near Festubert, France, was originally from France. One of his countrymen, Raymond Brutinel, was the well-known machine-gun advocate who commanded a special armoured car unit in the CEF, the Automobile Machine Gun Brigade.

So how ‘Canadian’ was the first contingent? A portion of the men, to be sure, were Canadian as much by virtue of the badges on their uniforms, as by outlook or temperament.

Canadians in 2014 might find some comfort in the multi-ethnic or transnational composition of the first CEF contingent (soon known as the 1st Division). After all, these were the same men who gained notoriety for their lax discipline during the winter of 1914-15 on Salisbury Plain, especially when it came to strong drink. Although Hughes insisted that the Canadian camps remain dry, off-duty soldiers found plenty to drink in the local taverns and on brief, but eventful benders in London.

The soldiers of the 1st Division quickly earned a reputation for drunken brawling, as roughnecks who had come from the Last, Best West to teach the Hun a well-deserved lesson. It was a little ironic, given the number of men in the division who had grown up in Britain.

Equipping the Volunteers

Modern armies require a vast range of manufactured goods and supplies to exist, let alone to fight. The CEF was no exception, but the Canadian government, generally, fell short in its efforts to properly equip the rapidly expanding overseas forces during the early phases of the war.

Historical appraisals of Canadian procurement during the First World War usually focus on the ill-fated Ross rifle. Hughes was a champion of the weapon, which had been adopted in Canadian service by the Laurier government a decade before the war. While the Ross rifle’s deficiencies became painfully evident on the battlefield in 1915—the weapon tended to jam under rapid fire—it was by no means the only piece of kit to cause trouble.

Canadian-manufactured service dress uniforms and boots were not up to the rigours of military service, and were widely replaced by War Office items before Canadian soldiers reached the front. The British officer in command of the 1st Division, Lieutenant-General Edwin Alderson, wisely discarded the Canadian Oliver pattern load-bearing equipment before the division left for France, kitting out the troops instead with the far superior 1908 pattern web equipment that was standard in the British infantry.

The Oliver equipment, made primarily of leather, was poorly designed and uncomfortable to use. The bulky cartridge pouch, for example, was situated inconveniently over top of the stomach, making it difficult to fire from the prone position. An improved pattern issued in 1915 was little better. In a damning trial report, a Canadian staff officer observed that he “should not expect the men wearing this equipment on a march to arrive at the battle point in such fighting condition or able to keep up such a sustained rate of fire, as they would with an equipment where the ammunition was worn more distributed on the body.”

An even and balanced distribution of load was a key strength of the 1908 pattern web equipment, a fully adjustable woven cotton assembly that incorporated accessible cartridge pouches, water bottle, entrenching tool, bayonet carrier and pack. It was well ahead of its time, and fortunately, remained standard for most Canadian dismounted troops at the front throughout the war.

It was already clear in 1914 and early 1915 that the new conflict would require a massive volume of artillery ammunition. The Canadian government, hoping to boost a lagging economy through war production, created the Shell Committee under Sam Hughes’s auspices to administer contracts. Most of the committee members were friends of Hughes, and predictably, conflicts of interest abounded. Worse still, manufacturers turned out defective products, or were incapable of filling orders at a time when the Allies were falling desperately short of ammunition.

As of June 1915, the Shell Committee had received only $5.5 million of the $170 million worth of ammunition that Canadian manufacturers had promised. Frustrated by this serious shortfall, British buyers sent orders to the United States instead of Canada. Money speaks volumes; Prime Minister Robert Borden was listening, and decided to dissolve the Shell Committee. The new Imperial Munitions Board took its place, and eventually put Canadian production back on track. The number of shells exported by Canada increased from $5.5 million in 1915 to nearly $24 million in 1917.

Much of Canada’s ammunition output went to the Allied powers, but it mattered little how many shells Canada could supply to its own army if the overseas forces lacked front-line transportation capacity. The Canadian government, during the first part of the war, was incapable of equipping the CEF with fully serviceable horse-drawn and mechanical transport (MT) equipment—especially the three-ton trucks that came to play increasingly important roles in battlefield logistics throughout the war.

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, the Canadian Militia had virtually no MT capacity to speak of. Horse-drawn wagons did most of the supply work at the summer training camps, as they had for decades. Militia officials had considered a subsidy scheme whereby operators of civilian motor transport fleets would receive an annual payment from the government in exchange for the promise to make their vehicles available to the armed forces in time of war. Such a scheme, however, was impractical in pre-war Canada, as there were simply not enough heavy delivery trucks in use at the time. This meant that the government would have to purchase transport vehicles for the first contingent ‘off the shelf,’ with little time to lose.

A typical 1914 British Expeditionary Force division was equipped with 165 motor vehicles, of which more than 150 were trucks of various sizes (130 of these were three-tonners). Upon the outbreak of war, Sam Hughes appointed T.A. Russell, a fellow Conservative, the owner of Canada Cycle and Motor Company, and the president of the Russell Motor Car Company, to buy up vehicles for the first contingent wherever he could.

Russell ordered several cars from Russell Motor Car, as well as about 50 American trucks, including White, Jeffrey and Kelly-Springfield models. He had a personal interest in both transactions, as president of Russell Motor Car and as the Canadian sales agent for Jeffrey and Kelly-Springfield. After much public outcry, a Royal Commission ruled that Russell had not acted improperly. The Liberals thought otherwise, and presented Canadians with a litany of Conservative misdeeds, accusing the government of abetting a ‘million-dollar rake-off’ through its handling of war contracts.

By the time the 1st Division arrived in England, it had five different makes of truck on its rolls (White, Jeffrey, Kelly-Springfield, Gramm and Peerless), totaling about 160 machines in all. The division’s transportation strength might have seemed sufficient on paper, but in practice it was anything but. There were too many different makes in service, not enough spares, and some of the models were not up to the task of battlefield logistics. Heavy rainfall on Salisbury Plain over the winter of 1914-15 did not ease maintenance operations.

Three of the five makes of truck that had been shipped over to Britain for the 1st Division actually reached France. The others were held back due to poor serviceability, but also to compensate for serious shortages in the second overseas contingent (the 2nd Division). For the moment, the War Office made up the difference of some 50 trucks from its own stocks to complete the 1st Division’s establishment in the field. Sam Hughes resented the substitutions, insisting as always that whatever equipment the Canadian government provided for its troops was surely the very best to be had. Alderson, in command of the 1st Division, knew better, and found serviceable vehicles wherever he could.

If 1st Division’s equipment had been less than perfect, 2nd Division fared little better in 1915. As troops of the new division arrived overseas, Canadian military authorities based in England had no idea if MT was on the way from Canada, or was to be sourced elsewhere. No one in Hughes’s department found time to answer repeated queries on this vital matter.

As late as June 1915, two months before it left England for the front, the 2nd Division lacked a full complement of vehicles. Hughes promised time after time that the trucks were ‘expected to be shipping in another week or so,’ but they never seemed to arrive. They were badly needed, even while the division remained in camp. As one of the divisional staff officers observed, some 18,000 men and 2,000 horses under his care required deliveries of rations and supplies in the Shorncliffe training area. Only 20 trucks borrowed from the British were available for the workload. It was almost impossible to keep all of the troops supplied with so few vehicles. By August, the division was still short nearly 70 vehicles. There was little option but to borrow more trucks from the War Office in Britain, an unpopular decision in Ottawa.

Why did the Canadian government experience so much difficulty with procurement? Partly because the types of trucks it needed were, largely, available only in the U.S., and American manufacturers were swamped with orders. But there were other inefficiencies in the system, ones that were purely the products of Canadian political considerations, such as the reluctance to cut out the Canadian middlemen who acted as sales agents for American automobile manufacturers.

Part of the solution was to take responsibility for war purchasing away from Hughes. A new War Purchasing Committee was formed under Sir Edward Kemp, a trusted minister in Borden’s cabinet.

In the mad scramble to equip the early overseas contingents with motor vehicles the government permitted officers and men to bring personal vehicles with them on the ocean crossing or to purchase vehicles in England. Canadian soldiers who volunteered their machines for official military use did so ‘free of charge,’ but with the understanding that the Canadian government would pay for fuel and oil, as well as daily upkeep and repairs, a financial commitment of some significance.

Some Canadian soldiers from the 1st and 2nd Divisions jumped at the chance to own and operate a private vehicle at public expense. In the widely spaced out army camps in southern England, owning a vehicle was the ticket to freedom and status during off-duty hours. Of course, members of the CEF who volunteered their cars or motorcycles insisted that it was all in the public interest, but the scheme proved to be of little military value. As it turned out, the upkeep of a motley collection of private vehicles was an expensive headache, and in reality, most soldiers were far more interested in having a motorcycle or car available for weekend and evening ‘joyriding’ than pitching in their vehicles for the good of the war effort. The policy was gradually abandoned as the war intensified in 1916.

During the decade that had passed between the South African War and the call to arms in 1914, Canadians had taken renewed interest in military affairs. There was by then a surplus of volunteers, even if most of them were not Canadian-born. But regardless of where they came from, the men of the first contingent were to learn hard lessons in their first battles—a reality that greeted soldiers of all armies in a world war that consumed millions of lives.