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As Canadian commanders planned to assault Mont Sorrel, Germany attacked. Two weeks and almost 9,000 casualties later, Canada recovered the lost ground On May 25, 1915, the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division officially became part of the British Expeditionary Force with headquarters at Shorncliffe Army Camp in... -
In the fight for Festubert, combat for the “Canadian Orchard” cost 2,468 casualties. The Canadians emerged from the battle for Ypres, Belgium, in 1915 with horrendous casualties: more than 6,000 men, including 1,410 who became prisoners of war. This casualty rate, 37 per cent of...
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In the Battle of Frezenberg, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry would give no... -
Of the 18,000 Canadian soldiers on strength for the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, roughly one third became casualties, including 1,672 killed in action and more than 1,000 as prisoners of war. When the Canadians were withdrawn from the front lines on May... -
As a three-year-old, I had no real comprehension of the horrific circumstances in which I lived. The hand grenade, carelessly discarded by a Nazi soldier, attracted my attention. I was playing outside my home in the Netherlands in 1944 when I saw it lying on... -
The Second World War in Europe ended officially on May 7, 1945, with the unconditional surrender of all German forces. For the First Canadian Army, however, it had ended two days earlier. On May 5, German General Johannes Blaskowitz surrendered the 120,000-strong Twenty-Fifth Army to...
Voices from war’s end
The most familiar images from the end of the war are the joyful and sometimes raucous VE-Day celebrations on May 8, 1945. But the war did not end all at once for everybody. Freedom came in stages as the Allied front crept forward across Europe. Canadian liberators fought town to town, beginning in Sicily...
