Millions of Canadians share in joyous celebration across the country on this Canada Day, the 149th birthday of Canada’s founding on July 1, 1867.
But in the Atlantic province of Newfoundland and Labrador, it is a day of truly mixed emotions, especially so this year. This is the 100th anniversary of a fateful day, July 1, 1916 during the First World War, when the Newfoundland Regiment was foolishly sent ‘over the top’ only to be mowed down by German machine guns.
Starting early in 1915, while German and French forces were bleeding each other around Verdun, the French sent frantic appeals to British Commander Sir Douglas Haig to take the pressure off.
The plan to relieve German pressure on Verdun came in the form of a planned attack along dozens of kilometres of the front in the area of the Somme. It was part of what Haig called the “Big Push” and a vast build-up of men and munitions for the mass attack was carried out in the region throughout the spring.
Haig, still fighting the wars of the previous century, was quietly confident that his planned assault would destroy the enemy lines and enable the cavalry to ride into open countryside and attack the German rear areas, battery positions, headquarters and communications.
However, the German Army, had become well aware of the buildup and eventual attack. They had restructured their defences, especially in the northern area of the British lines. They were firmly entrenched along the ridges and the villages of the northern Somme countryside. With deep bunkers to protect them against the massive shelling.
Haig refused to believe reports that the enormous shelling of the German lines had actually done very little damage, to the barbed wire defences, the machine gun pillboxes, or to German soldiers. Instead he ordered the attack to proceed.
The result was a slaughter with almost 60-thousand British soldiers killed, wounded or missing in one day. Along much of the British lines, little or nothing had been gained .
In 1916 Newfoundland was not yet a part of Canada, and July 1st was to become ever after one of its most tragic days.
Still a relatively small colony, almost every islander had some familial connection to the the 1st Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment. It was raised early in the war and become part of the 29th British Division fighting first in the poorly planned and tragic Gallipoli campaign in 1915.
After that epic failure by British planners (and forever remembered by Australians and New Zealanders as ANZAC Day, their day of Remembrance), the Newfoundlanders were sent to England and then European front in time for Haig’s ‘Big Push’.
On that fateful morning of July 1st, they were in the line at Beaumont –Hamel in northern France when the order came to advance. The Germans well prepoared cut them to ribbons. They were to be in the third wave.
The first wave of British soldiers left their trenches at 0730 and were cut to ribbons, then a half-hour later the second wave was ordered out of their trenches with the same result.
The Newfoundlanders some 200 metres further back, could not make it to the front line as the Allied trenches were now filled with dead, dying, and wounded.
In full daylight sometime after 0900, and in spite of the catastrophe everyone saw, they were ordered over the top of their reserve trench heading towards the front line. Ordered to proceed at a walking pace over open ground on a slight downhill grade toward the front and the German lines, they were easy targets. This was made worse as they had to funnel through the few places were the wire had been cut on their side, before even getting to the German wire.
Within 15 minutes of leaving their St John’s Road support trench, most of the 780 Newfoundlanders were dead, or wounded, many horrifically.
Only 68 of the regiment were able to answer roll call the next day.
Thus within mere minutes in that single day most of the cream of Newfounland’s young men were gone forever, bringing devastation and sorry to almost every family in Newfoundland and Labrador
In spite of horrific losses in the tens of thousands on the first day alone and virtually no gains, Haig was not dismayed.
In the era before front line reporters, the speed of electronic media, and the internet, it was the leaders like Haig who controlled what news was sent. He told the newspapers that good progress had been made, with few casualties. It would take months before the horror of the loss began to be known. By that time, the many other horrors of the war had blunted his devastatingly incompetent plans.
For Newfoundland however, the war robbed it of a generation of future leaders and workers. The war ruined it’s economy, forcing it into bankruptcy, loss of it’s independent Dominion status, and eventually the decision to join Canada in 1949.
Thus those fifteen minutes on July 1st, 1916 changed Newfoundland’s direction and history forever.
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