Sunday August 11th, 1918
Big leave party for Blighty night. Another tomorrow.
Canadian Corps
It looks as though increasing numbers of the 199th Brigade are being sent for home leave to Blighty. Frank watches and hopes. In the meantime, men of the Canadian Corps, thousand of miles from their homes, are engaged in the final days of the Battle of Amiens.
They are commanded by Lt-General Sir Arthur Currie, who has been in post since June 1917. Under his leadership, the Corps fought successfully in the Second Battle of Passchendaele and the Battle of Hill 70. The latter of these was regarded by Field Marshal Haig as one of the finest minor operations of WWI.¹
Currie also argued successfully to keep the Corps together as a unit and for it not to be mixed in with the Americans. As a result, the Canadian Corps will remain an homogenous formation for the whole of the Hundred Days Offensive.¹
Canadian Corps at the Battle of Amiens
John FB Livesay was a Canadian correspondent in the field. After the war he would write a book on the Hundred Days War². Today the Observer newspaper in London, published his report:
‘By the evening of the first day (Thursday) the entire Canadian Corps had attained its objectives, these being an average advance of fourteen thousand yards. … The total prisoners taken by the Canadians on the first day will reach six thousand. Every gun fronting us was captured.
So complete was the surprise that many of these still had on their muzzle covers and their gunners were still in their dug-outs. …. one of the most remarkable things to be seen from the heights when the great barrage broke at 4:20 yesterday morning was the almost total absence of reply from the Boche batteries.
This war has no more wonderful exhibition of scientific gunnery than that which broke on the enemy yesterday in a barrage far more intense than that even of Vimy, and pursued his retreating forces relentlessly, raising precise distances in yards at stated intervals of minutes as our men got into him. It was nothing less than marvellous when there is taken into account the fact that many of the batteries were only brought up a few hours before the engagement opened, that it was impossible for them to expose themselves by any attempt at registration, and that a great part of the work of the barrage was done from maps by triangulation.’³
The photograph shows a dump of German heavy artillery guns and howitzers captured in the Battle of Amiens. Those in the foreground were captured by the 2nd Canadian Division and the 3rd Battalion, Tank Corps.
13th (Service) Battalion War Diary – 11th August 1918 – Haudricourt
Church Services as usual. Programme of Training and Work (Aug 12th & 13th) issued (Appendix No 2).
References & Further Reading
¹ Arthur Currie on Wikipedia
² ‘Canada’s hundred days : with the Canadian corps from Amiens to Mons’ by JFB Livesay, (1919)
³ ‘Marvellous Gunnery, Germans Unable to Reply’, The Observer, August 11th, 1918, page 5
* Q 9273, copyright Imperial War Museums