Canada in World War I: Part 5 - Tactics, Restructuring, and Post-Somme Recovery

Yes, I understand I'm jumping back into the war after a long hiatus (part four was written in February) but it's for a good reason. The books I'm reading on the subject are long. It's not so much that it took me ten months to read it, but it's taken me ten months to summon the will to take up the second volume.  So, let's recap, since it's been a while.

Artillery fire would be pretty if it wasn't abjectly horrifying.

The Canadian army was a rag-tag fighting force that was called in to support the British, thought to be full of cowboy-style ruffians and undisciplined soldiers. However, after a few key battles and hard fought victories, we began to earn our reputation as a small but elite army of troops. We fought from Ypres, to Mount Sorrel, to the Somme, fighting and dying and typically succeeding, but the lattermost was the most devastating - and not just to the Canadians, but pretty well everyone. The Somme had over a million casualties on each side, and once the battle was over the Canadian forces took a step back to lick their wounds and regroup.

Meanwhile, back home, a regrouping took place as well. Sam Hughes, the conservative military minister, had ruled with an iron first up until this point. This helped the early stages of the war as having one singular overseer of the situation was helpful considering the massive degree of chaos that came with organizing a previously non-existent, untrained military force into something worthwhile. As they settled down, Hughes' use wore off, and complaints rose about his erratic, prone to anger personality, his many scandals and mistakes, and appointments of friends and political allies that were far from hidden. Prime Minister Borden, as a result, removed Hughes from power and replaced his role with two people; one to run things at home, and a new office, a minister strictly for oversees military forces.

Sam Hughes, angry with Canada
for ousting him from his position
of power, later became
vice-president Mike Pence.

Leading the men in Europe was Julian Byng, the well-respected general of the Canadian forces of 80-100,000, who spoke with the French and the British to share and learn tactics after the Somme. 

Over the past few years the Canadians developed a system. The artillery would bombard the defences of the Germans about ninety metres ahead of their infantry every three minutes, allowing the soldiers just enough time to storm through and clear out the trenches and continue going forward in what was called a "creeping barrage." The problem was the Germans were getting wise to the plan, starting to predict when it was coming and bombarding the troops as they crossed no-man's-land towards the trenches. The new plan was to focus on taking out the big guns so that couldn't happen, but that was a difficult task. A number of solutions were utilized to varying effectiveness; using observation planes to give the friendly guns something to shoot at (critical, but thankless work), using advance spotters to look for the flash of the guns and hopefully triangulate the distance (through either math, science or magic), and using sound-waves to measure the speed and trajectory of the artillery shells to guess where they came from (again, math, science, or magic). 

Another key part of strategy was raiding, and the Canadians were experts. It was here they would learn how to fight effectively, swiftly, and hopefully capture a few prisoners to gather intelligence about the enemy. The whole idea was to have a raid completed, start to finish, in just fourty-five minutes with as much damage done as possible and to return before the defenders had even figured out what hit them. The most important aspect was the element of surprise, hitting during the night when soldiers weren't at the ready, and retreating under the cover of darkness. However, that began to die down as raiding became far more common as the war pressed on, especially for Canadians who saw it as a means of earning their reputation, pride, and rewards. Larger, more audacious raids were planned as every unit wanted to have the greatest success. 

In February 1917, the Canadians set their sights on raiding the first lines of Vimy Ridge. Vimy was a fortress; seven kilometres of defences, uphill, littered with barbed wire, trenches, defensible positions and a heck of a lot of Germans. Both the French and the British had tried to take Vimy previously and failed miserably, taking many casualties in the process. The Germans held the territory for a full two years. But this wasn't a full-scale assault yet; they just wanted a raid.

Respirators, while life-saving in a gas attack, made it
incredibly difficult to breath. Which... sounds kind of
counter-intuitive.

The plan was to use the weapon that many still saw as almost mythical: gas warfare. The more experienced front-line commanders argued heavily against its use, as it was uphill (the gas was heavier than air, and would therefore fall down towards them), the Germans and Canadians both had respirators they could use against it, and wind was, of course, rather fickle. Ignoring the pleas of the men at the front the command went ahead with the plan anyways, that at this point had lost all semblance of a surprise attack as it had been delayed for days due to a lack of wind. The chemical assault did essentially nothing to damage the defences, and in the first five minutes of going over the trenches and rushing, Canada took 190 casualties, a number that would rise to 687 by the end of the day. 

The Canadians learned an important lesson that day: preparation was everything, and poor planning leads to many lost lives. They would attack Vimy again in the months to come, but only after months of preparation. 

Roman Gladiators: Part 3 - Lions, Leopards and Bears - Oh My!

There are a few similarities in going out to a sporting event today and going to a gladiator spectacle back then. First, it was for the consumer, so they did their best to make it pleasant. Amphitheaters had cushions and awnings to keep it cool and comfortable. The wealthy sat closer up while the poor sat high up in the nosebleeds (I wonder if they had signs up like at a waterpark; "the first three rows may get covered in splattered flesh and blood!"). There were concession stands to feed the people. There was even a halftime show, as the gladiator shows tended to be full day events; the difference here is instead of Katy Perry dancing around with men in hilarious shark costumes, there were public executions. Past or present, that's probably the time I'd step out to take a leak. If it weren't for my abject fear of public washrooms, that is.

An oddly fitting Simpsons line for Christians becoming
martyrs in the arena.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLLOhhi8aU

So, what are they watching? If you remember correctly, I said two blogs ago that many of the fights that occurred in the gladiator arena were far, far more shocking than the traditional depiction you would expect in books and movies. It was the sheer volume of death that was so incredible, and the way the Romans would search far and wide just to provide variety for the bloodbath made it all the more gruesomely spectacular.

By 300 B.C., animals became the newest attraction. Killing a man? Yeah, that's cool and all, and I'm sure it's really exciting, but killing a bear? Now that'll get people talking. Due to the Roman Empire's colossal reach and scope, animals were brought in from all over. Soon, elephants would be fighting while a hundred lions - yes, a hundred - were slaughtered the next day. Next would be rhinos, 150 leopards, and five crocodiles. They would bring in apes, as well. All of this was just one emperor's arena event. Nero, for example, had 400 bears and 300 lions killed in a day. Those are numbers that are so incredible I can hardly picture it. These are animals I think of in small numbers, sparsely populated across large areas of vast forests or open savanna, not all packed into an arena to fight it out with people or each other. In the Colosseum one year, 9000 animals were killed in games that stretched well over weeks. Naturally, this was unsustainable as when you completely wipe clean an ecosystem it tends not to repopulate all that quickly. The excessive hunting displaced the animals, moving them south and out of reach of the empire's deadly grasp towards the end of the gladiator games' run.

The process in bringing these animals was, of course, exceedingly dangerous, expensive, and difficult. First, they would trap the animals in all corners of the empire. That was the easy part. The trick was managing to get a colossal, violent, angry animal onto a boat without having the ease of being able to slaughter it first. Imagine packing an elephant onto a boat created at the time of the Roman Empire; surely no easy task. The requirements of space, food and manpower would severely tax those that had to bring them over, and all of this was before the arena even occurred. From there, they would have to keep them in temporary holding cells before they would release them through a rather ingenious method of lowering them from a platform into a thin hallway in which they have only one direction to go - straight into the arena. None of the animals would survive. The poor may or may not have feasted on the meat of the animals, but that's still up for debate (I'd admit that if I had the chance, yeah, I'd eat a lion. Just to say I have the heart of a lion in me).

In addition to Christians, criminals were also sacrificed
to the animals for entertainment. This criminal had developed
a primitive Segway to try to outpace the leopards, although
it appears ineffective.

The animals were typically reserved for a morning timeslot, a prelude to the main event. Along with the animal fights and hunts, there were comedic bits, competitive athletics, and other such entertainers. Once that finished up, they'd have the public executions until they were ready to bring on the gladiators themselves (Kiss Cam technology for halftime filler was yet to be invented).

Coming out to a flourish of music (an acoustic version of Welcome to the Jungle, I presume), the gladiators would then take the stage. Since there were massive numbers of small amphitheaters all over the empire, many of the fights were simply what one would expect; a small group of gladiators that would fight one-on-one to the enjoyment of a crowd. However, in the larger arenas (the Colosseum and otherwise) there would occasionally be staged battles symbolizing great wars the Romans had succeeded in. Some would have literally thousands of men fighting to the death. Now, this was no Civil War reenactment (which may or may not only exist on television), but it was instead very real. The largest such example was in 52 A.D. under emperor Claudius, in which 19,000 people fought in a massive ship battle, fighting until they would decide to stop it after enough had died. How many that would be is unclear, but I imagine it wouldn't be just a scant few. The Romans liked their bloodshed.

Once the games had concluded, they would call in the next wave; the janitorial staff. Human and animal carcasses were everywhere, and the task of clearing them all out was anything but minor. The lunchtime executions were simply thrown into the nearest river, an unceremonious end and meant to disgrace the dead. The gladiators would at least be buried, but typically in a mass grave. The more successful, moderately wealthy ones could occasionally afford a gravestone.

Years later, humanity would avenge this man's death
by always eating Animal Crackers' heads first.

The last casualty was the games themselves. Once the empire split into east and west, the games died out in in the two segments for different reasons. The west got poor; bringing in animals (which eventually switched to the cheaper option of herbivores, as they were easy to collect but much less fun to watch being killed), feeding and housing gladiators, and the upkeep of the arena in general was an expensive endeavour and eventually they just couldn't afford it. The east was completely different; emperor Constantine was one of the first to favour Christians, and under their influence, he began to weaken the games. Eventually they replaced the pagans, and mauling countless animals and humans in a bloodied mass of violence and destruction just didn't say "Christian values", marking the end of the age of gladiators.

It was, however, the birth of the Christian party-pooper.