World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Poetry
I suppose that I am the proudest man in the British Isles to-night,
but I am not the happiest. I am the proudest man because I command the
finest fighting force in all the Allied armies. An officer of Canadian
birth, who has spent the whole of his military career with the British
Army, and married an English wife, told me the other day that he was
proud to be a Canadian, for everywhere he went men spoke of the deeds
of the Canadian Army Corps. When the women with their children and the
old men were fleeing before enemy forces on the Western Front on a not
very distant occasion, and learned that the troops meeting them were
Canadians, they turned round and went back home. On another occasion,
when visiting a British Headquarters, I saw a Brigadier sitting by
the roadside, tired, and dirty, and wan. He called out, "Who's that
coming along?" When the reply was, "General Currie", he said, "Are the
Canadians coming down here?" Told that they were, he threw his hat in
the air and declared, "Then we are all right now".
When we came to England first, we were not regarded as the finest
fighting soldiers. We had many things said about us unjustly; and
suggestions were put about that it was improbable we should ever become
good soldiers. Everywhere to-day, at General Headquarters and all other
places, it is recognized that Canadian soldiers are fit to take their
place beside the veteran soldiers of the British Army, with whom we are
proud to serve.
I know that it has been said that Canadians and other Overseas troops
are placed in the hottest parts of the war area. The greatest fighting
of the war has been this year, and we have not taken any particular
part in it. The Boche has not attacked the Canadian Front. He knows
that he has never yet met the troops from Canada without suffering
severely. The turn of the Canadian Corps must come. The temper of the
Canadian soldier is that there is no position he is asked to take that
he will not take; and I know that the Boche will not take any part of
our line, except over the dead bodies of your Canadian fellow-citizens.
That is why I am not the happiest man in the British Isles to-night.
The Canadian Corps is going to die. It is simply a question of who can
stand killing the longer.
I have never seen the Corps in finer fighting fettle than it is to-day.
The Canadians are now more efficient than ever; and we could not be in
that position unless we were backed up by General Sir Richard Turner
and his staff in England. There is a feeling of co-operation now that
never existed before; and the better the liaison we have between
France, England, and Canada, the better it is for the fighting forces.
And so we stand in a great cause, on the eve of great events. We have
to preserve the British Empire. It would be a terrible calamity if
anything should happen that would make the peoples of the British
Empire hesitate at such a juncture. The British Empire must be saved.
THE AIR MEN
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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