A reader sent along a few thoughts with this item;
I served in the Canadian military, and sort of keep an interest in these things, especially Canada’s military history, but I have never read anywhere that a Canadian cavalry outfit was in combat in WW1. One of the last cavalry charges, and perhaps the biggest final charge, strikes me as something notably historic – in any military history. And, here it is that this country performed this, undoubtedly gallant and magnificent, act.
So, why is this not something that is presented in Canadian schools? How come there isn’t some heroic painting honoring this event? It should be one of those instantly recognizable national symbols – right up there with our other great national symbols, like – “We Are Our Social Programs”, and “Our Culture is Multiculture”, etc.
I guess it’s way too late for any of that stuff now.
It’s not too late to pass it along to your kids or grandkids.
Update – andycanuck sends along this link to the Charge of Flowerdew’s Squadron, c.1918.
This handsome couple could be my grandfather and his steed. Although he was too young to actually fight in WWI, he was training in Aldershot, England, as part of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, to go to the battle front when the war ended.
I’m very grateful to have memories of my grandfather’s military achievements and of my father’s contribution to the war effort, both of them on the front lines in Europe.
‘Sad that “multiculturalism” has relegated to the shadows the truly heroic military exploits of our forebears. Without their bravery and sacrifice, Canada would not have been able to become a haven for immigrants from countries where democratic freedoms are non-existent.
Multiculturalism keeps putting the axe to the root from which our democratic freedoms have thrived. How stupid is that?
My father and grandfather fought in WWII.
What a magnificent story.
Batb, my grandfather was a USAAF pilot, stationed at Hickam Field on the other side of Oahu when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He passed away a week ago today. He was 91.
Condolences, Dave J. on the passing of your grandfather. May he rest in peace.
It sounds as though he had a full life.
Condolences to Dave. My dad served in the RCAF during WW11. He too is 91. I hope we can keep him around a while longer.
I cannot remember hearing nor reading anything about the heroic Royal Canadian Horse Artilery in the first great war. Not at home nor at school. They must be one of the best kept secrets of that war. Awesome story. We forget (or ignore) such important times in our history at our and our children’s peril. History will mark Canada’s valuable contribution to freedom in Afghanistan. Hopefully history will also record the incomprehensible oppositon to freedom from the likes of Jack Layton who seems to believe that “freedom” is actually free.
Here are two links to a painting of the actual charge:
http://www.bridgeman.co.uk/search/view_image2.asp?image_id=214956
http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/canvas/tre/cwc109e.html
Flowerdew’s VC was displayed at the Bow Valley Museum in Calgary with a copy of his citation. The troops were being annihilated by machine guns and the charge was to take the pressure off so they could reach their objective. Sobering.
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i wonder what my wife’s grandfather, who served in the
“cyclist battalion” in world war one, would think of
whiners and naysayers like taliban jack.
two words… vimy ridge.
the price was heavy: 10,500 casualties, including 3,598 dead.
that was one battle, by the way, not the whole war.
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My Grandfather served in WW1 in the Royal Canadian Dragoons. They thoughtfully left their horses behind when they went over to France. He came under gas attack in the trenches and is only one of two in our home town awarded the Mons Star.
I too have noticed the lack of documentation on our historic achievements and contributions and chalk it up to one unassailable truth- our liberals and their social engineers hate the military. They will claim otherwise of course, but the history books betray them at every turn. As a young man I watched in disgust as these cowards slashed military funding, treated our servicemen like dirt, and our ageing vets with contempt. Then idiots like Turdeau and his clotpoles gave us their sanctimonious crap about ‘peacekeeping’ and then sent our boys into hell holes like Afghanistan where there was only war and no peace to keep. Fortunate are we that these leftist lickspittles weren’t around all those years ago when the fate of the world hung in the balance.
It is up to us to keep the legends alive and to properly honour our service people that made the victories and our nation possible.
As we lose great heroes and their legends to obscurity it is important to remember who is responsible for this disgrace: the lickspittle liberals. They hate the military, even though they claim otherwise. They treat our servicemen and vets with contempt, prefering to wage war against 12 year old nazis in the washrooms or in the kangaroo courts of the HRC. I would wager that even Neville Chamberlain would wrinkle his nose in disgust at the antics of cretins like Pierre Turdeau, Warren Kinsella and Richard Warman.
It is up to us to keep the legends alive and origins firmly in perspective…and to keep a damned sharp eye out for where we are headed.
Co-author and I are doing a book of WWI letters, focusing on our local men but including others to do a complete story of WWI through the eyes and thoughts of the men who were there.
Flowerdew and the calvary charge will be included and we found a ltr sent home to his mother the morning of the attack in which he said:
“The weather is still good, but very keen at night. Have had the most wonderful experiences lately & wouldn’t have missed it for anything – Best love to all.”
He died the next morning.
As you read the letters of ‘ordinary’ men, you realize they were a different breed.
Google “Battle of the Long Sault”. You’d be amazed to see the things we, as a nation, have forgotten.
“The weather is still good, but very keen at night. Have had the most wonderful experiences lately & wouldn’t have missed it for anything – Best love to all.”
When I listen to todays Canadian soldiers who are interviewed after returning from A-stan(some who have been wounded)and those who have yet to go I hear the same resolve and determination in their voices.
But I sure as hell don’t hear it from the “progressive” left.
Horny Toad
Thats cool.
Is that horse being rode “English style”?
Is that a quarter horse or some other type?
“but I have never read anywhere that a Canadian cavalry outfit was in combat in WW1.”
I was quite amazed when I read that, assumed Canadian cavalry heroism was common knowledge. We has several cavalry regiments in WW1. It seems like they were always attacking well entrenched machine gun positions. Maybe the old boys figured they’d be difficult to hit.
My grandfather was in the Royal Canadian dragoons, and barely survived the War, and died young.
Kate, thank you for posting this incredible story. I read that whole fascinating article at the Daily Telegraph. Amazing! I take my hat off to those incredibly brave men.
I’d previously thought that the last great cavalry charge in history was in 1896 at the Battle of Omdurman, in which young Lieutenant Winston Churchill participated.
This real and compelling piece of history could make a helluva movie. (Something historically accurate and dramatically well done, along the lines of “Anzacs, the War Downunder”, about the Australian and New Zealand troops in WW1.)
If you are interested in a account of Moreuil Wood by two Canadian historians (and professional armoured officers), read “It’s a charge, boys, it’s a charge!” by John Grodzinski and Michael McNorgan in Fighting for Canada, Seven Battles, 1758-1945, edited by Donald E Graves and published by Robin Brass Studios in 2000. Full disclosure – I also contributed two accounts to the book, so I receive royalties on any copies sold, as do John and Mike.
The whole battle involving the Canadian Cavalry Brigade is covered in detail, as is its place in halting the German advance in 1918.
Canadian History is much maligned for being ‘boring’ but then things like the Battle of Moreuil Wood and the action at Liliefontein in the Boer war in which 3 Canadians from the same unit (RCD) won the VC in a single day never make the curriculum.
I have a Canadian Calvary portable forge for shoeing horses from the WW1, all in good order. I always make sure that the young people know what it was for, My old cousin who joined up with the FSF or Devil’s Brigade just passed away last year. He joined at 16 years of age was wounded several times in France. Was called up again for Korea, and stayed in and retired after another 30 years as Regimental Sgt. Major of the BlackWatch. The FSF was the First Special Forces.
Off topic, but someone mentioned N. Chamberlain. Personally I think he gets a bad rap. Britain couldn’t have fought a war at the time of the Munich crisis even if they wanted to. Immediately after that however, their defence spending went through the roof, and the air force that fought the battle of Britain was created. The Spitfires, Hurricanes, Wellingtons, Blenheims, the radar and air defence system did not exist in 1938, it was well on its way by September 1939. The KGV battleships did not exist and the army had no mechanized formations. Something to keep in mind while writing off Chamberlain.
If we lowered the flag for every KIA at Vimy Ridge, the flag would be at half mast for nearly ten years. If we did the same for the KIA at Dieppe it would’ve stayed down for two and a half years. Although a KIA in Afghanistan is every bit as tragic as one in any other conflict, it does make you think.
Great collection of Pictures. Those where real Canadians in those day’s.
Battle for Carpiquet Airfield
Makes one think of the savaged metal
rib cage of civilization as a stricken beast. The men running threw the strewn detritus of this mechanical beast. Marching across the tunnel of its desiccation. Done in a monochromic tone. To highlight the hard cold feel of metal. Heck of a painting.
The attack on the wood was carried out by BOTH the LdSH(RC)and the RCD.
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/1046497.html
This is a great story and another reminder of the great Canadian heroism that goes unrecognized by so many today.
There is at least one other 20th century cavalry story. The one at the link below is not Canadian; it happened 22 years after Moreuil:
http://old.polishnews.com/fulltext/history/2001/history4.shtml
bear
The Battle of Moreuil Wood was fought by the Canadian Cavalry Brigade under the command of Brig Seely. The units were the LdSH(RC), the RCD and the Fort Garry Horse. The charge itself was made by “C” Sqn LdSH(RC).
Cheers
And talking of warriors, this is how the dead are treated in France
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/international/Muslim_graves_vandalised_in_French_WW1_cemetery.html?siteSect=143&sid=8938358&cKey=1207480105000&ty=ti
I’m surprised that Lady Elizabeth Butler seems not to have painted this battle, although she did record a slightly earlier British cavalry charge:
The Charge of the Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry at Huj (8 November 1917).
http://www.military-prints.com/lady_butler.htm
Great story! Thanks. I can’t say much for the vainglorious fools who ordered such attacks but I only have admiration and the greatest respect for those who attempted to carry out these orders. I would have given the old boy the corn.
My late step-father ran away from his home in England at the outbreak of WWI and joined the cavalry.
During the course of the war he was on occasion: shot, sabred, gassed later left for dead in a bombed out basement.
He survived the that war and served in the Second as an officer administrating the training of 250,000 Commonwealth air men in the Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
I understand the marketing considerations (lakefront condo’s in the Okanagan) of Corb Lunds “I want to be in the Cavalry” video but it both annoys and disappoints.
Perhaps before the next video he tipi-toes over to Fort McLeod or googles:
Charge of the Light Brigade:Alexander Roberts Dunn
Flashman anyone?
The Canadians have been at the front of the defense of liberty, e.g., taking some of the worst of the Normandy invasion in WWII. It’s an interesting coincidence of history that the English speaking people have been so much in the forefront of the battle for freedom. The Aussies, English, and Americans turned back the Japanese Empire in the Pacific at horrific cost.
One note: the Polish army in WWII did have a successful cavalry charge against the Wehrmacht (but not against tanks, as was commonly thought).