Canada's Hundred Days

Canada's Hundred Days was the name given to the series of attacks made by the Canadian Corps between 8 August and 11 November 1918, during the Hundred Days Offensive of World War I by the French after the war. Reference to this period as Canada's Hundred Days is due to the role that the Canadian Corps repeatedly played as a spearhead during offensives.

During this time, the Canadian Corps fought as part of the British Fourth Army in the Battle of Amiens, then as part of the British First Army in the Second Battle of the Somme, Battle of the Scarpe, Battle of the Canal du Nord, Battle of Cambrai, Battle of the Selle, Battle of Valenciennes and finally at Mons, on the final day of combat before the Armistice of 11 November 1918. In terms of numbers, during those 96 days the Canadian Corps' four over-strength or "heavy" divisions totalling roughly 100,000 men, engaged and defeated or put to flight elements of 47 German divisions, which represented one quarter of the German forces faced by the Allied Powers fighting on the Western Front.[1] However, their successes came at a heavy cost; Canadians suffered 20% of their battle-sustained casualties of the war during the same period.[2] The Canadian Corps suffered 45,835 casualties during this offensive.[3]

  1. ^ Cowan, John Scott (Spring 2006). "Higher Education and the Profession of Arms in Canada" (PDF). On Track. 11 (1). Conference of Defence Associations Institute: 13. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 5, 2016. Retrieved January 29, 2016.
  2. ^ Cook, Tim (2005). Canadian Official Historians and the Writing of the World Wars (PhD thesis). University of New South Wales.
  3. ^ Cook, Tim (2008). Shock Troops: Canadians fighting the Great War 1917–1918. Toronto: Penguin. p. 579. ISBN 978-0-6700-6735-0.