The Hundred Days (18 h 36 m, 8 ago 1918 ano – 22 h 17 m, 11 nov 1918 ano)

Descrição:

For the Canadian Corps, it was Canada's "Hundred Days," for in this period it was in the forefront of the victorious march to Mons. When the United advance began, the Canadian Corps was appointed the responsibility of creating an attack on an essential salient near Amiens on August 8. Utter privacy was important since the Germans had come to regard any action of Canadian troops as a warning of impending illness. To burn the enemy, part of the Corps was transferred to the north to the Ypres section. After establishing their presence known to the Germans they hurried back to Amiens. Preparations for battle were carried out at midnight, and there was no preparatory fire to warn the enemy of impending action. The shock was complete. Flanked by Australians and French, and initiated by British tanks, the Canadians advanced 20 kilometres in three days. The moral of the German High Command was badly jolted. In Ludendorff's words, August 8 was called the black day of the German Army. The three days of heavy fighting came at a cost the Corps suffered 9,074 casualties. The Allied plan was to advance on a broad face with a series of relevant attacks in sensible areas. Only promptly, in mid-1918, the British have enough rolling stock and guns to be able to carry out offensives on a number of Army heads without having to stop and regroup. Therefore, after the breakthrough at Amiens, the Canadians were moved back to Arras and given the task of cracking the Hindenburg Line Germany's main line of defence in the Arras area.

Between August 26 and September 2, in hard endless fighting, the Canadian Corps began a sequence of attacks that broke within the German defences, including breaching the wicked Drocourt-Queant Line, in the beginning of the Canal du Nord, part of the main Hindenburg Line. The fast change from the Somme caught the Germans by shock, though nonetheless, the struggle was most intense and 11,400 Canadians were dead. Currie saw the breaching of the line as "one of the finest feats in our history." The Corps was now in front of the main part of the Hindenburg Line, protected by the Canal du Nord, an only somewhat made canal. There was a gap while the Corps regrouped and the British armies to the south came up to the Hindenburg Line themselves. The mixed offensive to destroy the line came on September 27. Currie came up with a breathtaking and audacious plan, so daring that it took Haig to over-rule the Army commander and to give it his blessing. The whole Canadian Corps was to be delivered through a 2,600-yard dry section of the Canal du Nord. The charge along the whole beginning was followed by the most extensive single-day attack of the war. The Canadians not only passed the canal and breached three lines of German defences, they also caught Bourlon Wood, a tremendous accomplishment. Coupled with great successes elsewhere on the British front, the Hindenburg Line was well and truly breached. Eventually, in 1919, the Canadian troops came home where they were greeted by pleasant and enthusiastic crowds in cities and villages across the country.
By Tahera

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