more than 6,000 casualties including 2,000 killed in just three days. Far worse would come. By the time the Canadians entered the Somme Campaign in late August 1916, more than 11,000 Canadians had already been killed in the war. By then, two more divisions were overseas and, by the end of the year, a fourth division joined the Canadian Corps in the field. Their 10 weeks in the Somme bloodbath in the fall of 1916 marked some of that campaign’s few successes; 24,000 Canadian casualties were grim testimony to the nature of the fighting. The Canadians were learning the business and cost of war. Stunning victories the following year at Vimy Ridge, Hill 70 and Passchendaele marked the Canadian Corps as an elite formation. They were earning a reputation, they were good and they knew it. Canadian achievements on the battlefield came at a heavy cost — more than 35,000 casualties in those three 1917 battles was grim testimony to the price of success. But it was in 1918 that the Canadians would play a decisive role in a series of major battles known as the “Hundred Days” between August and November. They “were brought along to head the assault in one great battle after another.” Soldiers digging a communication trench through Delville Wood, Imperial War Museum.
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