The Allied Commanders and psychiatrists of WWI believed that soldiers broke down, or suffered shell shock, because in their minds, men in the trenches had not been "hardened" enough. Their thinking was civilians which was what the Canadian Expeditionary Force was comprised of were not made to be natural warriors and that it would take a great deal of training to make these men into proficient soldiers. Training was to be simple, continuous and varied and were to be trained for one purpose only which was to fight.

Background:  During 1915, the French Army established "forward psychiatry" to slow the loss of their troops to the base hospitals. The British soon followed.  It was widely accepted as an productive intervention, forward psychiatry was not manageable to random-controlled trials and only one controlled outcome study has taken place.

"Give me one million men who can hit a target at 500 yards , and we would not have a foe who would invade our country" - Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes.

Rifles were produced at the Ross Rifle factory in Quebec City and numbered 420,000 with versions 1-5. The cost to build the rifle was $28. The rifle weighed 8 1/2 pounds. It could fire 20 rounds a minute. It was accurate up to 1,800 feet. The bayonet was 10" long.

This rifle was given to the infantry and snipers and they loathed it.

The legacy of good will between the people of the Netherlands and Canada is a story of friendship and kindness.  Enjoy the story of the 8th Hussars and their role in nurturing good will during and after the end of World War Two.

War was declared by the United Kingdom against Germany on September 3, 1939, and the Battle of the Atlantic would began the same day. One week later Canada followed the United Kingdom and declared war against Germany. This dangerous threat from the U boats began on September 3, 1939 with the sinking of the              SS Athenia from the torpedoes of a German U Boat. The Athenia had approximately 1,400 passengers and crew onboard and the death toll was 117 passengers and crew. There were American citizens on board at the time of the sinking.

World War II was the first conflict to employ the use of night fighter operations and this led to a number of types of aircraft being used, different radar types being used and different tactics being used as the war progressed. Very early in the war when RAF Bomber Command chose to bomb civilian targets the Luftwaffe had one goal which was to "search and destroy". 

1940-1941                                                                                                                                                          

Canada had nothing in the way of an Army Force prior to World War I or World War II. Because we did not have any armed forces the Canadian Governments of the time and our military minds of the time scrambled to find equipment and men.

                                                                                                             WORLD WAR I

A HALIFAX BOMBER CREW OF WORLD WAR II

I urge all of you to read the following and then watch the video produced by the Yorkshire Air Museum & Allied Air Forces Memorial at former RAF base Elvington. The video is titled The Last Flight of Halifax L 9561 and can be found on You Tube.

Canada sent a total of 418,606 men overseas and in comparison hospitalizations numbered 539,690. Battle casualties numbered 144,606 with hospitalizations for various diseases numbering 395,084 and this number included more than one hospitalization for a soldier. This was a period prior to there being any effective antibiotics. Minor illnesses of today were rampant in World War I and are mostly eliminated today. A soldier could be way from his unit for weeks or months in WWI.

THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AIR TRAINING PLAN

While the war in Europe was being fought, the American President Franklin Roosevelt was well aware of the training taking place in Canada and it led him to remark that Canada "was the aerodrome of democracy".

During the war years of 1939-45 Canada for the most part was many thousands of miles from the European battlegrounds.