Canadian division crosses to France

On 9 February 1915 the first transports carrying the 1st Canadian Division to France sailed from the port of Avonmouth near Bristol. The first ships reached Saint-Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire on 11 February, and the last a few days later. That is why the British chronology of the war records the Canadians’ crossing under two dates, 9 and 11 February. It was the first division from the Dominions to take its place on the Western Front.

Farewell to Salisbury Plain

The Canadians had landed at Plymouth in October 1914 and spent the winter in camps on Salisbury Plain. Training was hampered by almost incessant rain, mud and cold. The Canadian official history noted that few of those who fought on the Western Front over the next four years endured so long and fruitless an ordeal as that winter. In January 1915 the battalions were reorganised on the British four-company pattern. The division, commanded by the British general Edwin Alderson, comprised three infantry brigades of four battalions each, artillery and services. One Canadian battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, had been in France since December as part of the British 27th Division.

On 2 February the quartermaster units left for France in secret. On 4 February King George V reviewed the division on Knighton Down in rain and a cold wind. In a farewell message, read to the soldiers after they had embarked, he thanked them for the cheerfulness with which they had endured “exceptional rains” and wished them good fortune on the field of battle. On 7 February the first unit left the camp, and over the following days trains from stations around Salisbury Plain carried the rest of the division to a port whose name the soldiers did not know. It turned out to be Avonmouth.

The long way across the Bay of Biscay

The division had originally been meant to cross by the shortest route, from Southampton to Le Havre. The plans were changed after Germany declared a war zone around the British Isles on 4 February, and the last days of January had shown that German submarines were already reaching the Irish Sea. The transports were therefore routed from the Bristol Channel to Saint-Nazaire, which in the autumn of 1914 had served for several weeks as the main British sea base. The convoys were escorted by destroyers, though some of them had to turn back because of bad weather. No submarines were sighted.

The first were the luckiest. The ship City of Benares, carrying divisional headquarters, made the passage in 36 hours and at noon on 11 February tied up at the quay in Saint-Nazaire. The following transports ran into a storm that raged in the Bay of Biscay on 12 and 13 February. The soldiers spent those days crammed into the cold, dark holds of small cargo ships, and some vessels reached port a day or more late. The unloading, done largely by the soldiers themselves, was completed on 15 February. On 16 February the British Colonial Secretary, Lewis Harcourt, informed the Governor General of Canada that the whole contingent had crossed safely to France.

To the front in Flanders

From Saint-Nazaire trains carried the Canadians by a roundabout route through Nantes, Le Mans, Rouen and along the Channel coast. The journey covered nearly 800 kilometres and took about 43 hours. The division went into billets east of Hazebrouck, in reserve to the British Second Army. From 17 February its brigades in turn learned trench warfare alongside the experienced British 4th and 6th Divisions near Armentières. On 20 February the Canadians were inspected by the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshal John French.

At the beginning of March the division took over its own sector of the front at Fleurbaix from the British 7th Division. A few weeks later the Canadians were to move to Ypres, where their first great test awaited them.