This essay will go into detail about the Canadian roles in World War I and World War 2. It will tell about the victories and defeats of these wars, as well as the influences made on the world by Canada, and the influence on Canada itself.
Canada's military effort in World War I put the country into the world stage. When the war started in 1914, Canada had only 3000 soldiers in their regular army, but were backed up by 60,000 reservists who however were very poorly trained. But, by 1918, Canada had a very large military, with an army very advanced and with numbers of around 600,000 soldiers. They had four infantry divisions which fought alongside British forces overseas. More than 60,000 Canadian soldiers died in World War I.
Canada, automatically entered the war in 1914 when Great Britain did, this was unquestioned and greatly supported by the people of Canada, coast to coast. Even though Canada's regular army started out relatively small and weak, within two weeks of the conflict's start, over 32,000 men had enlisted into the army and had begun training. The Canadian soldiers were sent to England for training, the trained on the Salisbury Plains through a long cold and harsh winter. The Canadian solders first entered action in early February 1915. They reached France and were briefly introduced and trained in trench warfare. After this training, they surprisingly took 4 miles of land from the Germans.
Here on April 22 the Germans sought to break the stalemate by introducing a new weapon, poison gas. Following an intensive artillery bombardment, they released 160 tons of chlorine gas into a light northeast wind. As thick clouds of yellow-green chlorine drifted over their trenches the French defences crumbled, and the troops, unprotected, their lungs seared, died or broke and fled, leaving a gaping four-mile hole in the Allied line. German troops pressed forward threatening to sweep behind the Canadian trenches and put fifty thousand Canadian and British troops in deadly jeopardy.
