Most people will know of this battle without actually knowing it by name. It was the second time the Germans used gas, and this time it was directed toward the Canadian lines:
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On the morning of 24 April 1915 the Germans released another cloud of chlorine gas, this time directly towards the re-formed Canadian lines just west of the village of St. Julien. On seeing the approach of the greenish-grey gas cloud, word was passed among the Canadian troops to urinate on their handkerchiefs and place these over their noses and mouths.
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We knew there was something was wrong. We started to march towards Ypres but we couldn't get past on the road with refugees coming down the road. We went along the railway line to Ypres and there were people, civilians and soldiers, lying along the roadside in a terrible state. We heard them say it was gas. We didn't know what the Hell gas was. When we got to Ypres we found a lot of Canadians lying there dead from gas the day before, poor devils, and it was quite a horrible sight for us young men. I was only twenty so it was quite traumatic and I've never forgotten nor ever will forget it.
—Private W. Hay of the Royal Scots
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A plaque was erected to the memory of the 10th Battalion and the 2nd Battle of Ypres at City Hall in Calgary; annual dinners to mark the occasion became a unit tradition in The Calgary Highlanders, where the toast is given, with Highland Honours, to: "The Glorious Memory of the 22nd of April 1915."
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The old City Hall in Calgary (from where about 60% of the original 10th Battalion men were recruited) bears a plaque dedicated to Lieutenant Colonel Russ Boyle and the men of the 10th Battalion who made the charge at Kitcheners' Wood. The regiment commemorates the battle annually on the weekend closest to April 22nd. "St. Julien's Day", as it is known, usually involves an all-ranks reunion dinner, an officers' mess function, a freedom of the city parade, and a church service. The Regimental hockey team is known as "The Oakleafs" and a regimental newssheet known as The Oak Leaf has been published on and off over the years, in addition to the official newssheet, The Glen. In Belgium, the Vrije Basisschool (elementary school) of the current day St-Juliaan displays an oak leaf memorial in honour of the event.
This is the parade route starting from Mewata Armoury at 10:00am.
Spoiler!
The Parade will stop at the Church on 1st and 7th Ave SE at 11:00am I believe. They will go in for mass and then continue on the parade route after mass.
Very neat thing to see in person if you've never seen one before, and it will display that Calgary does have a rich military history that a lot of people aren't aware about.
And if you're a motorist, you will want to avoid those areas on Saturday.
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This battle is amazing when you think about what the soldiers endured. Mustard gas is terrible.
I have fond memories, although hazy of St Julian's nights.
I have posted this before but:
Five hundred yards to the front, a black silhouette stood
Outlined by the flickering gunfire; St. Julien Wood.
The land between had been blasted and shattered and raped
And, concealed between black, smoking craters, the gates of Hell gaped.
Canadian soldiers stood, waiting for word to advance,
Their minds drinking in this grim vision of beautiful France
While their ears cringed in mental discomfort and physical pain
At the noise of the barrage that screamed around Ypres again. The time came, and they moved out, advancing in alternate waves
Each two companies strong; each one moving as water behaves,
Flowing forward in silence to find its own level, around
All the upflung confusion of shell-tortured, treacherous ground.
In spite of the darkness of midnight, the going was good
So that, still undetected, their front rank came close to the Wood
Until, just as the forest developed a visible edge,
They ran into the French farmer's border - a strong, healthy hedge! What to do? There was no way around it, and time was their foe
Just as much as the Germans: smash through; there's nowhere else to go.
So they tried, and they died, row on row, as though caught in barbed wire
As the enemy, startled alert, laid down murderous fire.
Decimated - each tenth man laid dead - was a word coined in Rome,
And the Tenth would have happily settled for that, and gone home,
But the hedge all around them confined them, and try as they would,
They had no way but forward to go ... To St. Julien Wood. They were out of the hedge now and into the enemy trench
Swinging bayonet and rifle butt, covered in mud, blood and stench,
And they out of the trench and on, up to the edge of the trees
Where the enemy, hidden by tree trunks, could snipe them with ease.
But the surging Canucks were demented by now -- men possessed
By one single and burning incentive -- to clean out this nest
Of demonic and venomous hornets; this devil-spawned brood
Who were trying to stop them from taking St. Julien Wood. And the Hun staggered backwards, his dead lying heaped on the ground;
Hundred tried to surrender, appalled by the fury they'd found
In these madmen who fought like blind Furies unleased by the gods
Coming forward, and winning, in face of incredible odds!
But then, somehow, the stunned German infantry rallied again
And perceived that the demons who tore at them really were men,
And from enfilade points they set up a new withering fire
That would force these Canadian berserkers to stop and retire. Those first three hellish hours dragged on to become sixty four;
Almost three solid days of exhaustion, gas, gunfire and gore,
And only one hundred of eight hundred and sixteen men
Came back out of St. Julien Wood into sunlight again.
What they did in that wood, amid carnage and slaughter and strife,
Moved their General to say that the thing he most prized in his life
Was the "Canada" armlet displayed with such pride on his sleeve,
And the honour he felt just to know what his men had achieved. Refrain For, as machine guns spewed at them
And shellfire chewed at them
The tired survivors had no water and no food
Because for sixty hours
They'd defied the powers
Of the Kaiser's crack battalions at St. Julien Wood. The place had been the test of them; It saw the best of them
Blown into glory in the battle's bitter feud,
And the oak leaf medallion
Of the Tenth Battalion
Is the symbol of its glory at St. Julien Wood. Loud sing the bugles that sound in November,
Calling the Living to pause and remember
Arthur; Lowry; Ormond; Boyle; Comrades resting after battle's toil. So when the mess kit's sparkling
And the pibroch's darkling
Melody brings gooseflesh and a tingling in the blood
You know the rank and file and Brethren of the Highlanders
Are reliving the Glory of St. Julien Wood.
__________________
Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
Corporal Jean-Marc H. BECHARD, 6 Aug 1993
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This battle was the inspiration for the poem Ypres, 1915 by Alden Nowlan:
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The age of trumpets is passed, the banners hang
like dead crows, battered and black,
rotting into nothingness on cathedral wall.
In the crypt of St. Paul’s I had all the wrong thoughts,
wondered if there was anything left of Nelson
or Wellington, and even wished
I could pry open their tombs and look,
then was ashamed
of such morbid childishness, and almost afraid.
I know the picture is as much a forgery
as the Protocols of Zion, yet it outdistances
more plausible fictions: newsreels, regimental histories,
biographies of Earl Haig.
It is always morning
and the sky somehow manages to be red
though the picture is in black and white.
There is a long road over flat country,
shell holes, the debris of houses,
a gun carriage overturned in a field,
the bodies of men and horses,
but only a few of them and those
always neat and distant.
The Moors are running
down the right side of the road.
The Moors are running
in their baggy pants and Santa Claus caps.
The Moors are running.
And their officers,
Frenchmen who remember
Alsace and Lorraine,
are running backwards in front of them,
waving their swords, trying to drive them back,
weeping
at the dishonour of it all.
The Moors are running.
And on the left side of the same road,
the Canadians are marching in the opposite direction.
The Canadians are marching
in English uniforms behind
a piper playing ‘Scotland the Brave.’
The Canadians are marching
in impeccable formation,
every man in step.
The Canadians are marching.
And I know this belongs
with Lord Kitchener’s mustache
and old movies in which the Kaiser and his general staff
seem to run like Keystone Cops.
That old man on television last night,
a farmer or fisherman by the sound of him,
revisiting Vimy Ridge, and they asked him
what it was like, and he said,
There was water up to our middles, yes
and there was rats, and yes
there was water up to our middles
and rats, all right enough,
and to tell you the truth
after the first three or four days
I started to get a little disgusted.
Oh, I know they were mercenaries
in a war that hardly concerned us.
I know all that.
Sometimes I’m not even sure that I have a country.
But I know that they stood there at Ypres
the first time the Germans used gas,
that they were almost the only troops
in that section of the front
who did not break and run,
who held the line.
Perhaps they were too scared to run.
Perhaps they didn’t know any better
– that is possible, they were so innocent,
those farmboys and mechanics, you only have to look
at old pictures and see how they smiled.
Perhaps they were too shy
to walk out on anybody, even Death.
Perhaps their only motivation
was a stubborn disinclination.
Private McNally thinking:
You squareheaded sons of bitches,
you want this God damn trench
you’re going to have to take it away
from Billy MacNally
of the South End of Saint John, New Brunswick.
And that’s ridiculous, too, and nothing on which to found a country.
Still
It makes me feel good, knowing
that in some obscure, conclusive way
they were connected with me
and me with them.
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I think I need to dress better, or shave, or cut my hair...maybe all three.
While waiting outside City Hall for the Highlanders to march up and have a ceremony, I went into the municipal building just to warm up for a few minutes.
Immediately as I entered, a nice young woman asked me if I wanted some lunch. I gave her my best confused "why are you talking to me" look and said no.
Then she asked if I needed a haircut. Um, no thanks.
Apparantly there was an event for homeless people going on. I had to leave right away. Couldn't take all the sympathetic looks from the volunteers directed at my 5 year old son. "That poor child!"
On topic, nice ceremony. Not many people there to watch. Too bad, I think this sort of tradition (freedom of the city once a year) is important. I know what horrors those Calgarians of the 10th battalion faced that night and morning at Kitchener's wood in 1915, and those Canadians that held when others fled during the gas attacks...the least I can do is stand in the snow and wind, and tell my children why.
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I think I need to dress better, or shave, or cut my hair...maybe all three.
While waiting outside City Hall for the Highlanders to march up and have a ceremony, I went into the municipal building just to warm up for a few minutes.
Immediately as I entered, a nice young woman asked me if I wanted some lunch. I gave her my best confused "why are you talking to me" look and said no.
Then she asked if I needed a haircut. Um, no thanks.
Apparantly there was an event for homeless people going on. I had to leave right away. Couldn't take all the sympathetic looks from the volunteers directed at my 5 year old son. "That poor child!"
On topic, nice ceremony. Not many people there to watch. Too bad, I think this sort of tradition (freedom of the city once a year) is important. I know what horrors those Calgarians of the 10th battalion faced that night and morning at Kitchener's wood in 1915, and those Canadians that held when others fled during the gas attacks...the least I can do is stand in the snow and wind, and tell my children why.
They always march in empty streets. It is sad. I don't know if there is an attempt, but I do think the attempt could be greater. The only outlet I saw report it was CTV in my original post and I didn't see anything about the parade afterward. I would say 75% of the people who witnessed the parade did so accidentally.
I caught basically the whole parade. My timing was off, so sorry if someone went down there and didn't see them. I didnt't get down there until 12:45 pm and I thought I had missed them already but then I saw a cop car on 5th ave at the beginning of the route so I darted over that way and sure enough, there they were:
I doesn't look like they did the mass as in years past. They stopped in fron of City Hall as Aeneas described (hah) for a brief ceremony and then continued on down Stephen Ave.
And now everyone that reads this thread knows that the St. Julien's Day Parade takes place on the Saturday closest to April 222 each and every year regardless of weather. So if you missed them this year, try to go down and see them next year!
Edit: Kings Own are parading today as well, so you may be able to catch them. I have never seen their parade before however.
Military Parade Downtown Calgary - Saturday April 20
