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00:00This is the War Memorial in Stratford, Ontario, and it's typical of all the War Memorials
00:15across Canada, in every village, in every town, and in every city.
00:20These memorials are gateways to the First World War.
00:24Unfortunately most Canadians have forgotten the First World War, and they don't realize
00:28that it was the greatest and most traumatic episode in our history.
00:35400,000 Canadians went overseas between 1914 and 18, and 60,000 died for King and Empire.
00:58This is the War Memorial in Stratford, Ontario, and the World War Memorial.
01:07It really was recommended only one month old, but just every one year the first.
01:13Even though it was a lot of time, it's not so fortunate it can't wait.
01:18The peaceful countryside of northern France,
01:41dotted with war memorials and military cemeteries.
01:44It was here that were fought the final desperate battles
01:48that brought the Great War to a sudden, unexpected end.
01:57March 1918.
01:59Germany has defeated Russia
02:00and switches millions of men from the east to the western front
02:04to launch the greatest offensive yet, the Kaiser's Battle.
02:09After four years of war,
02:11Germany's hopes for victory now ride on storm troops
02:14such as 22-year-old Lieutenant Ernst Jünger.
02:18March 21st, the hurricane broke loose.
02:23Compared with it, all preceding battles were child's play.
02:27We were all in transport
02:28over this elemental expression of German power
02:31and were burning with impatience.
02:33The decisive battle, the final advance, had begun.
02:37Its stake was the possession of the world.
02:39We were on the Douay Plain, and it was here in 1918 that the Canadians prepared their defenses to stop the great German offensive they all knew was coming.
03:00It was also near here, in January 1918, that my grandfather's war came to an end.
03:07While playing cards with a number of his friends in a tent, a shrapnel shell burst overhead.
03:12And a shrapnel ball entered his cheek and came out the bottom of his neck here.
03:19For him, it involved being evacuated out and having his jaw wired for one year, and his war was over.
03:28The rest of the Canadian Corps were now in lines very close to the Germans, out by Lenz and through all these small villages and out on the plain.
03:41They were digging trenches at a phenomenal rate, putting up barbed wire, building machine gun redoubts,
03:46because everyone knew the Germans were coming.
03:55Spring 1918, in the whirlwind attack of the Kaisers offensive, millions of storm troops overwhelm the British and French armies,
04:03sending them reeling back towards Paris and the Atlantic coast.
04:07By early summer, the Germans are a breath away from victory.
04:10But in July, the Allied High Command decides on a bold gamble, a counter-attack.
04:17And as it's spearhead, they choose the one army the Germans have carefully avoided attacking,
04:22the Canadian Corps, the conquerors of Vimy Ridge.
04:28In the summer of 1918, the Canadian Corps is perhaps the deadliest Allied force on the Western Front.
04:34Its commander, Arthur Currie, knows that the Germans are well aware of this.
04:40So if he is to move his 100,000 men, Currie must do it in the utmost secrecy.
04:50The ancient French cathedral city of Amiens, astride the Somme River.
04:55It was here that the great German advance had been stopped, blocking their march to the sea.
05:00It's from Amiens that the Allies planned to make their counter-stroke.
05:04And it is from Vimy to Amiens that the Canadian Corps must move.
05:09To trick the Germans, decoy Canadian units are sent north to Belgium.
05:15While in total secrecy, Arthur Currie moves his army of 100,000 men, 60 kilometers south to Amiens.
05:21Traveling only at night, the Corps moves under a total blackout.
05:26Among the thousands of troops is 24-year-old John Harold Becker.
05:36Not a man in our platoon had any idea where we were.
05:40We marched for a long time in a forest in pitch blackness,
05:44and finally halted and fell off to the side of the narrow road under the trees,
05:49and lay down in the rain.
05:55This is Gentel's wood.
05:57And it was a wood behind the front lines for the Battle of Amiens.
06:01The Battle of Amiens was the big breaking point in the war.
06:04It was the first time the Germans were beaten,
06:06and it would be the last time that the flow of the war would change.
06:10The big idea for Amiens was that in the march offensives,
06:14the Germans had pushed everyone back so far,
06:17but had outrun their abilities to really defend the positions that they had won.
06:22So they had a whole series of large salience that were weakly defended,
06:26with just some barbed wire, machine guns, and trenches.
06:29It was really ripe for the picking in August 1918.
06:33The problem for the Canadians was that they were moving into this front in total secrecy,
06:37and how do you hide 100,000 men moving south.
06:42In Gentel's wood was one area where they hid the Canadian troops before the attack.
06:47And in this wood would be thousands of Canadian troops hiding from German observation
06:52and waiting to move up to the front to launch the attack.
06:59It was the first time I had seen real enthusiasm on the eve of an attack.
07:02Our move to this front had been so unusual, the news of surprise was so intriguing,
07:07and the information given us by our officers so encouraging that every man seemed ready to go.
07:13As for myself, I did not feel any particular elation, but I certainly wanted something to happen.
07:17As eager for something to happen as his boys, he's a Canadian Army chaplain in his late 50s, Canon Frederick Scott.
07:29In four years of fighting, Canon Scott has seen thousands die, losing his own son at the Somme.
07:38When 2,000 Allied guns opened fire at 4.15 in the morning of August 8th, Canon Scott has every reason to rejoice.
07:47I could not help shouting out, Glory be to God for this barrage!
07:52The German reply came, but to our delight it was feeble, and we knew we had taken them by surprise.
08:03Sweeping forward with the Australians on their left and the French on their right,
08:06Canadian infantry quickly move out into open country, into a new, fast-moving kind of warfare,
08:13with tanks, aircraft, field artillery, all racing forward together in an attack designed to drive the Germans away from the end.
08:20We're driving through the Loose River Valley. This whole valley was shrouded in mist when the Canadians came through here.
08:33It was the most difficult part of the operation, and they had to sweep around the river.
08:38They were totally successful, and they quickly pushed beyond the woods and the river into the open country beyond.
08:44That's characteristic of the Amiens battlefield. They broke through the German front lines, which were not very strong,
08:49and then pushed into open territory. Going also now up this road into Hangard and Hangard Woods,
08:58which is the jump off position for the 1st Canadian Division, and of course our old friend Ken and Scott is right there.
09:05He's now about, jeez, he must be 55, 56 years old, and he's right up there with the boys as they're moving across the territory here.
09:13In the fields in different directions, I could see rifles stuck, bayonet downwards in the ground, which showed that there lay wounded men.
09:29I found that these were chiefly Germans, and that all of them had received hideous wounds and were clamoring for water.
09:34I think all the Germans I saw that morning were dying.
09:43The first wave of Canadian infantry moves so fast, it quickly pushes beyond the range of its heavy guns,
09:50and runs into a wall of bullets from German machine gunners.
09:53Lieutenant James Pedley was so eager to get to the fighting, he'd hitched a ride from Paris, but soon regrets his haste.
10:01Crack! Moreau is hit! He falls back, then stiffens in a final convulsion and collapses. A tap on my shoulder.
10:11Looking around, I see an officer of the 2nd Brigade. He is fresh, eager. Sections of un-muddied men are climbing the hill behind him.
10:18May I go through you, sir, he says, a phrase from the golf links, happily transplanted. You bet your life he may go through.
10:26The battle on the 8th of August actually ended in these fields out here.
10:45This is the only place for the entire day that the Canadians did not reach their objective.
10:49The 4th Division were hung up in the woods across here, and Germans started to bring up reinforcements and catch the men in the open field.
10:56And when they were advancing across here, they were put down, had to take cover in whatever shell holes they could get.
11:03The day had been phenomenally successful. They had advanced 8 miles, captured all objectives except for this one,
11:11and they were ready to push for another day on August the 9th.
11:15The whiz-bangs came smashing in among us at a terrifying rate.
11:19I turned my head to see if the boys were still with me, and one of the whiz-bangs burst right in front of me.
11:23And instantly, something kicked me with a jolt.
11:27Stunned, I lay still for a minute. Then I yelled, I'm hit!
11:33As the sun sets on the 8th of August, Harold Becker stumbles towards a dressing station, his back shattered by shrapnel.
11:40The next morning, James Pedley's legs are cut from under him by a flail of machine gun bullets.
11:46Becker and Pedley have their blighties. Soldiers slang for a wound that takes a man safely out of the war. Others are not so lucky.
11:54In the ambulance, there was a taciturn fellow. I speak to him once or twice, but he only grunts an answer.
12:02Who the devil does he think he is? Too proud to answer when you speak to him?
12:06Unexpectedly, the light shoots upward and reveals the broad white bandage wound around the man's head.
12:12The truth comes over me. For him, the game is played out. He is blind.
12:17On the 9th, they put in new troops and they launch another big offensive against the Germans.
12:36They come through this position, they capture Le Quinelle village and they push on for another 4 miles.
12:42Both days were phenomenal victories, but there was a very heavy cost for both days.
12:51Against ferocious German resistance, the Canadians claw their way forward for 10 more days.
12:57Capturing 10,000 German prisoners and 200 guns.
13:01As planned, surprise has been total.
13:04The Canadian advance of 24 kilometers makes Emyen the greatest British victory yet.
13:09It reverses the tide of the war.
13:12The Kaiser's battle, which had almost defeated the Allies, has become the Kaiser's ruin.
13:17And glimpsing now a possibility of winning the war, and quickly, the British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, congratulates the Canadians on their stunning success.
13:28Movements now were very rapid. This was real war, and we were advancing daily.
13:39We heard of the victories of the French and Americans to the south.
13:42It was glorious to think that after the bitter experience of the previous march, the tables had been turned and we had got the initiative once more.
13:48The Allies have the initiative, but the cost of the 11-day battle has been heavy.
13:5712,000 Canadians missing, wounded and dead. And after Emyen, the war still has 90 days to go.
14:03Whatever the battle has cost the Allies, for the Germans, it is a military catastrophe, shattering their hope of conquering Europe.
14:14To stave off defeat, the German army retreats, regrouping near the Hindenburg Line, an interlocking wall of pillboxes, machine gun nests, artillery emplacements, and kilometer-wide fields of barbed wire.
14:28The most formidable defensive system in Europe.
14:38It is against the Hindenburg Line that the Allied High Command will next throw the Canadians, ordering their commander, Arthur Currie, to do the impossible.
14:47Crack Germany's wall of steel, whatever the cost.
14:59With the victory at Emyen, the Allies had stopped the Germans cold.
15:05But ahead lies Germany's most formidable defensive system, the Hindenburg Line.
15:10The French and British governments believe it will take years, and millions more dead, to end the war.
15:15But boldly gambling on the possibility of a quick victory, the Allied High Command risks a new offensive, and orders General Arthur Currie and the Canadian Corps to crack the Hindenburg Line.
15:29The Canadians will attack from just outside the French city of Arras.
15:32Arras 1918, the once beautiful city, with its cathedral and monasteries in 17th century squares, lies at the heart of the British sector.
15:48After four years within range of German guns, Arras has been pounded into ruin.
15:54It's market day in Arras, and this was the main city that was bought by the French city of Arras.
16:23It was behind the Canadian lines throughout 1918.
16:27With the German shelling, life was very intense here, so a lot of the men would go underground.
16:32And they lived in the caves underneath Arras, and in the basements, or the caves, in the areas around the Grand Place and the Petit Place.
16:39We're in the Souterrain under the Hotel de Ville at Arras.
16:53It's a series of chambers that were built about the 16th century, and were used by First World War troops to be safe from the Germans throughout the war.
17:07It held over 10,000 troops.
17:10It had a whole lighting system and water system.
17:13It was almost a home away from home.
17:15I made my way to Arras and spent the night in one of the mysterious caves which lie under that city.
17:28It was a most curious abode.
17:30No one knows when the caves were dug.
17:32They were probably extended from time to time as the chalk was quarried for the purpose of building the town.
17:37Long passages stretched in different directions, and from them opened out huge vaulted chambers where the battalions were billeted.
17:55General Currie doesn't let the Canadians rest in the city, but orders them right into action.
17:59Over battlefields where the cream of the British Army had been slaughtered in 1917, it now takes the Canadians four days of savage fighting in late August 1918 just to penetrate to the outworks of the Hindenburg Line.
18:20Men were carrying out wounded on stretchers. I heard someone call my name. Going to where some wounded were lying, I saw Sadal. He looked up. Tell me straight, he whispered. Do you think I've got mine?
18:41He was frightfully wounded like the cases beside him. I think you have, I said. Is there anything I can do?
18:49Sadal begged me to sit beside him till he went to sleep.
18:53It was a strange experience to sit there without talking and wait till he was gone.
18:57The men on the other two stretchers were both dead, and shortly, Sadal was too.
19:02Will Bird, 42nd Battalion.
19:04On the first two days of the battle, August 26th and August 27th, the Canadians had advanced further in those two days, and the whole British Army had advanced in two months in 1917.
19:23They were doing really well until they came up against the German positions on this ridge.
19:27And the Canadians were not ready for this. Their advance had outstripped their artillery, and once they got against these German positions, it was basically small groups of men advancing and really getting caught in the uncut barbed wire.
19:42It was the same problem that they had in the Somme in 1916.
19:48In the little valley over here, the 2nd Canadian Division was wiped out, and it literally became the graveyard of the 2nd Division.
19:57It was the same.
19:58It was the same.
19:59It was the same.
20:00It was the same.
20:01It was the same.
20:02It was the same.
20:08Undaunted by such losses, the Canadians regroup for the attack.
20:13Their target is now a section of the Hindenburg Line called the Drokor-Quayant, or DQ Line, a kilometer-thick barrier of dugouts, fortifications, trenches, and fields of barbed wire.
20:25Curry concentrates his men and guns at one slender point.
20:29His daring plan, punch a narrow hole through the German line, and have his troops fan out behind the Germans once they have broken through.
20:37The attack begins, scrambling right after the first wave of the Canadian assault, is a fragile-looking signaller, Victor Wheeler.
20:47When Victor joined up, the doctors told him he wouldn't last three months.
20:51By now, with most of his friends already dead, Victor is a veteran of two years fighting.
20:58Hitting the DQ Line, we lost so many officers that many privates and NCOs were suddenly filling the breaches in the ranks.
21:06Of our six runners, only one survived.
21:09Signaller Scott was struck in the neck, and Charlie McDonald's leg was blown off at the hip.
21:15But, by 8.30 in the morning, after very heavy fighting, some of it hand to hand, we had captured the first four lines of the Drokor-Quayant Trench System,
21:25and were within 440 yards of the town of Dury.
21:29Our first objective.
21:31This is a piece of the Drokor-Quayant Line.
21:40It's a spike from the First World War that somehow has surfaced through the mud after years and years of plowing in this field.
21:49This is an actual piece of the Drokor-Quayant Line, probably held the revetments in,
21:54or some of the, you know, little bridges they used to have over the top of the trenches.
21:58This is a Drury Mill Cemetery.
22:02It was made right after the battle from all the bodies that were laying in the barbed wire and the men that were killed up here.
22:09As you can see by this cemetery and the fighting at the Drokor-Quayant Line, the Germans had by no way given up.
22:16And they were fighting a very hard battle, and they still had Cambrai to go.
22:20They had one more major battle.
22:22In fact, in the 60 days in August and September 1918,
22:26one in five of all the Canadians killed in the war were killed.
22:40Breaking through the DQ Line brings the Canadians close to their ultimate objective,
22:44the pivot of the German army's supply system in France, the city of Cambrai, only 10 kilometers away.
22:54All along the Western Front, the German armies are in retreat.
22:58But the fighting has 60 days to go.
23:00And lying between the Canadians and Cambrai is the biggest single barrier of the Hindenburg Line.
23:06The heavily fortified, 20 meter wide Canal du Nord is the most treacherous obstacle the Canadians have ever faced.
23:15The Canal du Nord, a wide, peaceful waterway in the fertile agricultural plain of northern France.
23:34Easily crossed now in a matter of seconds, but in late September 1918, it is the most dangerous obstacle on the Western Front.
23:48And it is this obstacle that the Canadians are poised to attack.
23:52So bold and so risky is Arthur Currie's plan to cross the canal that the British command,
23:58usually not adverse to sacrificing soldiers' lives, vetoes it.
24:03But Currie insists and he prevails.
24:05This canal at that time was water from here up and from about two miles down.
24:15But in this area, it was dry.
24:17They hadn't finished the construction of the canal.
24:20This attack that the Canadians were going to do was probably the hardest that they threw at anybody during the whole war,
24:26at least the most complex.
24:27Because they decided that the whole attack was going to be funneled through this dry part of the canal bed.
24:33And then everybody, which is about 60,000 troops, would have to fan out to attack other positions.
24:41As we waited to cross the Canal du Nord, probably never in the war had we experienced a moment of deeper anxiety.
24:48The men would have to climb down one side of the canal, rush across it and climb up the other.
24:53It seemed inevitable that the slaughter would be frightful.
24:59They did the same thing as they did at Amiens.
25:01They had all their men hiding in the woods.
25:03And this was a deadly operation because if the Germans found them, gas shells and high explosive would have caused thousands of casualties.
25:09But anyway, Currie, who was the commander at that time, decided this is the attack he was going to make.
25:15And with a thundering barrage, the men stormed across the canal just where we're going right now.
25:29All across here, about 4,000 Canadian troops led the attack and pushed into these fields.
25:39Half of them went north to attack Marquion, and the other half pushed straight across the fields towards Berlon.
25:45Currie's boldness pays off. The Canadians rush the canal, punch through German defenses, and fan out north and south heading for the final objective, Cambrai.
26:03Shortly after crossing the canal, all officers in D Company became casualties.
26:07Soon there were so many casualties, we had to reorganize two companies on the spot.
26:11Badly battered as we were, we continued to drive forward into the hurricane, while SOS messages went out for replacement officers.
26:18Corporal Victor Wheeler.
26:20Well, the first stage of the battle had gone very well, and now they're just streaming through.
26:33The troops are just, the fields are full of the Canadians advancing.
26:36They're coming up to Berlon Wood.
26:39Berlon Wood had been destroyed in the fighting in 1917, when the British tried to capture it, and really they held on for a while but couldn't hold it.
26:46The Canadians just swept right by it.
26:48Troops went around it, both north and south, and troops also poured through it.
26:53So within about a day, Berlon Wood and the village of Berlon was in Canadian hands, and they're pushing the attack towards Cambrai.
27:01The problem occurred here, was that after Berlon, they outstripped their artillery again, and they're going against German defenses on the outskirts of Cambrai that they really don't know anything about.
27:13Whether they're slit trenches, or machine guns, or barbed wire, they have no real idea of what's facing them.
27:20So Berlon was part of the successful two days after clearing the Canal du Nord, but they're going to run into a lot more trouble as they close in on the suburbs, the little villages around Cambrai.
27:32The Canadian Corps, on 27 September 1918, forced the Canal du Nord, and captured this hill.
27:44They took Cambrai, Danais, Valenciennes, and Mons.
27:48Ken and Scott is with the troops, as in a dozen days of non-stop and exceptionally bitter fighting, they slowly drive the Germans back across the fields, pausing only at night.
28:01In the morning, I went back again to our men in the line. The country was undulating, and German machine gun emplacements were in all directions, and our men suffered very severely.
28:16In just the first day, after storming across the Canal du Nord, the Canadians had advanced more than four kilometers, and lost thousands of men.
28:41Private G. L. Port, Royal Canadian Regiment, 28 September 1918, age 22. He did his best.
28:59Private G. Burton, 52nd Battalion, Canadian Infantry, 28 September 1918, age 31.
29:06He fought with heroes side by side. He died that we might live, ever remembered.
29:20The fighting on September the 27th had broken the Canal du Nord line and the German Marquion line,
29:26and the Canadians had stormed through Berlon Wood over here, and they were crossing these fields going towards Cambrai.
29:33On the 28th, new troops came up to relieve the tired ones, and they continued their attack against the German position called the Marquion line.
29:42The Marquion line was a trench system, not too elaborate.
29:46Lots of barbed wire that ran from these villages across this little valley here, and into these small villages that are really suburbs of Cambrai.
29:54From here, the Canadians could actually see Cambrai, and if you can imagine, on the 28th of September from this church over here,
30:03all the way across to the factory buildings on the Douay Road, the Canadians were assaulting on the German positions.
30:10The problem was, the Germans were inside these little villages here, and they had fortified all the villages, and they put up barbed wire, and basically the Canadians didn't know where they were.
30:20They didn't have the proper maps or reconnaissance to help them with the attack.
30:25They had outstripped a lot of their artillery, and now it was getting very difficult for them to break through to Cambrai.
30:30In fact, this is where Cannon Scott's war ends, where he's watching the spires of Cambrai like we are now, and he's actually wounded, and that's the end of him for the war.
30:42Suddenly, there was a tremendous crash in front of us. A lot of earth was blown into our faces, and we both fell down.
30:52I'd been wounded in both legs, and from one I saw blood streaming down from my buddies.
30:57The chaplain of the 10th Battalion, who happened to be standing in the sunken road, got some men together quickly and came out to our help.
31:05I was carried off immediately to an ambulance in the road, and placed in it with four others, one of whom was dying.
31:12Our journey lay through the area over which we had just made the great advance.
31:18Through the open door at the end of the ambulance, as we sped onward, I could see the brown, colorless stretch of country fade in the twilight, and then vanish into complete darkness.
31:28And I knew that the great adventure of my life, among the most glorious men that the world had ever produced, had come to an end.
31:41After almost four years sharing the troops' hardships and dangers, and giving comfort to wounded and dying Canadians, under fire and on every battlefield, Cannon Scott's own wounds will keep him far from the action.
31:55The victory he had dreamed of, and which required the death of his own son, is just 40 days away, but Cannon Scott will not be there to see it.
32:04We're in the Hotel de Ville of Cambrai, overlooking the Grand Place, where the Canadians marched on October 9, 1918.
32:29Some of the most famous photographs from the period are the Canadian troops coming in here.
32:33The third division men who had crossed the canals, and found themselves into the square here.
32:38They walked around here, and of course the whole thing is on fire.
32:41So the city itself hadn't been damaged so much from the war, but the Germans who were seeking retribution,
32:46and to destroy everything they possibly could, had just torched the place.
32:50Reaching the centre of Cambrai, no one is more surprised than the Canadians, that the Germans have abandoned the city, slipping away like thieves in the night.
33:05But the Germans had no choice.
33:07With the British army closing in from the south, and the Canadians from the north, the German command realised they were about to be trapped.
33:15With strategic Cambrai gone, even the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, has to admit the war is lost.
33:22The torching of the city signals the beginning of the end for Germany.
33:26But the burning of Cambrai is just one act of cruelty amongst many.
33:31During their four-year occupation of Belgium and northern France, the Germans have destroyed hundreds of villages,
33:38uprooted orchards, slaughtered livestock, forced populations of men and women into slave labour,
33:44and executed thousands of hostages.
33:48After Cambrai, you're talking about the 9th, 10th, 11th of October, there was no time out.
34:03The idea was to stay on the heels of the Germans, don't let them build any more defensive works.
34:08Because if you give them time, they'll build another line, and you'll lose another 10,000 men trying to get through it.
34:13So the idea was to keep the pressure up.
34:15So after Cambrai, and for the next month, month and a half, they just kept pushing them.
34:24In spite of the loss of Cambrai, the Germans fight a series of bloody rearguard actions, inflicting heavy losses.
34:31Battling ahead without rest, the Canadians thrust into occupied territory for the first time.
34:36Emile Seger, a professional cartoonist, now a fighting soldier, is in the midst of the Canadian advance.
34:44Our first inhabited French town. As we entered, the street was empty.
34:53The Germans, we were told later, had warned the people to stay in their cellars.
34:57Soon, faces peered from windows. Then, in an instant, the villagers began to pour from the doorway,
35:03singing and shouting,
35:08children danced, old women rushed out with mugs and steaming pots of ersatz coffee and slices of brown bread.
35:12It was about all they had, but they insisted on sharing it with us.
35:16At Ruil, the population who, only moments ago, had been liberated after four years as captive, were wild with joy.
35:32They embraced hundreds of us at random. Even the commanding officer did not escape the kisses.
35:36Corporal Victor Wheeler.
35:38Advancing north, the Allies find the roads blocked with thousands of refugees, just as the German command had planned.
35:47To slow down the Allied advance, German soldiers deliberately destroyed the population's homes and sources of food.
35:55As the Canadians push further into occupied territory, they discover there is an ironic and dark side to their role as liberators.
36:08As thousands of German soldiers are captured or surrendered, the Canadians are caught in an unenviable situation.
36:15Having fought for four years to protect the French and the Belgians from the Germans,
36:20Canadian soldiers like Will Byrd now find it is the Germans who need protection.
36:30We saw a man running at top speed. He was bareheaded and without a tunic, but his grey trousers and boots told us he was a German officer.
36:38We watched. Women came running from the village, and men. Some of the women were carrying pitchforks.
36:44The Germans slowed, seemed to stagger, glanced around wildly, started off again and suddenly was surrounded.
36:50We could see clubs being used, and pitchforks.
37:02As the Canadians advance into Belgium, messages chronicling Germany's collapse stream towards Allied command.
37:08Leel and Ostend are now in our hands. The Hun evacuated Douai in the night.
37:13First Division walked right in.
37:15Zee Bruges and Bruges have been captured. Entire Belgian coast, freed.
37:23For the Canadians, the last battle of the Great War will take place at the Belgian city of Mons.
37:29Suddenly aware that the war is almost over, each soldier begins to think of himself.
37:38Nobody wants to be the last man to die.
37:46On the 10th of November, the 42nd Battalion, the Black Watch of Canada, including Will Byrd, arrived near Mons.
37:52They took over the positions just beside the city.
37:56They were preparing for a nice, easy rest until the armistice.
37:59When they received word from the Canadian Corps, coming from Arthur Currie, the commander,
38:04that they would be asked to move on Mons.
38:07The men were very unhappy about this, but nonetheless, they followed their orders.
38:11They figured the war was just about over, and this was not required.
38:14But on the night of November the 10th, just south of this train station,
38:19the company of the 42nd Battalion and Will Byrd made their move on Mons,
38:24and was going to be the final action of the Canadian Corps in the Great War.
38:38In Mons, in 1914, the British suffered their first defeat of the Great War,
38:43when the Germans drove British troops from the city.
38:45Now in 1918, with only 24 hours to go, Arthur Currie orders the Canadians to take the city,
38:54and end the British Empire's war where it began.
39:01November the 10th, 1918, Will Byrd and Tommy, and the brothers Tom and Jim Mills,
39:08Will's friends of the 42nd Battalion he's fought side by side with for years,
39:11are camped just outside the city of Mons.
39:15They can hardly believe that the end of the horror is in sight.
39:19Bird! It was the voice of the company Sergeant Major, harsh as a whipsaw.
39:27Get your section at once. Battle order. We're going to take Mons.
39:32Tom Mills and his brother Jim are on their feet.
39:35The war's over tomorrow and everybody knows it. What kind of rot is this?
39:38The Sergeant Major's face was pale and set. He was not speaking in his normal voice at all.
39:44Orders are orders. Get your gear.
39:47Five or six of the men were shouting at us to turn around and attack our headquarters.
39:51The officers, they said, were worse enemies than any German.
39:53So Will and his buddies have to fight their way into Mons, just hours before the armistice.
40:04And at dusk, Will Byrd kills his last German.
40:07The Germans had set up their machine gun in the middle of the street.
40:15I lay on my side and peered forward.
40:18One German had his helmet off as if adjusting the strap.
40:22I shot the rifle grenade.
40:26It exploded at shoulder height over the machine gun.
40:30I went forward.
40:32Two of the Germans lay as they had fallen.
40:33The third had crawled across the sidewalk and was lying there.
40:37The way was clear.
40:43The Canadians capture Mons, but in the last day, 38 Canadians die.
40:48Including Tom Mills.
40:52Jim Mills is wild-eyed.
40:54He says he's gonna shoot whoever arranged to have his brother killed for nothing.
40:58He really means it.
41:00He's hoping Curry comes here today.
41:01If he doesn't, he's gonna shoot the next tire up.
41:04He says his brother was murdered.
41:06An officer says, take Jim and get him drunk.
41:09So drunk he won't know anything for 24 hours.
41:12Then it'll be too late.
41:14And he'll forget all about it.
41:19It was not likely that Jim Mills and the others would forget their friends and their brothers.
41:23who had died in what would be the last day of the Great War.
41:38Mons, 11th of November, 1918.
41:42Dawn.
41:43Hostilities will cease at 1100 hours, November 11th.
41:50Troops will stand fast on the line reached that hour, which will be reported to Brigade Headquarters.
41:57Defensive precautions will be maintained.
42:01There will be no intercourse of any description with the enemy.
42:06We're in the Hotel de Ville in the Grand Place of Mons.
42:12By the early morning of November the 11th, Canadian troops had infiltrated most of the city and were filtering through to the Grand Place here.
42:19The Germans had gone and already civilians were coming out of their houses in a very celebratory mood, cheering on the troops and the Canadians were starting to fill the square.
42:36By about 7 a.m. they got news that the armistice was in fact going ahead and at 11 a.m. the war would end.
42:42So the Grand Place here in front of us was just loaded with French and Belgian civilians all through the area.
42:50The Canadian troops, many of them kilted like Will Bird's boys.
42:55The RCRs and the Princess Patricias were all coming into the place here.
43:00In a sign of honour, the Belgian civilians had brought all the dead Canadians killed in the last part of the battle
43:07and laid them out here and covered them with flowers and wreaths.
43:09And the whole square was just full.
43:13The Canadian troops were exhausted, but they still got into the mood of things.
43:19They then had a number of speeches by the early morning into the afternoon by the local dignitaries, the mayor.
43:26And so ended the Great War.
43:29When he enters the city, General Currie is pleased to learn that the last 24 hours of fighting and the victory at Mons has cost only 38 dead.
43:40The Belgians organize a tribute for the Canadians who died liberating Mons.
43:44Gentlemen of the Canadian Corps, we bow, filled with respect and deep feeling before the tomb of your comrades.
43:55In so doing we enshrine in our hearts the remembrance of what they were and what they have done for us.
44:00From afar brothers we knew not came to us to strive beside us.
44:06And with how much suffering, with how much effort, with how much sorrow have they paid for it.
44:13Noble Canada has shed rivers of blood.
44:17Belgium is free and civilization is saved.
44:20You really get a sense of the euphoria that would have been here at the time.
44:30It would have just been an incredible circumstance to stand here.
44:34Four years of suffering for everybody.
44:36All the death and all the people who weren't here.
44:39The remembrance of all the people who had gone.
44:41And that's really what I feel strong about when I'm here is the sense of history and the finality of the First World War.
44:50In four years fighting for king and empire, the Canadian Corps had suffered 60,000 dead.
45:04Paying this terrible price, the naive amateurs of 1914 had become by 1918 the most feared troops on the Western Front.
45:13Masters of war.
45:14Four years fighting in the most deadly war in history had transformed men like Will Bird and their world.
45:23As millions of veterans would soon discover, nothing could ever be the same again.
45:28There was no jubilation.
45:32We sat around and saw pictures.
45:35Mud holes.
45:37Faces.
45:38Barbed wire.
45:39Stand to parapets.
45:41Still forms under blankets.
45:44Boots.
45:45Worn and muddied boots protruding from ambulances.
45:49Pitiful khaki forms huddled on the duck boards.
45:52War we had seen.
45:53We had seen.
45:54And we had seen through it.
45:55We had seen through it.
46:23We had seen through it.
46:25fini call dodge tests.
46:28No, I see.
46:33jumps.
46:34Is Nichting fight through.
46:36Even if we had seen through fish landonெ.
46:44Tough days.
46:46We had seen through it.
46:48We had seen through it.
46:49You