In WW I after almost three years of neutrality the USA finally joined Canada and the other allies to defeat Germany. The US expeditionary force fought as a unified force under its own command for only the last 47 days to help finish off a Germany that was already reeling on the edge of defeat. In that war the Germans came to regard the Canadians as the shock troops of the allied armies. Then and now Canada is a nation of about 10% the population of the USA. In that war on a per capita basis Canada suffered 10 times the casualties of the USA.
Who remembers now the Battle of Amiens in August, 1918? Yet it was this battle that broke the spirit of the German army in the West. German troops broke and ran before a Canadian and led assault: the first German rout of the war. Between August and November, Canadians spearheaded a sequence of attacks that destroyed the German army's will to fight.
Those battles -- collectively known as the Hundred Days -- have been brilliantly summarized in a short book, Shane Schreiber's
Shock Army of the British Empire.
By Schreiber's tally, the 100,000 Canadians who fought in the Hundred Days met almost one quarter of the entire remaining German army on their Western Front: 47 German divisions against four Canadians. The Canadian Corps fought alongside the Australian Corps and the 51st Highland Division. Together they engaged and defeated some 40 per cent of the German army.
Over those three months, the Canadians suffered more than 45,000 casualties, killed and wounded -- or about as many as in the whole year from D-Day to VE Day in World War II.
Being a Canadian, of course, Schreiber underscores his point with a final statistical comparison to the U.S. forces in the Meuse-Argonne region on the southern portion of the Western front.
Troops engaged:
Americans: 650,000
Canadians: 105,000
Duration of Operations:
Americans: 47 days
Canadians: 100 days
Maximum Distance Advanced:
Americans: 34 miles
Canadians: 86 miles
German Divisions Defeated:
(Out of a total of 200)
Americans: 46
Canadians: 47
Average Number of Casualties Suffered per German Division Defeated:
Americans: 2,170
Canadians: 975
Total Casualties:
Americans: 100,000
Canadians: 45,830
"The ultimate conclusion that must be drawn," Schreiber sums up, "is that ... the Canadian Corps was able to make a highly significant contribution to the defeat of the German army on the battlefield at precisely half the cost in terms of life and limb as the American army."
Note: the room is doing strange things to my formatting which I am unable to edit
