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Comment by nerdponx | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why this came to be. At first my theory was that they were upset at being dragged across the ocean to fight a war they had nothing to do with, leading to a kind of personal vendetta against Germany for starting it. But that doesn't make much sense, because evidently the Australians didn't have the same reaction, and as I understand it the average German soldier was not much invested in their cause.

I know that American soldiers only showed up at the end of the war, but did they have a similar reaction to the Canadians?

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I think Canada implemented conscription much later than the European countries, so in a lot of cases it would be volunteers versus conscripts. I wonder if Canada also had a less visible/rigid class system than Europe back then, that could cause a lack of sympathy for enemy soldiers who realistically had little choice in what they were doing. And obviously Canada isn't going to be holding on to any European territory, so the accomplishment of moving borders around would mean even less to them than the others.

According to the article:

> One theory was that Canadians were perpetually avenging the “Crucified Canadian,” a battlefield rumour of a captured Canadian officer that Germans had supposedly crucified to a barn door near Ypres. The crucifixion was almost certainly fabricated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucified_Soldier

From what I've read America went through a compressed repeat of all the mistakes and what the other allies had learnt 1914-1916. Were it not for the brief excursion into Mexico in the years preceding, they'd have opened with cavalry. Even so they still formed a cavalry division in 1917. Learning to deal with the arrival of machine guns, gas and the stagnancy of trench warfare before proper mechanisation was challenging to the generals and tactics of the day.

I imagine their soldiers had just as tough a time of it as others. Life was cheap, WW1 was brutal in the extreme.

Cavalry actually was used very effectively in WWI, for example the Battle of Mons. It was still quite devastating outside of trench warfare, which was why there where still some cavalry units at the start of WWII.

Consider a man lugging around a 35lb anti tank rifle, ammunition, and gear would have loved to have a horse. That can apply to just about any heavy but still man portable weapon.

PS: Horses where still useful outside of battle in WWII. Hell, America was occasionally using donkey’s in Afghanistan.

Yeah but Mons was the opening weeks of the war before the entrenchment and stagnancy on both sides. In some respects it was one of the last battles of the old tactics, still fighting the last war. A cavalry action in 1917 would have been pointless slaughter. Mind, so were most of the infantry advances.

Horses were used as transport, and lugging around field guns throughout the war - they were more capable than vehicles in the conditions. Those were supplemented with the narrow gauge trench railways. Internal combustion wasn't yet up to replacing all those uses.

"Consider a man lugging around a 35lb anti tank rifle."

You seem to be describing mounted infantry rather than cavalry.

Mounted infantry fought on foot, they didn't charge into battle. They also equipped soldiers with bicycles when would have had a similar effect.

horses can go though terrain no bike ever could

And the obverse is true also.

Mounted infantry are typically about speed of movement, similar to bicycles. Each still has slightly different trade-offs

> Horses where still useful outside of battle in WWII.

They were still useful in battle in WW2. My regiment fought on horseback during WW2. And the US still trains soldiers to fight on horseback to this day.

> Consider a man lugging around a 35lb anti tank rifle, ammunition, and gear would have loved to have a horse.

Yes but that’s not cavalry is it - that’s just an infanteer on a horse.

> Consider a man lugging around a 35lb anti tank rifle, ammunition, and gear would have loved to have a horse.

man + 30 kg of gear (standard for US) is already approaching the upper limit of what a horse can carry. Horses are easy to spook and hurt. Donkeys are total badasses in comparison.

Are they badasses or just immovably tame?

I think one cannot overlook that a great many Canadians were farmers, foresters, and miners at a time when workplace safety wasn't a thing. My grandfather recalled men being ripped in half by the snapped lines from the log pulls, of being squished by errant logs. Similar horrors were commonplace in Canadian life of that era, along with starvation, disease and winter.

This was my thought, but then wouldn't Australia and New Zealand have been the same?

New Zealand troops were certainly involved in atrocities but I have been under the impression they behaved better than the Canadians - I am a New Zealander though so have a bias.

The ones I know of:

https://ww100.govt.nz/surafend-incident

https://i.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/84221541/editorial-claim...

I wonder why this came to be.

This is perhaps a better explanation than the Crucified Canadian: Another (theory) was that Canadians had never forgiven the Germans’ first use of poison gas in 1915, of which Canadian units had been some of the hardest hit.

This is the reason I remember being told as a kid. There was a lot of hate towards Germans from that generation for a reason. Mustard gas...

According to the book Vimy Ridge by Pierre Berton the Canadians were taught from the start of their training (in Canada), by Currie, not to take prisoners unless specifically instructed to do so, say to obtain information under interrogation later. It was official policy not an emotional reaction. Currie was very self-made as a military man and may have come up with that policy on his own. Or not.

I’m not sure how much it counts for, but the federation of Australia was barely 13 years old at that time. Furthermore it’s flag was also the Union Jack.

When WW2 rolled around, the point was moot, with offensive forces literally on the doorstep - Darwin was bombed, and there were submarines inside Sydney’s harbour.

The Canadian flag was also the Union Jack until 1965!

Canada had its own flag in addition to the Union Jack between 1868 and 1965. A fairly typical British colonial flag - similar to British Hong Kong [1, 2], Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony, etc. - with the Union Jack in the canton (upper-left quadrant) against a red background with a coat of arms in the bottom-right varying based on who was part of Canada at any given time. [3]

[1] Illustration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959–1997)#...

[2] During Protests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959–1997)#...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Canada#/media/File:Can...

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