June 6 - Dday at Normandy Beaches but did you KNOW

FRANCE -1918

Valenciennes remained in German hands from the early days of the First World War until 1-2 November 1918, when it was entered and cleared by the Canadian Corps; 

Nine Canadians and a Brit are buried in Onnaing Cemetery, north of Valenciennes,France. The last hundred days of the First World War were a series of hard fought victories for the Canadian Forces.

The Germans, who had been holding on in an industrial suburb of Marly, retreated in the early hours.  

The Canadians counted 1,800 prisoners, 800 enemy dead in the battle area, and 80 of their own dead and 300 wounded. Most of the Germans had died in the barrage,  but not all the men had died that way — in less hostile circumstances there might have been more prisoners, Nicholson writes. In his article "The Politics of Surrender," published in the Journal of Military History, historian Tim Cook notes that informal rules and symbolic gestures made up the "grey area between combat and capitulation" and soldiers were "frequently executed."

The Canadian soldiers had developed a reputation for fierceness was, as he rightly noted, also part of the Canadian reputation as shock troops," Cook writes. "The Germans, too, believed the Canadians were less likely to take prisoners. Therefore, Canadians who fell into German hands often suffered a similar grim fate. That begat a cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals."

Cook says most soldiers had two choices: kill or be killed

"The Great War soldier was as much an executioner as he was a victim," he writes.

In the advance eastward to Belgium, soldier Will Bird of the 42nd Battalion recounted stumbling upon a German soldier eating lunch in the forest. The German yelled "Kame-rad!" and threw his hands in the air, the signs of surrender.

One of Bird's friends, named Giger, drove his bayonet into the German soldier,another German soldier came on the scene, grabbed an axe and wedged it into Giger/s neck.

There was nothing we could do for Giger. 

Casualty Details: UK 697, Canada 151, Australia 28, New Zealand 1, South Africa 3, India 5, Total Burials: 885

In the blood, noise and mayhem of four years of war, good and evil were hard to discern.