CEF MkI to the 46th Battalion (South Saskatchewan)

Peter_Suciu

Peter_Suciu

Well-known member
A friend sold me this Canadian Expeditionary Force MkI helmet earlier this year. It has the remains of the flash to 46th Battalion (South Saskatchewan), a unit that came to be known as "The Suicide Battalion." The 46th Battalion lost 1,433 killed and 3,484 wounded – a casualty rate of 91.5 percent in 27 months.

It goes very nicely with my CEF 1902 pattern tunic and P08 web gear.
 

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Very nice item Peter.

I'm just finishing up my history of the 5th Battalion Western Cavalry, 1st Division, 2nd Brigade which was recruited from Saskatchewan. Just a couple of days ago I finalised the Honour Roll. Out of 5,853 men who served with the unit 1,672 were killed. That's the total of Killed in Action, Died of wounds, Missing in Action, Accidental Death or Sickness. It equates to a 28% fatality rate.

1,443 fatalities for the 46th is high when you consider that the 5th was in the 1st Division and saw action as of the spring of 1915 whereas the 46th was in the 4th Division and didn't see action until August of 1916.
 
A couple of photos of the volume that I mentioned in my first post about the 46th Battalion. Something our American neighbours and the rest of the world should be aware of.....WW1 was our "Revolution of Independence". As a result of the performance and sacrifice of our troops like the 46th the Brits, were forced to give us a seat at the Versailles Conference and later negotiate the moves which made Canada an independent Nation. We were automatically at war in 1914 when the Brits made their declaration, not so in 1939. In that year, our democratically elected representatives debated and made that decision to declare war on Germany.
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Published in 1978 by Hurtig publications Edmonton.
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This volume provides both an overall description and analysis of the 46th's exploits but also specific survivor accounts of those actions.
 
Vimy Ridge of course was the other key defining moment when the Canadians took the ridge very quickly after others had failed to capture it many times. It showed what we could do as a nation and how we deserved to be in the big boys club.

Part of the success was because of "Colonial" Canadian Artillery Officer then LCol later General Andrew McNaughton, who later became the Canadian Chief of the General Staff. Basically (no offence British friends) he showed the Brits how to effectively use their artillery and invented many precision techniques for locating and destroying enemy guns. Counter battery, sound ranging etc. It is estimated that he destroyed about 80 percent of German artillery and machine guns at Vimy. This was directly related to his background in both soldiering and science.

Of note, the place where I work as a contractor with the military is called McNaughton Barracks here at Canadian Forces Base Kingston. He was Colonel Commandant of both the Artillery and the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RCEME). You don't normally have a Colonel Commandant from another branch but he was so admired for his scientific ability the RCEME picked him.

If you are interested here is more on him:

en.wikipedia.org

Andrew McNaughton - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

And yes he is one of my First World War heroes. Along with my wife's Great Great Uncle who was also in the Artillery and won the Military Medal for crawling forward and fixing the wire to the Observation Posts under fire during the battle of the Somme.

Pictures of General McNaughton and Lance Bombardier McCreith attached (don't have his actual medal but nice repro for the display).
 

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McNaughton is an unsung hero.

I believe it was McNaughton who because of his Engineering background, came up with the idea of using electrified mosquito netting place at a defined distance downrange of artillery pieces to calculate the time it took for a fired round to pierce the netting thus sending a signal which allowed for the calculation of the muzzle velocity of each individual gun. This enabled them to then compensate for barrel wear and fine tune each gun which greatly improved the ability to conduct "Creeping Barrages" without losing men to "friendly fire" by ensuring that guns no longer fired short.
 
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