Bullets, Bombs, and Bayonets

Book excerpt: Bullets, Bombs, and Bayonets draws attention to a significant part of Canadian military history, a period in which almost an entire generation of young men never returned from the battlefields of Europe. In 2017 Canada commemorates the 100th year of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The triumphant conquering of Vimy by the Canadian Corps in April 1917, was considered a defining moment in Canada’s rise to nationhood. Equally significant but much less publicized was the Canadian victory at Passchendaele in the fall of 1917. It was there that more than 4,000 Canadian soldiers died, and almost 12,000 wounded. The Battle of Passchendaele will be forever remembered as a colossal slaughter in the mud of Flanders fields. Bullets, Bombs, and Bayonets acknowledges those members of the 43rd Battalion who fought and died in the Ypres Salient, in the name of freedom.