16 - Shock Troops: Canada’s Ruthless Reputation in the Great War
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16 - Shock Troops: Canada’s Ruthless Reputation in the Great War
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About this listen
By 1918, the Canadian Corps had acquired a reputation across the Western Front: shock troops. Assault specialists. The men sent in when the ground was hardest, the wire thickest, and the objective critical.
British command relied on them for complex, coordinated attacks. German reports warned of their aggressiveness. After Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Amiens, and the Hundred Days, a myth began to solidify - that Canadians were uniquely ruthless.
But was that reputation earned? Or constructed?
In this episode of Memory and Valour, we examine the battlefield reality behind the label. Drawing on the scholarship of Dr. Tim Cook and the voices of the soldiers themselves, we unpack how the Canadian Corps became known as “shock troops” , and what that designation truly meant in the brutal logic of industrialized war.