Canadian generals in the First World War

The men of the 1st Division, the initial cohort of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) to arrive in England at the outset of the First World War, spent months on Salisbury Plain in winter learning the rudiments of warfare. The division’s commander, Lieutenant-General Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson, found it ill-equipped and untrained, with many weak officers. In a few cold, rain-sodden months on Salisbury Plain, he did what he could to put things right, dismissing some of the officers chosen by Samuel Hughes, the minister of militia and defence, and replacing useless Canadian-made equipment with British issue. Although at the outset 70 per cent of Alderson’s division was British-born, Canadian soldiers were different, largely because of their officers, who for the most part were not as powerful or as respected as was the case in British regiments, where class perhaps as much as competence served to maintain discipline.

Major-General Arthur William Currie stood out among most generals in the British army. He came from the colonial militia, he was overweight, and he did not wear a moustache. At the same time, he encouraged “a frank interchange of opinions,” which was certainly not always the case among the hierarchical British. Easy-going, he remained comfortable with his staff and was well liked by his officers. Currie had difficulty, however, in transmitting his good qualities to his soldiers, whose temperament he did not understand and who found him stiff, abrupt, sometimes pompous, and occasionally insulting. Moreover, he was a stickler for discipline, especially after the loose behaviour of the Canadian Division in England. He demanded crisp salutes and polished buttons, requirements that did not endear him to the other ranks. His faults combined with the natural resentment of front-line troops against commanders in the rear to produce antagonism towards him in at least some members of the corps.

As one of Toronto’s senior officers, Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm Smith Mercer of the Queen’s Own Rifles no doubt struck Hughes as the logical person to command the four Ontario battalions in the 1st Infantry Brigade of the CEF. The choice seems to have provoked none of the controversy that swirled around some of Hughes’s other appointments. Mercer departed for England in that role, supervised the training of his brigade on Salisbury Plain, and was confirmed as brigadier-general on 4 Feb. 1915, the eve of the Canadians’ departure for France.

When the raw Canadian Division faced its first serious test at Ypres (Ieper), Belgium, on 22 April, Mercer’s brigade was in reserve at Vlamertinge, several miles behind the line. Two of his battalions were fed into the battle and he was left with almost no role. The next day he obediently sent his men to attack Mauser Ridge and went in person to rage at the nearby French troops whose promised support had not arrived.

Apart from showing his courage under fire, the battle was no test of Mercer’s ability in combat. When Alderson was appointed to command the new Canadian Corps in September and Mercer’s fellow brigadiers Currie and Richard Ernest William Turner rose to command the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions respectively, he remained with the 1st Brigade. However, on 20 November he took command of the corps troops, a collection of units that a month later became the nucleus of the 3rd Canadian Division.

The first real battle for Mercer’s division was unexpected. On 1 June his Canadian Mounted Rifles (CMR) battalions held the last part of the Ypres ridge in allied hands, from Mount Sorrel to Hill 62, the top of a spur that stretched west into the allied line between Armagh and Sanctuary woods. It was vital ground and the Germans, bent on distracting the British from their expected Somme offensive farther south, were determined to attack. Even inexperienced troops could eventually see the signs of German preparations. At dawn on 2 June Mercer and Brigadier-General Victor Arthur Seymour Williams set out to visit Mount Sorrel and Hill 62 to see for themselves. They were with the 4th CMR when the German barrage fell with an unprecedented intensity. A German eyewitness wrote, “The whole enemy position was a cloud of dust and dirt, into which timber, tree trunks, weapons and equipment were continuously hurled up, and occasionally human bodies.”

In the first minutes both generals were affected. Williams was badly wounded and, according to the official historian, Mercer’s eardrums were broken by a shell explosion and his leg by a bullet. Lieutenant Lyman Gooderham, Mercer’s aide-de-camp, reported that he helped the general to the edge of Armagh Wood, behind the battalion’s position, and went to get aid. Shortly after noon, German troops advanced almost without resistance, capturing Williams, Gooderham, and a few hundred shaken survivors. Mercer was not among them.