Private J. Arthur Maguire of the 2nd Battalion enlisted at age 21 in January 1915. He survived three years in the trenches of the Western Front, but he watched many friends die in combat. Maguire’s experience shook him to the core: near misses from bullets and shell splinters, the clash of battle, the haunting feeling of making it through the Armageddon of fire when so many chums did not. And yet he experienced a significant period of relief, even joy, near the end of the war.
In mid-October 1918, Maguire and his comrades were pushing the Germans back after inflicting a momentous defeat on the Kaiser’s forces by driving them out of Cambrai, France, on Oct. 8-9. The Canucks bled for that victory, but it broke the back of the enemy defences, delivering a fatal blow to their immobile logistical system of roads and rail lines that converged on Cambrai. As the weary Canadian survivors of the two-week battle to capture Cambrai marched east in pursuit of the fleeing Germans, they encountered French villages that had suffered under four years of occupation.
In one small settlement consisting of only a few stone farmhouses and shell-ruined barns, Maguire and his comrades advanced cautiously, with stray shells landing in and around the village from the enemy only a few kilometres away. But they were soon surprised to be greeted by dozens of cheering civilians who rushed from their cellars and hiding places. The worried Canucks waved at the French farmers to take cover, but they refused to pay heed, too enraptured with their moment of liberation. “They were so glad to see us,” Maguire later wrote, “they wept with joy.”
The French hailed the Canadians, breaking out beer, “vin blanc,” and even some hidden cognac that was dug up after years of lying in the ground waiting for this moment of freedom. The French did not have much, but they wanted to give it to the battle-scarred Canadians who had crossed the Atlantic and sacrificed so much to fight for liberty.
