Fresh off the boat, Canada's amateur soldiers march straight to the "most dangerous sector on the Western Front," the bulge in the Allied line around the Belgian city of Ypres, the bulge known as "the Ypres Salient". Within days, the untried Canadians confront Germany's new secret weapon and the first mass poisoned gas attack in history. Fought to a bloody finish, the battle of Ypres 1915 signals the beginning of "total war."

 

Running time: 47 minutes

 

With historian Norm Christie as our guide, we explore the battlefields, cemeteries and monuments of the First World War. In their own words, the men who fought tell their stories, and we discover how the naïve, amateur soldiers of 1914 became, by 1918, perhaps the most feared, efficient and deadly Allied Corps on the Western Front – the Canadian Corps.