Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Ahem....
If you dig a little deeper I think you'll find that was the Australians.....
The ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) suffered the greatest casualty rate of any of the western nations (because the British always put us into the thick of things), but also gained, man for man, the greatest amount of ground.
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Ah, everyone likes to think they're the toughest. The Germans respected the Canadians, and called them and the Australians
stosstruppen (shock troops) and considered them to be among the allies' toughest troops. In the words of the British Prime Minster Lloyd George:
"The Canadians played a part of such distinction that thenceforward they were marked out as shock troops; for the remainder of the war they were brought along to head the assault in one great battle after another. Whenever the Germans found the Canadian Corps coming into the line they prepared for the worst."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar...ng_World_War_I
"Australian and Canadian divisions deployed amongst British forces in France quickly came to be regarded as the best shock troops in the Allied ranks due to their ferocity in battle, and were employed accordingly."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_troops
"The Canadian corps, now known everywhere to consist of shock troops second to none on the western front, was frequently used as the spearhead with which to pierce particularly tough parts of the enemy defenses."
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles26...r-one-26.shtml
Of course, this is not to disparage all the other forces who fought bravely and of course were equally feared by the Germans.
One thing that is interesting is that aside from the native (Indian) snipers, Canadians were not known as being as good shots as the British in the early war or the Americans in the later war. The CEF was raised from a small pre-war militia and neither had the professionalism of the early BEF nor the time and resources to train like the later AEF.
Tony