

By Jerome Baldwin
By the fall of 1916, Canadian soldiers fighting in the trenches on the Western Front had already distinguished themselves in battle. In 1915, they had staved off disaster at the Second Battle of Ypres when they plugged a gap in the Allied line after panicky French troops fled in the face of the war’s first poison gas attacks. Amid the noxious clouds of chlorine, the Canadians had improvised gas masks—urine-soaked handkerchiefs held over their faces—and saved the day. Now
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