Private Hilaire Dennis and the Hundred Days Offensive

Private Hilaire Dennis was a conscript in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the First World War. Born to French-Canadian parents in Bristol, Rhode Island, Dennis had both Canadian and American citizenship. He was raised by his aunt and uncle in Pointe-aux-Roches, a small French farming community in Essex County. Dennis was working as a streetcar conductor in Windsor when the First World War began. By the end of 1917, the CEF was hemorrhaging manpower. Battles at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele produced tens of thousands of Canadian casualties, while Canadian volunteers for 1917 amounted to less than 5000 enlistees.

In 1918, Prime Minister Robert Borden was forced to institute conscription to keep the Canadian Corps at fighting strength. Dennis was conscripted in the first wave, assembled in London, Ontario, and finally shipped to England for training in February 1918. The conscripts of the first wave received an accelerated training regimen of only nine weeks before being shipped to the front. Upon his arrival in France in June, Dennis was moved to the Canadian Infantry Base Depot at Étaples and assigned to the 18th Battalion (Western Ontario). This unit and the honors it won are perpetuated by the Essex and Kent Scottish. Dennis participated in the opening battles of the Hundred Day Offensive, the final major offensive of the war.

The Battle of Amien officially lasted ten days from 8 August to 18 August 1918. The mission of the Canadian Corps was to push the German army away from a nearby rail line that was vital to British supply chains. What resulted was an unprecedented triumph. It was the first major territorial gain for the Allies in years. Nearly thirteen miles of territory was captured in less than two weeks of fighting, a stark change from the grueling trench warfare of previous years that fought for mere yards of territory at a time. Dennis arrived in Amien on 12 August with the rest of the 18th Battalion, establishing their HQ at Fouquescourt, directly behind the front line. Dennis’s first experience of combat was against the Alpine Corps, one of Germany’s “elite assault Divisions” in the assault on Fransart, two miles east of Battalion HQ. After a twenty-minute artillery barrage and support of British tanks, Dennis’s Company, temporarily attached to the 19th Battalion, began their assault. The 19th Battalion seized the center of Fransart while the 18th Battalion held its flanks on the southern edge. The town was captured with relatively few casualties, only 21 for the whole battalion. However, successive German counterattacks prolonged the battle for another three days. Dennis endured numerous German artillery barrages, strafe attacks and bombings from airplanes and mortars in addition to the vicious hand-to-hand fighting. The 18th Battalion stayed in the divisional reserve for the remainder of the battle. This first engagement would haunt Dennis for the rest of his life. In a letter to his aunt and uncle, he thanked them for their prayers, as they were the only thing that saved him from the “the awful claws of this machine of destruction.”

After five days of marching and only three days of rest, the 18th Battalion engaged in yet another battle, one that Canadian Corps commander Arthur Currie described as the “hardest battle in its history.” The Battle of the Scarpe, named after the attack’s objective of the Scarpe River, was a series of brutal close-quarters assaults, punctuated by heavy artillery bombardments from both sides. The aim of the operation was to push German forces back to the Hindenburg Line and secure from them the Cambrai-Arras Road, a crucial supply route. The battle lasted four days from 26 to 30 August 1918. On the 26th, the men of the 18th Battalion were ordered to assault a German trench line on a ridge named Chapel Hill. The attack was supported by an intense preliminary bombardment. Dennis and the rest of the Canadians stormed the hilltop in a decisive charge, taking no prisoners. In a letter to his relatives, Dennis wrote that during the attack he “was wild. I was right after blood.” German infantry retreated into the nearby village of Guémappe. Several hours after Chapel Hill was seized, Canadian infantry began another assault to take this village. With insufficient artillery cover and German machine guns firing from both left and right flanks, the 18th Battalion went “over the top” once again. In three hours, German resistance was shattered and Candian infantry, along with supporting tanks, occupied the ruined town of Guémappe. The battalion’s casualties were remarkably light. Ten men, two of which had been with the battalion since 1914, were killed and fifteen were wounded.

German forces withdrew back to the Sensée River and the town of Vis-en-Artois, leaving several small detachments to harass Canadian positions during the night. On 27 August, the 18th Battalion began preparations to seize Vis-en-Artois and continue six kilometers to the village of Cagincourt. An enormous creeping barrage crawled its way towards German positions, advancing one hundred yards every four minutes. Canadian infantry followed close behind the barrage. Despite a heavy German counter bombardment, the battalion was, according to the regiment’s war diary, in “splendid spirits.” As Canadian infantry approached the town German machine gun fire wounded many, including the battalion’s commanding officer Major McIntosh. Accurate British artillery completely overwhelmed German defenders in Vis-en-Artois, killing and maiming scores. The percussion of the blasts made German infantry physically ill. When the 18th Battalion finally entered the trenches around Vis-en-Artois, German defenders surrendered in the hundreds. Dennis wrote to his aunt and uncle about this saying that “[t]hey were coming to us with their hands up by the hundreds and some of them were crying like Babys.” Attempts to cross the Sensée and advance to Cagincourt were thrown back by the dogged German reserves. Canadian casualties for 27 August amounted to twenty-one killed and one hundred fifty wounded.

Canadian infantry advanced another three kilometers and were entrenched in shell holes on the western bank of the Sensée River. The next day, the beleaguered battalion was ordered to bypass the river by overrunning a nearby German trench network. A torrential rain persisted throughout the night, as did German artillery bombardment. In Dennis’s words, the noise was “bad enough to drive a man crazy.” On the morning of 28 August, the men of the 18th Battalion began their weary advance onto German trenches. They were restless, caked with mud, and half-mad from lack of sleep and constant bombardment. The attack was an abject failure. Canadian infantry were stalled at a massive razor wire obstacle several hundred meters from German positions. German machine guns inflicted terrible casualties. After several hours, the momentum of the attack buckled and the Canadians were forced to retreat. Dennis was shot in the hip during this encounter, falling into a nearby shell crater. He spent eight hours in this crater, bleeding, waiting to die. In the evening, stretcher bearers found Dennis and carried him back to Canadian positions and loaded him onto an ambulance. The 18th Battalion fought for two more days before they were relieved.

Dennis was transferred to a field hospital in Arras where he underwent immediate surgery to remove bullet fragments and irrigate the wound. He was transferred by train to another hospital in Étaples. He was taken to England on 14 September after his condition stabilized. Upon arriving there, he endured painful surgeries and treatments to ensure that his wound would not fester. By the end of September, Dennis could walk with the support of a cane and was officially released from hospital. He spent several months at a soldier's camp waiting for transportation back to Canada. He wrote to his uncle about his experiences, saying that “if I live to be a hundred years old I will never forget the horrible sights that I have seen in France.” He added later that “I had three months in France. Those three months are worth all the rest of my Life.”

Dennis returned to Canada in January 1919 and to Windsor in February. He married and began a family that summer. He spent the rest of his career working at a metal foundry until his death in the early 1950s, one year after his retirement. Hilaire Dennis suffered from chronic pain and PTSD for the rest of his life. He rarely spoke about his experience in the war. Dennis’s story helps to illustrate the trials faced by Canadian conscripts and the heavy fighting experienced by the 18th Battalion during the First World War.

Story by Calvin Barrett, Canada Summer Jobs 2022 participant
with The Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment Association

Sources

• War Diary, 2nd Canadian Division, 15 August 1918.
• A Canadian Conscript Goes to War—August 1918: Old Myths Re-examined by Patrick Dennis in Canadian Military History 18, 1, 2009
• Duty Nobly Done, The History of The Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment by Sandy Antal and Kevin R. Shackleton, 2006 – Chapter 7