This temporary grave marker is from the Battle of Arras, part of the Hundred Days. Canadians fought in places like Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, the Canal du Nord, and ultimately at Mons, driving the Germans back in each battle. This was being repeated all along the line by the Allies during those days. It was just a matter of time. Following the war, permanent gravestones would be erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission, founded in the war. Today its work continues as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
At Cambrai, the momentum continued, another costly victory.
Soldiers collected souvenirs from surrendering Germans. Among them was this spiked helmet, marked with the date and time of the previous owner's surrender.
This is the ceremonial headdress of Francis Pegahmagabow, the most decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian history, considered one of the deadliest snipers in military history. Following the war, he took a leadership role not just among the Ojibwe, but among First Nations peoples in the country as a whole, working for equal treatment.
The last Canadian killed in the war was George Price, shot by a German minutes before the armistice.
Canadians ended the Hundred Days by liberating the Belgian town of Mons, which had been occupied from the beginning of the war. The townspeople met them with open arms.
The cost of the war was enormous. More than one in ten of those Canadians who went to serve died, and there were even more casualties. An entire generation had people they had known who would never come home. This was typical of many countries involved in that war.
Afterwards, grief was expressed in memorial windows in churches, or town cenotaphs. Gravestones would be placed overseas where Canadians had died in action. And two decades later, another horrible war would engulf the world.
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