Upcoming Seminars

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BFBSM
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Upcoming Seminars

Post by BFBSM » Thu Dec 30, 2021 4:35 pm

There are two upcoming online seminars presented by The Western Front Association which may be of interest.

The first, on Jan 10, 2022, at 08:00 PM, London (UK) time, is entitled "Official History Gone Wrong: Failure on 2 September 1918 and the Flawed Canadian Official History"
At 8:00 a.m. on 2 September 1918, the troops of the 4th Canadian Division, after breaking the Drocourt-Quéant line, advanced over Mont Dury into furious, accurate, and devastating German fire. They faced this fierce resistance unsupported by an artillery barrage that the Canadian high command suspended to allow Brigadier-General Brutinel’s Independent Force to charge down the Arras-Cambrai road. This force was to capture crossings over the Canal du Nord by a coup de main. Due to the lack of artillery support, the 4th Division could not advance, and it suffered crippling losses and disorganization.

That at least is the account supplied in the respected G.W.L. Nicholson’s 1962 Canadian official history and subsequent historians have treated it as canon. Nicholson based his narrative on comments provided in 1961 by Andrew McNaughton, the Canadian Corps’ Counter-Battery Staff Officer in 1918. The official historian’s narrative was clear, concise, convincing, and wrong.

The purpose of this presentation by Dr Bill Stewart is to advance a different explanation of what happened to the 4th Division, and why the official history garbled this event.
Bookings: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/registe ... uXDyFlB07A

The second, on Jan 24, 2022, at 08:00 PM London (UK) time, is entitled "Canadian Nurses on the Western Front: From Passchendaele to Peace"
At 3:50 a.m. on 31 July 1917, the Allies attacked across an eleven mile front in the Ypres sector, the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres. On 1 August nurses and other medical staff at Canadian Casualty Clearing Station No. 2 battled to care for the more than 2,000 wounded soldiers who swamped the 300 available beds in a single 24-hour period. This was not the first crisis that Canadian nurses had coped with, nor would it be the last.

In Casualty Clearing Stations and hospitals, on ambulance trains and in operating theatres, Canadian nurses withstood shellfire and bombing raids, illness and emotional trauma to care for their patients across the Western front. Through the nurses’ own writings and some of their photographs, this talk by Andrea McKenzie illustrates their unique experiences as Canadians, as military officers, and as nurses on the Western Front during the last eighteen months of the war and beyond – from Passchendaele to peace.

Andrea McKenzie is chair of and associate professor with the Writing Department at York University in Toronto, Canada, as well as an associate member of the Graduate Program in History.
Bookings: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/registe ... OpgnUnqr-Q

Once again, these will eventually be posted on the Association's YouTube Channel, and I will provide links to those once they are uploaded.

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