One of Alberta's most storied military units turned 100 years old this week.
About 250 soldiers and dignitaries held a military parade and dinner at the Jefferson Armoury in Edmonton Wednesday night to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the formation of the 3rd Canadian Division.
The 3rd Canadian Division is one of the army's four operational commands and includes the roughly 11,000 soldiers in western Canada. It was first established in December 1915, during the First World War.
Soldiers of the 3rd division were part of Canada's finest moments at battlefields such as the Somme, Passchendaele, and Vimy Ridge, and paved the way for the liberation of Holland in Second World War, said Lt.-Gov Lois Mitchell.
"Canadians will never forget the service and sacrifices division members have offered on our behalf," she said.
The 3rd division has formed and dissolved several times over the last century, and was most recently known as Land Force Western Area. The federal government restored the division's old name in 2013.
This name change gives soldiers a tangible link to the division's storied history, said Brig.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, division commander and St. Albert resident.
"Now we can go back and talk to the troops about the division hitting the beaches of Normandy on the 6th of June, 1944," he said.
"It really gives a sense and meaning to where we've been."
Historic name
Canada fielded the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions in 1915 as part of the First World War, with the 3rd and 4th following soon after due to the war's huge casualty rate.
It was at this time that the division got its regimental patch, Eyre noted. The 1st got a red patch, the 2nd green, and the 3rd got French grey – the same colour as the uniforms worn by French forces.
"It actually goes better than any of the other ones with our uniforms," he said.
One of the division's first major battles was at Mount Sorrel near Ypres, France, in June 1916, Eyre said. Division commander Maj.-Gen. Malcolm Mercer was on the front lines when the massive German assault began and took lethal shrapnel wounds, becoming the most senior Canadian officer ever to be killed in combat.
Division troops initially fell back about 1,000 yards but later retook that ground in a series of counterattacks, enduring what Sir Max Aitken (honorary colonel for the Canadian Expeditionary Force) called "the heaviest (gun-fire) endured by British troops up to that time."
The 3rd division was the only Canadian force to take part in the initial D-Day landings at Normandy in the Second World War, being responsible for Juno Beach, historians note. They would lose about 1,000 members to death and injury, but would penetrate farther into France than any other Allied force that day.
The division later earned its nickname of "water rats" after particularly hard fighting in an extremely wet region of Holland known as the Scheldt, Eyre said.
Today, division troops are deployed in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Sudan, and will likely be sent in even greater numbers to other hot spots next year, Eyre said.
He urged Canadians to support their troops by getting engaged in discussions about defence policy.
"There's no better way to ensure that we are acting in the interests of Canadians than to be involved, informed, and included in the dialogue on our national security."
