My Grandfather's regiment, the 16th Canadian Scottish, saw 107 of its men killed at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. There were probably around 800 of them that went over the top that cold grey morning. It is a number that is stuck in my head, and thus I took notice of it on Wednesday when Trooper Brian Good, of the Royal Canadian Dragoons was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. He was the 107th Canadian soldier to die in that conflict, leaving behind a wife and two young daughters.
I recently read, in Tim Cook's incredible Shock Troops – one of the best books I've ever read about Canada's involvement in the Great War, a rather sobering statistic. You'll have to fogive me if I get this wrong as I've lent out the book and can't reference it yet. Sixty thousand Canadians died in the Great War (the number is approximate, different figures can be used depending on the criteria one uses). To translate that into today's terms, in terms of Canada's population now, 250,000 Canadian soldiers would have lost their lives over a little more than four years.
I point this out, not to belittle the sacrifice of Trooper Good nor the other 106 men and women soldiers who died, nor to suggest somehow that today's numbers are acceptable. I point it out to show how, thankfully, war has changed since those terrible days…
…and how, regretfully, it has not.