`My Chief Source of Worry': An Assistant Provost Marshal's View of Relations between 2nd Canadian Division and Local Inhabitants on the Western Front,1915-1917

The British Expeditionary Force's landing in France in August 1914 brought it into contact with allied civilians. Relations between soldiers and inhabitants during the war's opening months were amicable, as a depiction in the French weekly L'Illustration accurately portrays. Using the detailed war diary of the assistant provost marshal (APM), 2nd Canadian Division, this article shows that relations during the years of trench warfare were fundamentally different from those characterizing the war's opening months. Focusing on the period September 1915-August 1916 (but also including material up until May 1917), when 2nd Division occupied the Kemmel sector in Flanders, the article examines liaison organizations, claims settlement, the consumption and sale of alcohol, perceptions of the Flemish and the administration of military justice. It concludes that the local Flemish, who from the APM's perspective were greedy, sullen and a threat to security, resented the intrusion of a military presence which controlled their mobility, regulated their businesses, damaged their fields and farms and stole from their estami-nets. This mutual incomprehensibility and incompatibility would have mattered much less, however, if officers commanding had fulfilled their role in the administration of British military justice.