|
On April 9, 1917, Canadian troops led an attack to capture Vimy Ridge, a strategic location in northern France that was held by German forces during much of World War I (1914-1918). Victory at the Battle of Vimy Ridge helped Canadians develop a unique national identity and marked the emergence of Canada as a world power. This 1967 article from Toronto’s Weekend Magazine commemorates the 50th anniversary of the battle and details both the triumph of Canada’s forces and the horrors experienced by soldiers in the trenches.
By Herbert Fairlie Wood
The Battle of Vimy Ridge started at 5:30 A.M., on schedule.
 |
|
Also on Encarta |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
The troops with the dirtiest job, the 4th Division, who, mercifully, had the shortest distance to go, heard the first of it, the sound of shells passing overhead, in a long, sad sigh. Then a great splash along the Ridge flung earth and metal skyward in one great, shuddering convulsion.
Along the whole Canadian line, men marvelled at it. They could see the flashes from the gun lines behind them, then turn and watch the arrival of the shells. The snow had grown worse as zero-hour approached, wet clinging sleet, blowing in from the northwest. But nothing could conceal the weight of fire from a thousand guns. In a great arc in front of Mont St. Eloi, the dawn was shattered by a sheet of fire; the surface of the Ridge was rent and torn from end to end.
To Kristen Riis, of Saskatoon, Danish-born, the artillery bombardment was something he never forgot. 'Just before 5:30, a plane, sounding a siren, flying from north to south came by. Just as it went out of my hearing everything broke loose. It was like one flame as far as I could see.'
|
|
Also on MSN |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Meanwhile, the infantry were on the move.
Out from the tunnels, over the parapets, into the torn landscape that was no-man's land, surged the assault waves. Each man knew his task, each had his section leader in his sight, and, as if in happy augury, the wire of the enemy position had been cut. They could get through. The artillery had done its stuff.
As they advanced, a fireworks display of Very lights [flares] lit the sky; the enemy was signalling wildly for artillery fire. When it came, weak and desultory, it did little harm. The counter-battery program had worked unbelievably well and the infantry passed over no-man's land unscathed by shelling. Of the enemy batteries identified in those long months of preparation, 83 per cent had been silenced.
Brig.-Gen. James MacBrien's 12th Brigade had the task of protecting the left flank; not an easy role with the Pimple [the outcrop at the northern end of the Ridge] well within machine-gun range. But smoke shells were to cover the Pimple and two mines [the only ones used on Easter Monday] had been laid under the enemy front lines. They went up at zero-hour.
At first, all went well. Left to right, the 73rd, 72nd and 38th Battalions gained the German front lines quickly; the mines had made the advance easy, demoralizing the troops defending the sector. The 73rd soon had the front lines secure, with the 72nd, in the middle, confirming. But both units soon felt the effect of belated enemy reaction. Machine-gun fire on fixed lines swept down from the Pimple and some enemy artillery came to life at last.
The bombing parties of the 72nd were soon moving down the German support trenches, led by three men, Lt. D. O. Vicars, Cpl. 'Hat' Matthews and Pte. [Private] McWhinney. Between them, these three cleaned out a triangle of trench of over 400 yards, driving the demoralized garrison into the standing barrage which protected the left flank beyond the 73rd Battalion.
Pte. William Hogarth, of the 73rd, who now lives in Pakenham, Ont., remembers vividly the enemy reaction to this left flank advance. He was No. 7 on a Lewis-gun [a type of machine gun], team. His task was to hold the rim of a crater against counter-attack from the Pimple. He and his comrades reached the rim as shells began to splash into the watery bottom. 'The crater must have been 70 feet deep and when the shells began to land on the rim too, we were driven down. I got the wounded back up to the rim again, but one hit close and when the smoke cleared away, I was left alone.'
This sort of experience was shared by the rest of the 73rd and further advances were abandoned. The survivors held grimly on, waiting for the capture of Hill 145 to relieve them of some of their torment; no enemy garrison would long hold the Pimple if 145 were taken; its escape routes would be cut off.
The assault waves of the 38th Battalion, on the right flank of the 12th Brigade attack, found the ground they had to cross so pitted with shell holes that their advance lost momentum, and the barrage, which should have been followed closely for success, passed out of effective support. The enemy infantry began to climb out of their dugouts before the first Canadians could reach them and hand-to-hand fighting developed in the ruined trenches of the front line. Capt. T. W. MacDowell and one of his men tricked the occupants of one dugout into surrender but the 38th had a sticky time getting farther forward, for on the right flank, the 11th Brigade, commanded by Brig.-Gen. Victor Odlum, widely regarded as the originator of trench-raid techniques, had run into unexpected difficulties.
The 11th Brigade's attack had gone well at first; the 102nd Battalion, emerging from the forward trenches, had seized and consolidated the right half of the slopes before Hill 145, while the unit behind, the 45th, passed through and reached the summit to begin the task of turning the enemy's defences the other way. On the left flank, however, the 87th Battalion had a bad time, due to the C.O.'s insistence that a German strong point on his front be left intact, so that it could be used by his unit. This was an act of over-confidence that cost heavily, for machine guns cut down half his leading wave. Even the 75th Battalion, moving up to pass through, were pinned to their forming-up positions.
This delay permitted the enemy manning the support trenches to clamber from their dugouts and man their weapons and those Canadians who survived the galling fire from the undamaged position now faced the alert defenders of the second line. The 87th attack withered away into desultory fire from individuals.
The 54th, which had won the summit, now came under fire from the flank and had to withdraw. The whole attack of the 4th Division faltered. Of the six battalions that had begun the assault, only one, the 102nd, retained control of its objective at noon. Then somehow, miraculously, the remnants of the 87th Battalion pulled together and reorganized. Bombing parties were formed, armed, and sent forward against the troublesome, undamaged defence sector. Stokes bombs [small mortars fired from guns] came down to pummel the position, hurriedly emplaced machine guns forced the enemy below his parapets and the bombers, hurling grenades at every step of the advance, gained possession of the position.
There was no direction from above for this; on that confused battleground there could have been none. But the 87th, down to the last man, knew its task, struggled mightily to achieve it, and succeeded, although that was all that it could do. There were not enough men left to go further.
Strangely, the Canadians chose to reinforce failure, rather than success. While the 102nd Battalion and the remnants of the 54th clung desperately to the positions just short of success which they had won at such cost, the divisional reserve, the 85th Battalion, was ordered to attack with two companies where two battalions had failed — north of Hill 145.
It was a desperate gamble, for as darkness fell on the Ridge, the possession of Hill 145 became a major necessity. The divisions on the right had fought right past it.
The 3rd Division had fared better. The artillery bombardment had completely demolished the enemy forward lines; within an hour of jumping off both leading brigades reported that they had captured their sections of the Black Line. This put the 7th Brigade well beyond Hill 145, and the 8th on the outskirts of the La Folie Farm defences. The official German account tells what it had been like: '... on the left wing of the Regiment [the 261st] the British preparatory fire has destroyed and buried the German machine guns. Dead lie the crews in their stand-to positions. Now the task is easy for Tommy [British forces].'
By 7:30 A.M., only two hours after zero-hour, the 3rd Division's leading troops had reached the crest of the Ridge. With them, to provide vitally-needed firepower for the anticipated enemy counter-attacks, came Vickers gunners of the 8th Machine Gun Company.
Farther north Brig.-Gen. Archie Macdonell's 7th Brigade found Germans in the woods beyond the crest who attempted desperate counter-attacks against the R.C.R. [Royal Canadian Regiment] and small-arms fire harassed the flanks from the as yet unconquered Hill 145, but the 3rd Division was secure on its objectives.
Farther down the Ridge the assault waves of the 2nd Division, advancing against Thélus from east of Neuville-St. Vaast, were equally swift in reaching their first objectives. With sleet blowing in the faces of the survivors of the great bombardment, the Canadian advance was slowed only by the difficulties of the landscape.
The eight tanks did good work while they could but they had all bogged down by the time the advanced troops of the 5th and 4th Brigades had swept over Les Tilleuls and were closing in on the ruins of Thélus.
The forward troops of the 4th Brigade did not get far without fighting; the 18th and 19th Battalions, advancing on the right, had a particularly difficult time as they approached the German second line, but the long practice in platoon tactics now paid off. When the leading troops of the 19th came under fire from a position called Balloon Trench, the deployment and subsequent outflanking movement was a model of its kind. While the fire party kept the crews' heads down with Lewis guns, the enemy crew was put out of action by skilfully-thrown Mills bombs [grenades] and the advance was at once resumed.
At almost the same time, a hidden gun opened on the 18th Battalion, and while parties crawled forward to outflank this position, L/Sgt. E. W. Sifton leaped into the trench and bayonetted the entire crew. One of the enemy, though wounded, shot down the gallant sergeant, but the way had been cleared. Sifton was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
By 6:15 A.M. the two brigadiers [Robert Rennie and A. H. Macdonell] had reported their hold on the Swischen Stellung [a German position] secure; the next phase was exploitation by their respective reserves. On the left, Macdonell's 25th Battalion kicked off on schedule, passing through the triumphant 24th and 26th, and reached its Red Line objective — a trench called Turko-Graben — after a stiff fight with its garrison. Help came from the French Canadians of the 22nd Battalion. Their role was 'mopping-up', behind the leading waves. Translating this term into 'nettoyage des tranchées', they fell to with a will and the German support line began to crumble.
Nearly 400 Germans surrendered here, and the two reserve units captured two guns and eight machine guns. On the right, Rennie's 21st Battalion cleared Les Tilleuls, finding in the process the entire complement of two German battalion headquarters huddling in a large cave under the ruins.
The 1st Bavarian Reserve Division was holding this portion of the Ridge. Their line stretched from Thélus down to a point in front of the village of Bailleul. In after years the chronicler of their story would call the week before the 9th of April the 'Week of Suffering' and there is no doubt that the men who had to face the fresh and confident troops of the Canadian Corps had been called upon to endure more than human nerves and sinews could stand.
The 2nd Division's front widened at the Red Line and new troops were needed. Maj.-Gen. Sir H. E. Burstall now called forward the 13th (the Imperial Brigade from the 5th British Division, which had been placed under his command) for the next phase, in addition to his own 6th Brigade. These fresh troops came forward over the battlefield from assembly positions at the foot of the Ridge, formed into extended order and moved off towards the next objectives, Hill 135, the shattered village of Thélus, and the crest.
The British brigade threw two battalions forward for this assault, the 2nd Battalion of the King's Own Scottish Borderers and the 1st Royal West Kents. These two units were no strangers to the Canadians. Their gallant counter-attacks after the first gas attacks at Ypres in April, 1915, had been a decisive factor in stemming the German advance. On this day, so many miles further south and so many battles later, the British swept over Hill 135, cleared the crest of the Ridge, and made good the wooded slopes behind and between the village of Vimy itself and Farbus.
The three battalions of the 6th Brigade, advancing beyond the shattered remains of Thélus, reported themselves on the crest of the Ridge by 11:30 A.M. It had been a long morning, but one more advance was expected of them.
The 27th Battalion, from Winnipeg, led the 6th Brigade attack, supported by a company of the 29th. The official British historian has recorded the advance, which had now reached the gun lines. The Canadians 'encountered resistance at the line of batteries, not only from a machine gun, which was put out of action by rifle grenades, but from a battery which opened fire when the 27th were within 50 yards of it. Thereupon the front wave of both battalions raised a cheer, charged down the slope, and bayonetted or captured the gunners.' With this last effort, the 2nd Division had also captured all its objectives.
Maj.-Gen. Arthur Currie's 1st Division had the widest front and the farthest to go. There were few tunnels to aid in the assault: here, at the southern edge of the Ridge, the ground sloped so gently upward that tunnels were hardly feasible. So when zero-hour came the six assaulting battalions were quick off the mark. Over 3,000 men, intent on the one element that would reduce casualties, surprise, stormed out of the forward trenches that stretched for over a mile between Neuville-St. Vaast and Ecurie.
Leaning against the creeping barrage, fighting the mud at every step, the whole forward wave was in the enemy's front line before he could recover from the shock of the artillery bombardment.
Within minutes the second line had been breached; but resistance was growing. Isolated machine guns came to life and snipers, manning their iron hide-outs, began to cut down the advancing infantry. Artillery could not cope here; attackers and defenders were too close, and once again the 'fire and movement' technique that Currie had stressed so often brought results.
Pte. W. J. Milne, fighting with the leading waves of the 16th Battalion, on the extreme left of the Division's attack, had learned his lessons well. The historian of his unit has the tale: 'From half left a German machine gun opened fire on the company, inflicting many casualties. It could not be silenced. Groups crept up towards it from three sides but with no effect; fan-shaped around the position lay dead 16th men. [Then] a series of bomb explosions was heard in the enemy gun, and Pte. Milne ... sprang up from a shell-hole close to it, signalling to his comrades to advance. He had crawled around on his hands and knees to within bombing distance of the enemy machine-gun crew, and with hand grenades put every one of them out of action.'
Milne repeated this feat within the hour, but before the day was done, he had been killed. He, too, like Sifton of the 18th, won a posthumous Victoria Cross on this day.
The other battalions of the 3rd Brigade had similar difficulty reaching the Red Line, but all made it within the schedule laid down, in time to see the picturesque little group which now moved forward to join the 16th. Led by the Pipe-Major playing lustily, the C.O., Lt.-Col. Cyrus Peck, came striding over the broken ground, followed by the R.S.M. [regimental sergeant-major] and a grinning batman [orderly] carrying a jug of rum under each arm. A scattered cheer broke from the parched lips of the exhausted first wave.
At 9:40 A.M., the barrage came down again, as the 1st Brigade pushed through to the next objective. The 1st, 3rd and 4th Battalions, all from Ontario, had the task of advancing over the crest south of Thélus and down the far side to Farbus Wood, their Brown Line target. But first came the Blue Line. It was reached without fighting. The Germans here seemed stunned by what had happened to them.
In the advance towards the last objective, the 1st Brigade's commander, Brig.-Gen. W. A. Griesbach, of Edmonton, held his 1st and 2nd Battalions; the 3rd and 4th went in alone.
Now the guns which had kept silent in their camouflaged positions around Neuville-St.Vaast came to life; the guns which had sustained the previous advances were out of range. A fresh barrage enabled the 3rd and 4th to reach the uncut wire in front of Farbus Wood, while the machine-gunners who had accompanied them set up their weapons on the high ground behind and raked the roads below, now crammed with retreating columns. Griesbach's men stormed into the wood, overran the enemy batteries hidden there and pushed out to the far side.
The men of the 1st Division had arrived on time, and as isolated enemy batteries began to search them out in their new positions, they could feel, if they had time for it, that they had indeed accomplished the impossible. They had advanced over two miles.
Gen. Currie can be forgiven for the triumphant entry in his diary that night. The day's work had been a justification of all his views on how to fight the war. It was, in his words 'a wonderful success.' Noting that 'every line was captured on time, every battalion doing equally well', he added, 'truly magnificent, the grandest day the Corps has ever had.'
The British Division (the 51st), which was attacking on the right of the Canadian Corps, had had to fight hard; for a while [Lt.-Gen. Sir Julian] Byng worried about his open flank. But they were closing up by last light and the ground won by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Divisions was rapidly consolidated. It was another matter to the north, at Hill 145. The 85th Battalion had sent two companies forward in a forlorn hope to clear the two trenches that had held up the advance on the west side of the Hill. Just before dusk they attacked in a rush, firing Lewis guns from the hip.
The setting sun, shining in the eyes of the German garrison, had helped; the supporting artillery had not. Some rounds from Canadian guns fell among the advancing troops, disconcerting and slowing the assault.
Nevertheless, they gained the first trench. It took time and much hand-to-hand fighting, but the two essential lines were at last secured, at a cost of nearly half the force killed or wounded. This was about all that could be done without a new plan and fresh troops.
Commander of the 11th Brigade, Brig.-Gen. Victor Odlum, decided the time for personal intervention had come. 'In the end, towards morning,' Odlum has recalled, 'I went forward myself to see what the position was. I had two or three officers with me. As I got up on the top of the hill I could see that we had not got over; we were bent back on the top. There were Germans still up there. I went around and started on the left flank of my brigade and by unit I took them forward and placed them in position, one after the other. Then I went along and took the last one over the crest of the hill.'
Here, luck came into play. The disorganized enemy had evacuated the trenches on the crest. Odlum's men, who were from the 85th and 75th Battalions, were able to organize a defence in time to repel the last halfhearted German attempt to reoccupy them.
Meanwhile, Maj.-Gen. Sir David Watson had realized that he would have to use the two uncommitted battalions of the 10th Brigade to finish the task. Odlum's troops were too tired to go the rest of the way to the Brown Line. Under orders from Byng, Watson had been husbanding his reserve for the attack on the Pimple. But no such attack could take place unless Hill 145 was well and truly held. During the night and the following morning a new plan emerged. The artillery would once again fire a barrage on the enemy-held trenches, the Pimple would once again be sealed off with smoke, and the mortars would once again engage the emplacements that remained in enemy hands. By 3:15 P.M. the troops had moved forward up the casualty-strewn slopes of the Ridge and the guns were laid. Two battalions, the 44th and the 50th (both Western units), led the assault, leaping from the trenches on the crest and charging down the steep eastern slope behind the barrage. The 50th, on the left, lost a third of its strength within minutes.
Enemy dugouts were soon under fire and the previous day's success was repeated. Before the afternoon was over the 44th Battalion had mopped up the Bois de la Folie and linked up with the 3rd Division.
The 4th Division had joined the other force on the Brown Line objectives.
There remained the Pimple, and it was still the task of the 10th Brigade to take it. Brig.-Gen. E. Hilliam was given two days to get ready. His battalions were pulled back off the new line for a brief rest and refit, and yet another plan was prepared.
At 5 A.M. on the 12th, in a snowstorm that blew straight into the eyes of the defenders, the 46th, 50th and 44th Battalions advanced behind a creeping barrage towards the battered spot on the map that had held out for so long. The Pimple was quite literally one large defence position, bristling with armament. On the left, the 46th experienced the same heavy casualties as had the 50th two days before: half the men of its leading companies were casualties in minutes. But on the other frontages, the 50th and 44th found unbelieving Germans sheltering from the foul weather and took the first two trenches quickly and with small loss. An hour after the attack began, they were on their objectives, cutting down Germans endeavoring to escape into the plain below.
Two hours later, they had consolidated, the 46th had reported themselves in position to dominate the Souchez River and the Ridge was Canadian, from end to end.
Ahead, for Currie and his men, lay great victories which still echo on the lists of battle honors and in soldiers' memories. Hill 70, Passchendaele, Valenciennes and the Canal du Nord would establish for all time a place in history for the Canadian Corps. But for the survivors of April, 1917, it was the Ridge that started it all. There, the green men, the citizen soldiers, the volunteers, had shown what they could do. Thereafter a Canadian victory was an expected thing.
Behind the Ridge, men were busy counting up the tangible rewards. In addition to the thousands of German dead (the exact number has never been tabulated), the Canadians had captured 54 guns, 104 trench mortars, 124 machine guns, and 4,000 prisoners. Their own casualties, 10,000 killed, wounded or missing, were low by comparison with previous battles, and lower by far than the enemy's.
The intangible rewards were not so easy to assess, though many tried. For the Canadian official historian, the event 'had great national significance.' Others have decided that the event marked a long step forward in the development of that much prized and elusive quality, homogeneity.
Gen. F. F. Worthington, who spent nine days in Canada before enlisting in Montreal's Black Watch, has said, 'I never felt like a Canadian until Vimy. After that I was Canadian all the way. We had a feeling that we could not lose, and if the other Allies packed it up, we could do the whole job ourselves.'
Source: Copyright 1967, Sun Media Corporation. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Appears in
Arras, Battles of; Trench Warfare; Canada; World War I
|
Hotmail
Appears in