National Post (National Edition)
CANADIANS SEIZE VIMY RIDGE
2,000 PRISONERS CAPTURED, FEW TROOPS LOST
TANKS ACCOMPANIED TROOPS BUT HAD LITTLE TO DO; RIDGE CLEARED WITHIN SEVEN HOURS
Canadian Headquarters In France via London, April 9 — The crest of the Vimy Ridge has been carried. The strongest, defensive position of the enemy on the western front has been captured by the army of Sir Douglas Haig, and the Canadian corps was given the place of honor in the great event, being strongly supported by some of the most famous of the British formations. The attack was preceded by a bombardment which continued for several days, and in which guns of the heaviest calibre, formerly used on only the biggest battleships, took part. The results, as revealed by aerial observation, were a repetition of the battle of the Somme. Airplanes, flying low, could find only shapeless masses of churned-up earth where the enemy first line had been.
By Saturday afternoon Thelus, the chief village held by the enemy on the ridge, and lying due east of Neuville St. Vaast, was pounded out of all recognition, only two houses remaining. Prisoners taken told of heavy enemy losses. Even in the deep dugouts, where the Germans had hoped to be reasonably safe in that rain of death, no safety was to be found anywhere. In a desperate attempt to blind the eyes of the attacking army the Germans on Sunday endeavoured to destroy our observation balloons.
Sunday night our guns continued the work of devastation under conditions which made a spectacle that was majestic and aweinspiring. A full moon in the east lit up the countryside with mellow beams on the horizon, while the flash of the guns made a continuous play like that of the Northern Lights in the Dominion, or distant sheet lightning. This was sharply broken now and again by a column of reddish-yellow flames where, on the ridge, high explosives were bursting.
THE SUPREME MOMENT
The gunners, with tireless energy, continued the cannonade throughout Easter Sunday. On Monday morning came the supreme moment, that in which our infantry was called upon to go out and reap the fruits of months of preparation.
They had endured, unwaveringly, the answering fire of the enemy, which, however, was not comparable to ours. Some impatient to be at the foe, had gone out on small wars of their own, and it is reported that in one of the individual encounters in “No Man’s Land” a Canadian, meeting a German, pursued him after emptying his revolver ineffectively at him. The Canadian cast about for some other weapon. The only one within reach was his steel helmet and with the sharp edge of that he killed the armed German. Such was the spirit of the infantry who, in the grey preceding the dawn, sprang from their shelters when the appointed time came. It was a great occasion and greatly they rose to it.
From a crater of the scarred front, which resembled the openings made in quarrying operations, the distance to the top of the ridge ranged from 1200 yards to a little short of a mile. Thereafter the ground falls easterly towards the great plain of Cambrai. Up the ridge, amid the shattered Hun trenches, our men swarmed in successive waves. On the northern end a few trees along the skyline marked where the wood of La Folie had been, and our advance was through the remains of an orchard.
FIRST GERMAN SOS
Within half an hour after the first German “S.O.S.” rocket had been sent up, our objective was attained, with slight loss. The tanks which accompanied our advancing infantry, had little to do, but were seen in action later, near the crest of the ridge on the extreme north of the line, at a point east of Souchez, where much fierce fighting took place in 1915, and thousands of men fell.
The enemy put up a stiff fight. Hill 145 had been provided skillfully with concealed machine gun positions, and long after they had been driven from the surrounding ground with machine guns on the Hill they continued to sweep points of approach to the Hill with their fire. Encouraged by this show of resistance on what otherwise was a stricken field, the enemy began to send up reserves in trains from Lens, Douai and perhaps a greater distance, with the intention of launching a counterattack.
That attack was never made. As reports came in from the front and from the aviators of the massing of the enemy in Vimy and the trenches in the vicinity, a tremendous barrage was turned on by our heavy guns, the range being too great for field artillery. Perhaps for the first time in the war twelveinch weapons were used for this purpose at very long range. The splendid cooperation of the artillery arm in preventing this counterattack did much to lessen our casualties.
On a difficult part of the front, on the southern end of the Canadian front, the Germans yielded ground more readily than in the north. Many prisoners were taken, and as for Thelus, which had been strongly held before, our guns hammered it to pieces. It did not long hold out. By 12:30, seven hours after the battle began, no organized body of the enemy remained on Vimy Ridge, save the nest of machine gun sections on Hill 145.
Of the casualties it can only be said this moment that they are surprisingly light, especially in view of the importance of the ground won. The prisoners on the Canadian part of the front probably total close to two thousand. The British troops on the adjacent part of the front captured over three thousand. The men are splendid, and proud that they had been counted worthy to furnish a striking force in so important an operation as the recapture of Vimy Ridge.
No ground in all France is more dear to the hearts of the French people than the front from which the Canadians set out to drive the enemy from his positions on the ridge of Vimy, the chapel of Notre Dame de Lorette, Souchez and the sugar refinery, to conquer the crumbling ruins of which men died in thousands. In spring of 1915, before the tremendous dramas of Verdun and the Somme had been conceived, the army of France made a first great attempt to drive the entrenched foe from his positions.