Vimy Ridge
The Canadian victory in taking Vimy Ridge at Easter 1917 has acquired huge symbolic importance. To many, it represented Canada’s coming of age as a nation and the excellence of Canadian arms; to others, forgetting that Lt.-Gen. Sir Julian Byng commanded the Canadian Corps, it was Maj.-Gen. Arthur Currie’s triumph. To the soldiers, Vimy was a great if costly achievement, with more than 10,000 men killed or wounded. Whatever it meant, whatever it was, Vimy is enshrined in Canadian memory because of the great national war memorial that stands on the ridge in northern France.
The Canadian Corps’ attack on the German positions on Vimy Ridge was part of a major British offensive on the Arras front intended to assist a French attack to the south. The ridge rose gradually from west to east with a sharp drop at its rear behind the German lines, and it overlooked the Douai Plain and gave good observation of the industrial city of Lens. Previous Allied attempts to take the position had failed. Now it was the Canadians’ turn, and the four divisions of the Corps, fighting together for the first time, were primed.
Byng’s plan of attack was meticulously prepared. Infantry rehearsed their roles on mock-ups behind the lines; light rail lines were built to carry supplies forward and the wounded back; tunnels under the chalky ridge were carved out to lay mines or to shelter troops from hostile gunfire; and the staff officers, the key ones British regulars serving with the Canadian Corps, worked on their maps and ammunition tables. Gen. Currie, commanding the 1st Canadian Division, had earlier been part of a British Expeditionary Force mission to study French tactics at Verdun. As a result of his report, briefings of all troops improved, maps and photographs of the objectives were seen by every man, and platoon organization and tactical formations in the attack were modified.
The assault on a wet, windy April 9, 1917, Easter Monday, was preceded by a long artillery preparation that targeted enemy guns and rear areas with the aim of reducing the German ability to fire at the attackers and to interrupt supply. The infantry, now preceded by a massive creeping barrage, moved from their trenches and tunnels toward their objectives, three German defence lines stretching east for about 3,400 metres.
The attack went as planned almost everywhere, the advance moving like clockwork, though casualties were many. The first objective, the Germans’ Black Line, was reached on schedule, most of the enemy still in their bunkers sheltering from the artillery fire. The attackers briefly consolidated, then pushed on to the Blue Line, which fell easily. The Canadians seized their final objective, the Brown Line, with a downhill bayonet charge by the 6th Brigade.
Only on the left in the 4th Canadian Division’s sector was there serious opposition. At what were dubbed Hill 145 and The Pimple, the two highest points on the ridge, dug-in German troops resisted fiercely. Two brigades battered the enemy’s reverse slope positions without much effect, and German counterattacks drove the attackers back. The defenders of Hill 145 gave up only after heavy assaults; the Pimple finally fell on April 12 to a night attack launched into the teeth of a howling gale.
Gen. Byng’s careful plan included preparations to repel the inevitable counterattacks, and he had ordered machine guns to be brought forward quickly and defensive positions to be prepared. The ground gained thus was held, and all of Vimy Ridge was in Canadian hands, including Hill 145, now the site of the great memorial.
The casualties had been heavy. Nursing Sister Clare Gass, stationed behind the front, wrote in her diary that “The casualties though reported as small … simply filled all the hospitals hereabouts to overflowing … We have had no hours off for a week & have been on duty late at night & and are beginning to feel the effects …”
The victory did not alter the course of the war. The Arras offensive made little headway and the French attacks failed. There was no breakthrough at Vimy, no turning cavalry divisions loose to roam the enemy’s rear areas.
Trench warfare continued and the casualties mounted.
What Vimy did do was to give the men of the Canadian Corps the sense that they were special, that Canadian soldiers were as good as any British troops and better than most, and that they could beat the enemy.
One junior officer wrote home that Canadians “showed they could fight as well as anyone and a little better than ‘Heinie,’ We had him beat to a ‘farewelI.’ ” The victory also gave Canadians at home a great boost in morale.
For Prime Minister Robert Borden, overseas for meetings in London and visits to the front in April and May 1917, the casualties at Vimy led him to the conclusion that Canada must have compulsory military service to keep the Canadian Corps at strength.