Heroes of Vimy Ridge are remembered 100 years on
Princes honour the fallen at vital WW1 battle
PRINCE Charles and his sons have paid tribute to the heroes of Vimy Ridge on the centenary of one the most crucial First World War battles.
William, Harry and their father were among more than 25,000 people who attended a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary yesterday.
The royal trio laid a pair of boots in honour of Canadian forces who, like Britain, suffered huge losses during the four-day battle.
Prince Charles told the crowd: “Hundreds of thousands of Canadians crossed the cold, grey Atlantic to take a stand against tyranny and oppression.
“They left behind everything they knew to face a struggle they could not have imagined.
“This was a battlefield of corpses. Ladies and gentlemen, let us never forget.” The princes were taken through carefully preserved trenches on the Allied front line in northern France, the German position tens of metres away and no-man’s-land visible in between. The surrounding landscape was still scarred with the remains of collapsed trenches and shell holes. And though now covered with mown grass, sections were still cordoned off by electric fences due to unexploded ordnance buried beneath the surface – a reminder of the legacy of war. Vimy Ridge, an engagement during the Battle of Arras, lasted from April 9 to May 16, 1917 and claimed 18,000 Scottish lives – the highest concentration of Scots in any First World War campaign. The ridge, about 110 miles north of Paris, was captured by Germany early in the war. William and Harry’s attendance at the ceremony was met with delight by Canadian visitors, with dozens shouting “thanks from Canada” as the brothers left the ceremony.
As many of the crowd sheltered from the sun under umbrellas, one woman who had flown over from Alberta asked Wills to pose for a selfie.
The prince also pointed to another visitor’s face and joked: “You’ve been in the sun a long time.”
Other guests included Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, French President Francois Hollande, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Governor General David Johnston. Canada lost 3,598 soldiers in the battle. Mr Trudeau said: “The Battle of Vimy Ridge was a turning point in the First World War and for Canada, when Canadians acted, and fought, as one.” He told the world this type of conflict must “never happen again”.
The Queen sent a message praising Canadian troops. She said there would be “difficult memories of loss and of suffering, but also memories of many heroic acts of bravery and of sacrifice”.
The monarch added: “They fought courageously and with great ingenuity in winning the strategic high point of Vimy Ridge, though victory came at a heavy cost with more than 10,000 fallen and wounded.”
They crossed the Atlantic to take a stand against tyranny PRINCE CHARLES HAILS CANADIAN TROOPS