Part III: Conclusion of the Battle
The 3rd Division, led by Major-General Louis J. Lipsett, began the battle on the left center of the Corps advance, with the 7th and 8th Brigades in the line.
EDITOR’S NOTE: One hundred years ago, on 9-12 April 1917, the Canadian Corps captured Vimy Ridge from the German Army. A battle alters the lives of soldiers, and occasionally transforms the face of an entire army. Victory can go beyond, touching the soul of a nation. Such was the case at Vimy Ridge. Summerside’s J. Clinton Morrison is the award-winning author of Hell Upon Earth: A Personal Account of P.E.I. Soldiers in the Great War, 1914-1918, published in 1995. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the Journal Pioneer published a portion of a threepart series from Morrison’s book, each Monday. This is the final installment.
PART THREE: Conclusion of the Battle BY CLINTON MORRISON
The 3rd Division, led by Major-General Louis J. Lipsett, began the battle on the left center of the Corps advance, with the 7th and 8th Brigades in the line.
The PPCLI spearheaded the assault. Led by their pipers, the battalion reached the Black Line within minutes and pressed on under the protection of the creeping barrage. Scotchfort’s James McBride wrote: “The enemy has taken to the open, his trenches are only a death trap.
The rifle and machine gun fire is terrible and the ground is strewn with the enemy dead. The wounded are asking for help but we cannot stay . ... An officer waves his revolver, points in the direction of the enemy, he starts to run. He is followed by his platoon or by the whole company. In a few minutes we pass over the obstruction, the garrison is dead or dying all brave men but they could not stand the mad rush of men flushed with victory.”
As the PPCLI pushed forward it came under heavy fire from concealed enemy machine gunners who still held Hill 145 in the 4th Division’s sector. Nevertheless, two hours into the attack the PPCLI had captured its objective, the Red Line.
The 4th Division failed to take its objective on 9 April. Commanded by Major-General David Watson, its two assault brigades (and another in reserve) were in position on the extreme left of the Corps line. In order to reach its Black Line objective beyond Zouave Valley, two elevated and fortified German positions had to be silenced: the Pimple, and Hill 145. After a hard fight, the brigade’s 85th Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders) finally took the hill and the following day the final Red Line objective was secured.
To the 4th Division’s left, meanwhile, its 12th Brigade became mired in swampy terrain. Caught in an enemy crossfire between the defenders of Hill 145 and the Pimple, the brigade was eventually able to achieve most of its objectives along the Black Line. On 12 April the Pimple was finally captured and the Germans fell back to new lines on the Douai Plain. The ridge had been taken at last.
It had been a costly triumph: 3,600 Canadians perished and 16,000 were wounded or missing. Approximately 65 Prince Edward Island became casualties in the fighting. One of the survivors, Neil McDougall of Grand River, described his close call with death: “The wound I got will not hurt me in future life the least. I know over home when they hear of a fellow being wounded they think he is done, but it is not so with me. In fact, I feel nearly as good now as I ever have felt. However, it very nearly cost my life. It was a machine gun bullet that got me. It went in on my left side and came out on my right. If it had been one half inch around towards my back it would have killed me instantly, for it would have pierced my heart. It was high enough, but not deep enough so you will understand, mother, I had a narrow escape. The most peculiar fact of all is that the bullet that went through me came out in my right breast pocket and stuck in a book which I had in my pocket. It also broke a piece of my fountain pen.”
Other Islanders were less fortunate. “Poor Hector [Murray] was killed on April 9th about a half hour after the battle started,” wrote Richard Rogerson, 13th Battalion, of Canoe Cove to his sister, Katherine: “I seen him laying in a shell hole dead.”
While the Canadians struggled uphill, German snipers and machine gunners had picked away at them mercilessly. Shielded by their red crosses, stretcher bearers and ambulance drivers escaped the bullets but not the deadly shrapnel. Alyre G. Arsenault of Egmont Bay, with the 8th Field Ambulance, worked 48 hours nonstop during the battle, sorting through the bodies strewn along the slope, leaving the dead and loading the wounded to be taken to waiting motor ambulances further back. Burial parties followed and interred the dead where they fell, many in a single grave.
As the Canadian advance quickened so many prisoners were taken there was no one to guard them. According to James McBride, it didn’t matter: “Prisoners are passing back, their hands high above their heads, they need no guard, they are only too glad to get out of it.” The horror of seeing comrades die from hideous shrapnel and gunshot wounds gave the Canadians renewed resolve to take the ridge. The killing had its own momentum. Still grieving at his friend Hector’s death, Dick Rogerson wrote with a vengeance: “I have got my share of Germans. I got 14 to my credit in about two hours some I shot with my rifle more I drove the bayonet into and two I killed with a milles bomb... Once I killed my first German with my bayonet my blood was riled every German I could not reach with my bayonet I shot.” Edward Burgoyne was wounded in the leg on Easter Monday morning. “I suppose you will wonder if I have killed a German,” he wrote almost apologetically to his parents in Granville: “I can only remember killing four and I only stuck the bayonet in one of them. Perhaps some mother is waiting for him to come home but I had to do it as it was my duty and he would have done it to me if I had given him the chance. It was really a hand to hand fight and they stood their ground for a short time then they turned and ran and our rifle fire mowed them down like grain.”
The Battle of Vimy Ridge was an unqualified political as well as military success. Many observers claimed that Canada was born not in the British Parliament a half century before, but on the ramparts of Vimy Ridge that cold, spring morning in 1917.
Although its capture would not prove decisive in determining the future course of the war, more than anything else the battle would become a symbol of Canada’s coming of age on the battlefield.