The high ground

There’s a reason for the expression “to be holding the high ground”; that’s the position of strength. Uphill attackers are always at a disadvantage. Think Seminary Ridge or Little Round Top; think Chapultepec; think Omaha Beach.

Canadians think Vimy Ridge, the battle that many came to believe forged their national identity, which began 100 years ago today.

Germans had held Vimy since October 1914. The French tried twice in 1915 to take it back (including momentary success in May by the First Moroccan Division that ultimately collapsed due to lack of reinforcements). The attempts cost the French around 150,000 casualties, and for a while both sides basically cautiously coexisted.

In February 1916 the British, under Lieutenant General Sir Julian Byng, relieved the French so the latter could deploy around Verdun. When they arrived, they discovered that the Germans had dug numerous tunnels for the purpose of setting off mines under French positions in an attack. The Royal Engineers began countering the mining works. In May 1916 German infantry attacked, pushing back the British, although they were unable to consolidate their gains.

The Canadian Corps—four divisions that heretofore had been deployed in other British armies and were for the first time amalgamated into a national unit—relieved the British on the western slopes of Vimy Ridge in October 1916.

In developing a strategy for a spring offensive along the Arras front, the Brits and Canadians consulted with French commanders to learn lessons from the Battle of Verdun. They also did something rather novel for that war—they gave their troops, including the Canadians, intensive training: communicating objectives down to the platoon level, and subjecting them to repeated exercises on what to expect and how to adapt to combat conditions. Men were cross-trained for their comrades’ jobs, in the expectation that, when a soldier was knocked out of action, someone else would have to fulfill his function. They knew the purpose of the operation, the purpose of their unit and their own and their comrades’ purpose.

(I contend that this kind of thing—clear understanding of what was at stake in the operation; communicating each unit’s and each soldier’s role in that overall goal; detailed information on objectives; topographical familiarization; and those repeated combat-simulation exercises—were in large part responsible for the success of American troops at Omaha Beach, despite being landed in the wrong places and encountering much greater German resistance than had been expected. They knew their onions, and they pulled it off.)

Well, the training paid off for the Canadians, too. They commenced their attack on the morning of 9 April, Easter Monday, a cold day that later on brought sleet and snow. The attackers moved so quickly that the Germans couldn’t process it fast enough to react decisively.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t until 12 April that the Canadian Corps had control of the ridge. The battle had cost them 10,600 casualties (including 3600 killed). Sadly, there was no full-scale breakthrough on the Arras front. The Germans did not attempt to retake the position; instead they implemented a scorched earth policy and retreated to the Oppy-Méricourt line.

Whether or not Vimy Ridge was the forge of Canada as a nation, it has been a point of pride ever since. In 1922 France gave Canada perpetual use of a 100-hectare section of the highest part of the battlefield as a commemoration of the battle and of Canadian Expeditionary Force members killed during the First World War. The park is staffed by bi-lingual Canadian students, who lead visitors on short tours of the battle. You are limited to specified walking areas because of unexploded shells still buried in the ground. They use sheep to keep down the grass, because the weight of lawn mowers can set off explosions. Still, a hundred years on.

Some of the trenches have been preserved in concrete. You get an idea of them, but not the sense of constant mud, rats and lice; or of the artillery roar or the other sounds of war. I was appalled to realize that the forward observation trenches from the two sides were barely 50 meters apart. I just sat down and cried right there.

There’s also a monument, with sculptural representations of Canada’s sacrifice throughout the war.

There are two mourning parents; here’s one of them:

And the names of every Canadian soldier killed in action, for whom there is no known grave—the ones I call The Lost but Never Found. There are 11,285 of them there.

The legal age for enlisting as a volunteer was 17, but boys of 15 or 16 would take the name of an older man; so on the monument’s roster “served as” usually means someone not yet 17. There are many of them listed on that memorial.

And it is right for us to remember them all.