THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE
On Easter Monday, April 9, 1917,
occurred on the western front the great
push which has been named by the press the
Battle of Arras. For some days previously our
bombardment of the enemy lines had been
almost continuous, the so-called "drum fire"
which sounded like rolls of thunder. At times
during the night the rumble would become a
roar, and one of my tent mates would half
awaken, and say:
"Well, they're giving poor Heiny hell
tonight," and the tone would almost imply pity.
A grunt from the rest of us, and then we'd
roll over on our steel-hard cots to try
unsuccessfully to find a soft spot, and shortly the
snores from one of the officers who was
notorious for snoring would drown even the roll of
the guns.
Since the Somme advance in 1916 no great
pushback of the Germans had occurred. After
all the many and great preparations had been
completed, an attack was now to be made on
a ten-mile front north and south of the ruined
city of Arras by British and Canadian troops.
To the Canadians fell the lot of taking the
famous Vimy Ridge which they, with the
absolutely necessary assistance of almost
unlimited artillery, successfully took, consolidated,
and held, on Easter Monday, April 9.
The argument which sometimes occurs as to
whether the artillery or infantry did the
greater work in the taking of the Ridge is beside
the question; one was as necessary as the
other. The artillery could have hammered the
Ridge until it became absolutely uninhabitable
by the enemy, but the artillery could not
consolidate and hold the Ridge, which could be
done only by foot-soldiers. Without the proper
aid being given by artillery, no foot soldiers
in the world, be they ever so valorous, could
have taken this strongly fortified hill.
The taking of this Ridge was considered a
most difficult achievement for the reason that
the French in 1915 nearly captured it, but with
losses estimated unofficially at from 150,000 to
200,000 men. Anyone who has been in this
neighborhood and has seen the areas dotted
with equipment and bones of killed French
soldiers, and the trenches marked at almost
every turn by little white wooden crosses,
"Erected to an unknown French soldier," by
their British allies, could hardly doubt these
figures. Then the Allies, after holding the
conquered part of the Ridge for some months,
were pushed off it by the Germans, who
successfully held it till the Battle of Arras.
Before this battle it was said that French and
British were betting odds that the Canadians
would not succeed in this project of taking the
Ridge. These facts are not given in any spirit
of rivalry or criticism, but only as points of
interest and to give honor where honor is due.
The Canadians certainly can never complain
that they were denied their proper meed of
praise by the British press and public for their
work at Vimy, but neither can it be gainsaid
that they deserved the praise accorded.
The advance was to have taken place much
sooner, but preparations were not complete.
Easter Sunday, then Easter Monday became
the day decided upon, and 5.30 a.m. of that
day was to be the zero hour, or hour of attack.
Promptly at that hour the wonderfully
heavy artillery barrage multiplied one
hundredfold. Three minutes later the
soldiers began going over the top and following
the barrage. So complete were the arrangements,
and so successful every move, that
objectives were taken almost to the minute as
planned, and returns coming in to Brigade
H.Q. on the immediate front on which our
battalion attacked were as optimistic as could be
hoped for by the most critical.
A little over one hour after the first wave
of Canadians started across No Man's Land,
our O.C., Lieutenant Colonel J----, with an
orderly room staff, signalers and scouts,
started for the German lines to open a battalion
H.Q. at Ulmer House dugout, about 600
yards behind the trenches which two hours
before this had been the enemy front line. I
accompanied the party, for I was to establish
a Regimental Aid Post somewhere near the H.Q.
When we stepped out of the tunnel which led
from Zivy cave to the center of No Man's Land,
we had the misfortune to arrive in a sap--a
trench leading toward the Hun lines--which
sap at the moment of our arrival was being
very heavily shelled by German artillery. As
the sides of the sap were no more than two or
three feet in height, and as the shells were
dropping so close that we were continually in
showers of mud from them, our party became
broken up, leaving the Colonel and five of us
together.
Some two hundred yards on our way
we stopped to rest. The Colonel and I were
sitting behind a small parapet, our bodies
touching, when a shell dropped beside him,
pieces of it wounding him in five or six places.
He pluckily insisted on going on toward our
goal, but soon fell from exhaustion. The
problem then was to get him back in safety, for
there had been no cessation in the shelling.
Fortunately this was accomplished with no
other casualties, with great pluck on the
Colonel's part, and some slight assistance on the
part of his companions.
Major P----, M.C., then took charge, and
with most of the original party set out for
Ulmer House. Our route this time was
slightly altered by dodging the unlucky sap and
going directly overland. Stepping around
shellholes and keeping well away from a tank
stuck in a mud hole to our right, in order to
avoid the numerous shells that the Germans
were pouring about it, we proceeded on our
trip through the German barrage, which was
somewhat scattered now.
In passing it may be said that on this
immediate front, because of the depth of the mud,
the only assistance given by the five or six tanks
to the troops was that of drawing and localizing
the enemy fire to a certain extent, and so
marking out areas of danger that it were well to
avoid. None of them got even as far as our
first objective, but remained stuck in the thick
mud till they were dug out by hand. On hard
ground they are no doubt dangerous weapons
of war, but in this deep mud their only danger
was to their occupants and to those about them.
Our trip across this time was not particularly
eventful. Veering this way and that to avoid
the most heavily shelled bits of ground,
stepping over corpses of Germans, or, what was
more trying, of our own Canadian boys,
saying a word of comfort to some poor wounded
chaps in shellholes, we gradually and successfully
made our way across the shell-devastated
and conquered territory to Ulmer House. We
suffered only two slight casualties, a wounded
hand to the assistant adjutant, Lieutenant
C----, and a bruised chest to the signaling
officer, Captain G----.
A couple of hours later the shelling had
ceased so completely that it was comparatively
safe for anyone to wander about the
field which had so recently been the scene
of one of the greatest battles in history. Here
and there, in shellholes marked by a bit of rag
tied to a stick, we found many of our own boys
and the boys of other Canadian battalions who
needed attention. Stretcher parties were made
up, generally of German prisoners, and the
wounded were cleared with all possible speed.
One poor young chap we discovered late in
the afternoon in an advanced shellhole, with
his leg badly wounded and broken, he having
lain there from 6.15 in the morning. Yet he
smiled good-humoredly and thanked us gratefully
for what we did, asking only for a cigarette
after we fixed him up. Field ambulance
stretcher bearers and German prisoners under
Captain K----, M.C., of No. -- Canadian
Field Ambulance, worked tremendously to
clear the field. Other working parties were
encountered at different points, all with the same
object.
In our rounds we visited all that remained
of Thelus and saw some of the many captured
guns. One of the most interesting visits
we made was to a cave at Les Tilleuls, near
Thelus, which was being used as H.Q. for
another battalion as well as H.Q. for C
Company of our own. Here Lieutenant J----
greeted us warmly but failed to tell us the
details of his own exploit, which has acquired a
fame it well deserves and for which he received
the Military Cross. Here is the story:
Lieutenant J---- was second in command
of C Company, the C.O. being "Old Pop,"
who was killed early in the fight, the command
of the company devolving upon his subordinate.
He is a boy of twenty-two, a bank clerk in
civil life, as mild, gentle and good natured a
lad as one could find in a day's march. He
had led his men on till they obtained their
objective, and then he and a corporal who were
scouting about came to this cave with its long,
winding staircase. They threw down a couple
of Mills bombs, drew their revolvers, and went
down, to be confronted in flickering candle
light by one hundred and five German officers
and men, all armed.
Bluffing that they had a large force
upstairs, they covered and disarmed the 105
Germans, took them prisoners, and, hunting
up an escort for them, sent them to the rear.
Those are the cold, bare, undecorated facts.
And then to complete as pretty a bit of work
as was done at Vimy Ridge, Lieutenant J----
took a German carrier pigeon that he found in
the cave, tied to its leg a message giving the
necessary essentials, and finishing with the
words, "everything bright and cheery," he
freed it. It found its way to our battalion
H.Q. at Ulmer House, where we had the
pleasure of reading the note!
To stand at the mouth of this cave and look
about on all sides as far as the eye could see,
and to know that all that shell-racked ground
was won in a few hours by the citizen army of
Canada made one feel a legitimate pride in
being a native of that land. And the stories
which kept dribbling in for days, as we held
the line, of the gallantry of this man or the
nobly inspiring death of that one, were of
deep interest to us all.
Of our own battalion we lost on the 9th, 217
men out of a total of 657, and ten officers--not
counting two who were slightly wounded--out
of twenty-two of us. Three of our officers
were killed outright: "Old Pop;" Lieutenant
Beechraft, an American lawyer from Michigan,
who often said to me with a confident
smile: "The Germans have not yet made a
shell to get me." And he was right, poor Tom,
for I saw him lying dead that day on the field
with a German rifle bullet wound in his head.
The third of our officers killed was Major
Hutchins, a man well past fifty, who had
recently joined us and who had taken a
Lieutenant's position of platoon commander in
order to serve at the front. This was his first
fight, and he was killed by a shell while leading
his platoon across No Man's Land. All honor
to his gray hairs, and may they ever be an
inspiration to younger men!
One of the best stories of this battle
concerned a Canadian Brigade on our left under
the command of Brigadier General H----.
This brigade on April 9 took all its objectives
except one very difficult hill, No. 140,
nicknamed, because of its shape, the Pimple. The
General of the division sent word to Brigadier
General H---- that he was going to send in
some British troops to aid him in capturing this
hill. Brigadier General H---- is a bonnie
fighter, an Anglo-Indian who has been living
some years in British Columbia, and he has
a temper much resembling an Irish terrier's.
He curtly sent back word that his Canadians
needed no assistance. Knowing him well, the
General of division good-naturedly replied
that if General H---- succeeded in taking this
difficult hill they would give him the title Lord
Pimple. The next day the division received
the following message:
Have taken, am consolidating, and will hold Hill
140.
(Sgd.) LORD PIMPLE.
The main facts of this story can be verified
in the official records of this division.
I have a vivid recollection of General H---- when
he was Lieutenant Colonel in command
of the --th Canadian Battalion. I had been
sent there to relieve the regular Medical Officer
who was away on leave in England. Lieutenant
Colonel H---- was also away on leave
during my first few days' service with his
battalion.
On a certain day when we were being
relieved from the front line opposite Bully
Grenay I had not yet seen General H----. On
going out with my orderlies we were to pass
along Damoisette trench, which was one of the
front support trenches, and was an "out"
trench that day. We found it blocked by
some other officers of our battalion and a
couple of platoons, for this trench was being
heavily shelled just ahead of the block. We
joined the others and waited some time, when
an officer said:
"By G--, I take enough chances without
waiting here for the Huns to drop those shells
on our heads. I am going out Caron d'Aix,"
which was an "in" trench that day for this
relief. But the relief was to have been
completed at 10 a.m., and it was then 10:15, so
we would hardly cause any obstruction. This
fact, combined with the fact that probably
everyone, as is often the case, was waiting for
someone else to propose going back, made us
all turn about and retrace our steps. We were
going along Caron d'Aix trench when I heard
an angry voice behind me demanding:
"Doctor, what are you doing in this trench?
Don't you know that this is an 'in' trench?"
I turned and saw a thin-lipped, square-jawed
Lieutenant Colonel who, I guessed at once, was
our returned O.C. I explained that Damoisette
was being shelled heavily, that relief was
complete, and that only three of the men ahead
were mine. His face was quite dark and
frowning, and I could see that he was debating as
to whether he should give me a strafing, or pass
it over. Finally, he said sharply:
"All right; carry on."
That night at Bully I did not look forward
with any great pleasure to my dinner, for I
had heard of his reputation as to temper, and
I expected he would say a few things to me,
though, as Kelly well put it, "it's none of an
officer's business to put his nose against an
advancin' German shell." But I plucked up
my courage and entered the H.Q. mess room,
to be greeted in a kindly and friendly manner
by Lieutenant Colonel H----.
"How are you, doctor? I have not had the
pleasure of meeting you before," shaking my hand.
"Pardon me, sir, but you met me in a trench
today where I had no right to be."
"No. You were quite right to be there. I
made inquiries, and find you were right. And
anyway, I had no damned right to be there
myself."
In the time that I remained with his
battalion I found him always to be a courteous
gentleman, but with an irascible temper. One
would not be surprised if, since his becoming
a Brigadier General, his temper is less touchy.
And the incident of the Pimple shows that
he is an efficient officer, well worthy of the land
of his forefathers, and a credit to the country
of his adoption and of his men.