Vimy

Ashamed though I am to admit it I forgot that Saturday was the 87th anniversary of the beginning of the attack on Vimy Ridge.  The Post has the story.

This ridge, a strategically important feature of the Western Front, provided a commanding view deep into the Allies' rear and protected German-captured coalfields from bombardment. Barnacled with machine gun emplacements, impregnable bunkers and row upon row of heavily defended trenches, Vimy Ridge was a truly awesome killing machine that had claimed the lives of 190,000 French and British soldiers in previous assaults.

With the approach of dawn on Easter Monday, April 9, a heavy snow began to fall. Huddled in their greatcoats, the 20,000 frontline Canadian troops checked their equipment one last time and waited for the battle to begin.

Just before 5:30 a.m. the order to fix bayonets rippled through the forward divisions. As 1,000 heavy artillery guns thundered in unison, the Canadians scrambled into no-man's-land and joined the battle for Vimy Ridge.

Walking behind their famous creeping artillery barrage, the Canadians found the enemy's barbed wire smashed and its forward trenches filled with dazed and surrendering German troops. But the morning's artillery barrages had not obliterated the defences in and around the high point of the ridge -- the deadly Hill 145.

The task of taking Hill 145 fell to the Nova Scotia Highlanders, a motley reserve unit that had not expected to see combat that morning. Without artillery support, the Highlanders charged the German guns head-on. Half the battalion fell in the assault, but within an hour the position was captured and victory snatched from defeat. But it came at an horrific price: 7,000 Canadians wounded and 3,500 dead.

Entire battalions, such as the close-knit Highlanders, were decimated. Small towns across Canada shared in this communal loss.

Tragically, like so much of the Great War, Vimy proved futile.