Vimy Ridge Essay

397 Words2 Pages

Vimy Ridge was considered Canada’s greatest victories. This is the time when the country came out from Britain’s shadow and was capable of doing great things as their own country. Canadian soldiers earned respect and a reputation of effectiveness and a tough army. On April 9th 1917 the Canadian army were ordered to attack Vimy Ridge which was located in Northern France in the pas-de-Calais region. Near the border of Belgium, is a village called Vimy which was equipped with Barbed wires and machine guns. To attack this difficult position, Canadian troops had to carefully plan and practice their attack on France. In order to provide a wide range of firepower in the war they were given specialist roles as machine gunners, and grenade-throwers. …show more content…

The use of new maps and aerial work using remote sensing is to help to guide a way. To keep men safe, engineers dug tunnels from the back to the front. Not only do troops have to train and prepare for battle, the main guide to victory is the artillery barrage that would allow the opposing team (Germany) to come forward. The Canadian troops were led by Lt. - General Sir Julian Bying and Major General Arthur Currie where they overcame an impossible task. As an army they learned from their mistakes of previous battle. As a leader, Bying researched and studied on the French catastrophes in the Battle of Verdun as well as every perspective of Vimy Ridge. He predicted that Canadians can go far in capturing the Vimy Ridge (4000m) by 1pm because they were well prepared. As General Julian predicted, during the battle the Canadian army captured over half of the ridge in the first day of attack. To addition with all of the training, they had underground tunnels that were going through Vimy Ridge. This was made for the Canadian troops to cross over the no man’s land. By April 12th 1917, the Canadians controlled Vimy Ridge. The Canadians had taken over 60km2 of territory, captured 54 guns, 104 trench mortars, and 124 machine guns and captured over 4000 POWs. Canada has gained the respect of many people about this battle, unfortunately they lost 3500 men. Due to the success of Vimy, Arthur Currie became the first Canadian born