Preparation
The story of the Canadian Corps' 9–12 April assaults on Vimy Ridge is perhaps the best documented in Canadian military history. The preparations for it were masterminded by a cultured British cavalryman, Lieutenant-General Julian Byng. Taking command of the Canadian Corps just prior to the Somme, Byng and his Canadian Corps staff spent the winter of 1916–17 working feverishly to completely rework Corps tactics, training and staff procedures, organization and doctrine. Their mission was to capture what was generally considered to be the most dominant and tactically important feature on the whole of the Western Front, Vimy Ridge.
For the Germans, the Ridge was the lynchpin connecting their northern defensive line, which ran through Belgium to the sea, to the new Hindenburg system in the south. It was not only high dominating ground of tactical importance but the key to operating the Lens coalfields behind it, which were strategically important to their war effort.
Byng went to extreme lengths to train company and battalion commanders for the key roles he saw them playing in the upcoming battle. In November 1916, he instituted the one-week CO's Course, held at HQ Canadian Corps for all battalion COs and their 2 i/cs. Its aim was to lay down a standard doctrine upon which to base their training and operations, a significant deviation from the British model of maintaining the sanctity of command responsibility. Battalion COs and company commanders were invited for an additional week to Byng's HQ over the winter months where they spent their time mainly with Corps Staff on the study of tactical and administrative problems that might affect their units in the battle. Byng, himself, was often present and attempted to talk, at least once, with each officer informally in his mess.
The main keys to operational effectiveness, Byng knew, were training and discipline. He knew morale and esprit de corps were already present in the Canadians. He wanted to give them supreme confidence in their abilities. He allocated each of his four divisions three weeks to master the new tactics in early 1917. Everything possible was done to promote realism in training. Mounted officers moved forward with flags to simulate the pace and movement forward of the artillery's rolling barrage. Everyone carried exactly the loads that they would have to carry into battle. An area near the French town of Servins was taped to scale to represent the prospective battlefield, detailing every jumping off trench, enemy strongpoint and the successive lines of trenches they were to capture.
After the Somme, Lt. Gen. Byng had given Maj. Gen. Currie, GOC 1st Canadian Infantry Division (CID), the job of coordinating the lessons learned and asked him to recommend new infantry tactics, with training to be conducted prior to Vimy. On completion of a detailed report, Currie went to Verdun in January 1917 for further study of the lessons learned by the French army in that sector. On his return, Currie recommended to Byng that the policy of attacking in waves be discontinued and that the smaller, less vulnerable, platoon be established as the basic manoeuvre unit and used to spearhead attacks. He further advocated that platoons and sections be assigned easily recognizable objectives in the attack and that fire and movement drills be used to attain them.
Byng agreed, and battalions were permanently organized on the basis of four platoons per company. This freed the infantry from the bondage of linear tactics and restored fire and movement. Instead of advancing in successive linear waves towards the enemy, the infantry could now advance in a variety of formations as best suited the situation and terrain.
Byng reshaped his artillery as much as the infantry, stressing the need for close cooperation. One of the main problems at the Somme cited in all Canadian after-action reports had been the failure of the artillery to cut the wire, destroy trenches, provide counter-bombardment fire on German guns and support the consolidation phase when attackers were most vulnerable to counter-attack.
The plan
Lt. Gen. Julian Byng's plan called a frontal attack by all four divisions of the Corps in numerical order from right to left. By following the 7th CIB's experience on that Easter Monday, we can get an idea of the Corps attack as a whole. The Fighting Seventh was part of 3rd CID, facing La Folie Wood. Divisional orders were to attack on a two-brigade front. 8th CIB would be on the right and 7th CIB on the left, the latter brigade advancing in the shadow of Hill 145. Three battalions of the Fighting Seventh would take part in the assault, each advancing with two companies up and two in support, ready to pass through on the first objective line: The RCR right forward; PPCLI centre; and the 42nd Royal Highlanders from Montreal left forward. The 49th (Edmonton) Bn would provide mopping-up and carrying parties for the assault battalions.
At Vimy, each assault battalion of the Fighting Seventh would advance with two companies up, each with two platoons leading in extended order. The 42nd Bn's operations order had a special paragraph on formations to be used, for example crossing craters in files then advancing with all platoons directly behind one another, each in two extended lines, 20 paces between lines and 30 paces between platoons. Behind the lead platoons came a line of moppers-up supplied by the 49th Bn. Then came the company HQ in 'artillery formation' (spread out as a precaution against incoming fire), consisting of the OC, CSM and his signallers. The HMG detachments of the Brigade MG Coy moved independently while the Stokes Guns of the 7th CIB Trench Mortar Battery moved with the support companies, advancing 40 paces to the rear of the lead companies. All platoons in the support company moved forward in artillery formation.
On reaching the battalion intermediate objective line, the lead companies were to stop and consolidate. The two support companies would leapfrog through the lead companies and take up the advance to the next objective line. This new approach was born out of the carnage and experience of the Somme. There, the first waves of assaulting infantry had usually attempted to go to the furthest objective, and if successful, arrived without most of their leadership, ranks severely depleted by enemy fire and dog-tired from their efforts.
This new method of passing troops through one another ensured that the final objective would be held by men who were fresh and had done a minimum of fighting. Advancing by bounds, however, required a level of training and leadership superior to that possessed by the Canadian infantry at the Somme. The brigades of the Canadian Corps at Vimy had the time to achieve this degree of battlefield competence and control under General Sir Julian Byng. Leaders and men knew each other and, through briefings and rehearsals, were all clear about what they had to do.
As a whole, the attack of the Canadian Corps was to be carried out in four stages, each stage dictated by the German zones of defence. On 3rd CID's frontage, the operation would only entail participation in the first two stages: an advance at 5.30 am, scheduled to reach the first objective 35 minutes later. After a 40 minute pause to reorganize, a subsequent advance would be made at 6.45 am to a line drawn through La Folie Wood, along the reverse slope of the Ridge and bending back on the left to conform with the objectives of 4th CID. The Fighting Seventh was allocated 20 minutes for this second phase. The 1st and 2nd CIDs had objectives at a maximum distance of 4,000 yards from their jumping off positions while the 4th CID had the shortest distance of all but was faced with the prospect of seizing Hill 145, the strongest natural defensive position on the whole front.
It should be noted here that German defensive lines and tactics had changed significantly everywhere except on Vimy Ridge. After the Somme, the German army had gone to a more elastic style of defence-in-depth by zones. On 15 March 1917, three weeks prior to the battle they had withdrawn from a front of nearly 100 miles, to the new Hindenburg Line. By doing this they shortened their front line by 20 miles and freed 13 divisions to be on hand as counterattack forces for the impending British and French offensive.
At Vimy, all commanders down to brigade level would receive instructions of a kind that no other formation commander in the war had yet received. Byng laid down measures in the Corps operations order that gave his divisions and brigades authority to fight themselves forward. Interestingly parallelling the decentralised German stormtruppen tactics, which were designed to exploit weakest points and reinforce success, Byng's operational instructions gave his formation commanders the power to use their own initiative without checking back with him. His revolutionary operational paragraph reads:
In the event of any Division or Brigade being held up, the units on the flanks will on no account check their advance, but will form defensive flanks in that direction and press forward themselves so as to envelop the strong point or centre of resistance which is preventing the advance. With this object in view reserves will be pushed in behind those portions of the line that are successful rather than those that are held up.
These were prophetic words for the Fighting Seventh, for Brig. Gen. Macdonell did find his left flank vulnerable and exposed on the day of the assault, when 4th CID's units failed to keep up and take their objectives on the first day. His brigade took its objective easily but were later forced to present a strong 'defensive flank' to Hill 145.
The assault
With the opening barrages, all of the Fighting Seventh's assault battalions crossed a series of large craters to their front before seizing their first objective line. It took the 42nd on the left five minutes to 'scramble across the muddy craters as best they could, then re-form with great steadiness just as though they were rehearsing over the tapes at Bruay'. By 6.02 am they had captured their portion of the first objective, the trench lines known as BEGGAR and BLUE running mid-way across the rising Vimy plateau. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in the centre wended their way through the numerous craters of the DUFFIELD, GRANGE and PATRICIA-TIDZA group, then went quickly forward to their first objective, FAMINE trench, encountering light opposition. The Royal Canadian Regiment on the right pushed through the BIRKIN and VERNON Craters 'and captured the BLACK line at the hour named in their attacking orders'.
The Fighting Seventh now paused for 40 minutes then went forward again, fresh support companies now taking up the lead for the last stretch between the BLACK line and the final objective in La Folie Wood. 'Though the distance to be covered in this phase was less than that from the old Canadian line to the BLACK line', recorded the RCR History, 'it soon became clear that the Final Objective would not be attained with the ease that had marked the opening phase of the operation'. In La Folie Wood, a series of orchards, the RCR was roughly handled by the MGs of the 2nd Bn, 262nd German Reserve Infantry Regiment that inflicted the majority of that battalion's casualties in the operation.
In the centre, the PPCLI 'advancing at a steady walk, started off with almost a parade ground alignment', with the right forward company keeping pace with the RCR on its right, ran into fire from the edge of La Folie Wood after advancing only 75 yards and 'changed its method of progress to section rushes, one section pinning enemy fire down while the others dashed forward'. Byng's revolutionary orders were well followed. At BRITT trench, the PPCLI encountered an MG nest 'which embarrassed the advance for a few minutes' but encountered nothing as fierce as the RCR were encountering on their right.
On the Fighting Seventh's extreme left flank, the 42nd Bn surprisingly reached its final objective with little opposition or casualties by 7.30 am. The Royal Highlanders had expected a rough go since their left flank was dominated by Hill 145, the highest and most important feature of the ridge. The defences of 145 were particularly strong, ringed with well-wired trenches and a series of deep dug-outs located on its rear slopes. The 42nd got to its final objective line initially unhindered however because these German defences were being heavily shelled. Even after the Canadian artillery lifted, Hill 145's defenders were too preoccupied in bloodily repulsing the 4th CID's attempts to seize it.
When the neighbouring brigade on the left boundary, 11th CIB, went to ground short of its crucial objective, the German defenders of Hill 145 then had more time to take stock of their situation and see that they could enfilade the Fighting Seventh's position with relative ease in La Folie Wood on their left. The majority of the 42nd Bn's casualties sustained at Vimy were thus incurred by sniper, MG and observed artillery fire being brought to bear from Hill 145 as they tried to consolidate their positions on the final objective.
Two days after the capture of Hill 145, 10th CIB would successfully storm the Pimple, by which time the enemy, accepting the loss of Vimy Ridge as permanent, had pulled back two miles to their third line in the new Hindenburg system running southeast from Lens across the open plain. The battle of Vimy Ridge had been a striking success, by far the greatest Allied victory of the war up to that time, placing the four mile length of the ridge in Canadian hands.
'The great lesson to be learned from these operations,' read one divisional after-action report, 'is this: if the lessons of the war have been thoroughly mastered; if the artillery preparations and the support are good; if our intelligence is properly appreciated; there is no position that cannot be wrested from the enemy by well-disciplined, well-trained and well-led troops attacking on a sound plan.'
The Canadian Corps, led by Sir Julian Byng, had wrested from the enemy one of the most formidable defensive positions on the Western Front. The German C-in-C, Ludendorff, who celebrated his 52nd birthday on this famous 9 April confessed that he was 'deeply depressed'. The Canadians captured 4,000 prisoners, as well as 54 guns, 104 trench mortars and 124 machine guns, at a cost of 3,598 fatal casualties. Appropriately, Canada's greatest memorial to her fallen sons now stands, on soil granted in perpetuity by France to the Canadian people, on the top of Hill 145, the highest point of Vimy Ridge.
by Ian McCulloch
Further reading
Berton, Pierre, Vimy (Penguin, 1987)
Chappell, Mike, Men at Arms 164: The Canadian Army at War (Osprey Publishing, 1985)
Morton, Desmond, When Your Number's Up (Random House, 1993)
Turner, Alexander, Campaign 151: Vimy Ridge 1917 (Osprey, 2005)
Williams, Jeffery, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor-General (Toronto, 1983)