It doesn’t seem that long ago, but 10 years have passed since my visit to Vimy Ridge for its 90th anniversary.
We learned about armies dug into trenches and battling over the same area, taking and retaking it and trying to take it again.
Vimy Ridge, in France, was a strategic hold the Germans commanded. It’s an escarpment, high ground which would protect the southern flank of the advancing Allied Army. Others had attempted to take it from the Germans since the beginning of the war, but none had succeeded.
The Canadians moved on April 9, 1917. All four divisions of the Canadian Corps – the first time this had happened in WWI – were there. They used a new tactic: the creeping barrage. Troops slowly advanced - 100 yards at a time - behind a barrage of artillery, gaining ground as the land just before them exploded. The units leapfrogged each other as they moved; men held the line as the next unit advanced to hold a new line, they continued like this behind the barrage, creeping forward.
On that first day the Canadians nearly took the entire ridge and on April 12, 1917, the Germans retreated. The campaign was quick; it was a great victory. They now had the high ground and it was one of the first times an enemy was dislodged along the Western Front from a fortified position.
We learned about all of this before we arrived and I don’t know what I really expected to see when we did; but we were warmly welcomed to the 250 acres of the former battleground where the Canadian National Vimy Memorial was erected.
The site was green, lush with grass, and trees speckled the countryside. It was eerily beautiful as the battle scars were covered by this fresh, new life; but, the scars were still evident. The land was pockmarked by the explosions – craters that had once been smoking holes – the majority of the area was roped off for unexploded munitions and to preserve the battlefield, reminding you that the beautiful, peaceful place you stood was once the site of a raging battle.
The trenches and tunnels welcomed tourists to see what it was like to stand in them, bringing a pit to their stomachs as they saw the past come to life in front of them, as the ghosts of history roamed the grounds.
As we walked, we came to an open grassy area where, at the highest point of the ridge, the memorial towers over all else. It’s quite beautiful and much thought was put into the design by Walter Seymour Allward. A 24 ft wall - an impenetrable wall of defence – is held by “The Defenders:” “Breaking of the Sword” and “Sympathy of the Canadians for the Helpless,” the former a desire for peace and the latter Canada’s ideals: helping the weak.
A cloaked woman stands in the centre on top of the front wall, head bowed, looking down at a sarcophagus: Mother Canada mourning her dead, while facing east, a new dawn, a new tomorrow.
Twin pillars rise behind her, the “Chorus” carved into them: Faith, Hope, Truth, Honour, Charity, and Knowledge. At the base of the pillars is the “Spirit of Sacrifice” – a young dying soldier gazes upward, having thrown his torch to a comrade who holds it behind him, referencing John McCrae’s famous poem, “In Flanders Fields.” On the backside of the memorial is “The Mourning Parents.”
It really is quite something to behold.
