Brave Battalion

by Mark Zuehlke

  Byng knew his Canadians must prove them wrong or die trying, for Vimy Ridge was considered an essential objective in the forthcoming Allied offensive. The brainchild of Gen. Robert Nivelle, general-in-chief of the French Armies of the North and North-East, the offensive entailed a combined British and French attack from the Oise River to Lens intended to pin the opposing Germans in place while a second French attack along the Aisne River between Reims and Soissons achieved a breakthrough. With three great armies consisting of twenty-seven divisions striking across a vast front, Nivelle predicted that the Germans, unable to reinforce one sector by drawing troops from another, would be unable to prevent the long-sought breakout. Once the war became one of manoeuvre, the massed Allied force would be unstoppable.16

  What made Vimy Ridge important was that its seizure would enable Canadian Corps to establish a blocking position that would secure not only the British left flank during the offensive but also that of the entire Allied forces. Because the B.E.F. would be fully engaged, Byng had been warned the Canadians must win Vimy Ridge alone.

  It was a daunting, seemingly impossible task. The only thing working in their favour, Byng knew, was time. Arriving on the front in the late fall of 1916, they had ample opportunity to prepare and gain familiarity with the ground. Half of the Canadian Corps front faced Vimy Ridge’s western slope. Because the Germans held the heights, the Allies considered their completely exposed front in the open plain indefensible. Consequently, rather than constructing an extensive trench system, the front was marked only by a line of small, isolated outposts. These were intended to serve no more than a short delaying function should the Germans ever come down from the heights to fight in the open, but there was slight possibility of this happening because no worthwhile advantage would be gained.

  When the Canadian Scottish were stationed in front of Vimy Ridge for the first time in late November, their officers had held a group discussion to ponder what the advantage of “observation possessed by the enemy, perched as he was on the Pimple, the pinnacle of the Ridge at this end of it” must look like. They noted how the ground “climbed abruptly” out of the Zouave Valley “to form the westerly slopes of the Vimy Ridge which rose to the skyline in massive shape broadside on and shut out further view to the east.” The thought of going up that western slope into the face of German fire produced a collective shudder.17

  Quickly enough, however, the Canadians all knew they would have to do precisely that because the work undertaken by their engineer and pioneering units was all focused precisely toward the ridge. Old roads running toward the front line were repaired and new ones constructed. A 20-mile-long light rail track was laid that terminated three miles back of the front in the woods of Bois de Bray. “To this spot the transport sections of the various battalions repaired on the afternoon of each day, and on to trucks previously allotted to them, loaded up the rations, ammunition and the sundry other requirements of the men in the line. When darkness fell, off went the train, pulled by the tiny engine across the devastated area,” while the trucks trundled the supplies to the front lines. This greatly reduced the normal expenditure of energy each battalion had to make carrying supplies up by mule or on the backs of men.18

  Through the fall and winter the Canadians beavered away. To prevent having their signal lines severed by German artillery, they buried, seven feet underground, a “laddered” system of 21 miles of signal cable and 66 miles of telephone wire that created a multiplicity of links that could not be knocked out by one shell or even a series of direct hits.

  Canadian Corps had 50,000 horses and inadequate water supply, so reservoirs were dug and 600,000 gallons a day was pumped to the Corps along channels running 45 miles long.

  The Canadian pièce de résistance, what the Canadian official historian later declared “one of the great engineering achievements of the war,” was created by the tunnelling companies: eleven underground galleries running almost four miles to the front lines. These electrically lit subways were 25 feet or more underground and through them ran the vital telephone cables and water mains. They also provided a protected route for moving assault troops forward and the wounded back. Huge chambers cut into the flanks of the tunnel throughways housed brigade and battalion headquarters, ammunition magazines, and medical dressing stations. By tapping into existing underground chalk-quarries, such as Zivy cave, room was created below ground to accommodate several complete battalions.19

  Such marvels of engineering did not decide a battle’s outcome. Byng and his protégé Arthur Currie believed victory would be won by the new infantry tactics being applied in combination with innovations in the use of artillery. In October 1916, a thirty-year-old McGill University engineer turned gunner had been appointed to command of Canadian Corps’s heavy artillery. Considering artillery a science, Lt.-Col. Andrew McNaughton began developing the means to eliminate the German artillery—well hidden behind Vimy Ridge—with accurate counterbattery fire. Meticulously, McNaughton and his staff carefully detected the position of individual guns by studying photographs provided by aerial observation. They then had survey and sound ranging sections deduce the precise distance and positioning of the guns. “Wireless interceptions, captured documents and the interrogation of prisoners of war made an important contribution. Information from all these sources was rapidly collated and quickly transferred to the gun positions by an elaborate communication system.”20 By the spring, eighty-three percent of all the German guns hidden behind Vimy Ridge’s eastern slope had been situated with pinpoint accuracy and assigned as a target to three batteries of heavy guns delegated to counterbattery work.

  Destroying the German artillery was but one component of the complex artillery plan McNaughton and his staff developed. Byng and Currie insisted that all the German defensive works must be destroyed by artillery fire before the infantry assault. To achieve this required a massive artillery array, and British First Army provided 245 heavy guns and howitzers. Supporting field artillery numbered 480 eighteen-pounders and one hundred and thirty-eight 4.5-inch howitzers. From I British Corps came another 132 heavies and 102 field pieces. The density of firepower allowed one heavy gun for every 20 yards of frontage and one field gun for every ten. At the Somme the proportion had been one heavy every 57 yards and one field every 20 yards.21

  The British high command predicted that a two-day bombardment would crush Vimy Ridge’s defences, but Canadian Corps insisted on two weeks with the rate of fire doubling in the last week. This bombardment would target German trenches, dugouts, concrete machine-gun nests, and other strongpoints. Every detected ammunition and other supply dump, road junction, and communication node would also be pounded. To prevent repairs, the shelling would continue round the clock. A new fuse—No. 106—designed to trigger high-explosive shells and generate a splinter effect that sheared through wire had been extensively tested and would be utilized to break the wire fronting the German trenches. On the day of the attack the field artillery’s bombardment would seamlessly transform into a rolling barrage of 100-yard lifts that would walk ahead of the artillery to the objectives. Meanwhile, the heavies, howitzers, and other field guns would subject known defensive systems to standing barrages. In all, 42,500 tons in “bulk” ammunition was added to a daily quota of 2,500 tons to enable the guns to fire whenever and at whatever rate was required.

  In the weeks before the offensive, the Royal Flying Corps set about mastering the sky over Vimy Ridge. An extended mêlée ensued that pitted 400 Allied fighters almost every day against 150 German planes. While outnumbered, the Germans had superior planes and more experienced flyers. But numbers prevailed and, as the date of the offensive neared, the German flyers seldom ventured near the ridge.

  On March 20, the artillery bombardment began, but half the available batteries stayed silent at any given time to prevent the Germans from determining the true weight of guns deployed. Then, on April 2, the intensive artillery phase opened as the heavies positioned in a great arc along a 22,000-yard fron
t spoke with full fury. Thousands of shells crashed into the enemy lines in what the Germans later called “the week of suffering.” More than a million rounds—a combined total weight of 50,000 tons—were fired by the heavy and field artillery during these days. The villages of Thélus, Givenchy, and Farbus were systematically reduced to dust to deny their buildings to the enemy, the ridge and ground before it was transformed into a “pock-marked wilderness of mud-filled craters.” Long stretches of the German trenches were obliterated and movement from the rear became laboriously time-consuming or even impossible. Many of the forward companies received no rations for two to three days, a fact that left them greatly weakened on the day of the attack .22

  It was Easter Monday—April 9, 1917—when the Canadians went over the top. Byng’s plan, presented to his divisional commanders on March 5, had seemed deceptively simple. It entailed an advance in four stages, with each piercing one layer of the German defences. Byng had marked each stage’s objective on the map with a differently coloured line. The first, Black Line, was about 750 yards from the Canadian trenches and marked the forward German defensive positions. Red Line denoted the second objective—Zwischen-Stellung—a trench that ran from Thélus past the village of Vimy, which stood in the centre of the ridge, northwestward to La Folie Farm and Hill 145. Zwischen-Stellung was the final objective for the troops advancing on the left flank. Over on the right flank the map had two more lines with the first being Blue Line. This line passed through Thélus, Hill 35, and the woods of Bois de Bonval and Count’s Wood. These woods overlooked the village of Vimy. Brown Line indicated the assault’s final intent, which was to sever the German Second defensive front. It passed through Farbus Wood, Bois de la Ville and the southern part of the Bois de Bonval.23

  In numerical order from right to left, the four Canadian divisions would advance simultaneously. Each would have two brigades forward and adhere to a strict timetable. Black Line would fall thirty-five minutes from Zero Hour of 0530. A forty-minute pause would allow the artillery to reorganize, and then twenty minutes’ marching would carry Red Line—final objective for 3rd and 4th Divisions. Over the next two-and-a-half hours the two divisions that were carrying on to the right would pass their reserve brigades through to the front and advance 1,200 yards to Blue Line. Here the troops would pause another ninety-six minutes for realignment of the artillery and then push through to Brown Line. The deepest part of the Canadian penetration would total 4,000 yards. By 1318 hours Byng intended Vimy Ridge to be taken.

  On the extreme right 1st Division would advance with its 2nd and 3rd Brigades forward. Brig. George Tuxford had elected to have three of his 3rd Brigade battalions up front. The 16th Battalion would be on the left, the 14th Battalion in the centre, and the 15th Battalion to the right. For 1st Division, Black Line coincided with a major German trench, Zwölfer-Stellung, which roughly paralleled Zwischen-Stellung at a distance of about 250 yards and lay about 700 yards from the brigade’s starting position.

  Shortly after dark on April 8, the Canadian Scottish had moved quickly and safely to their start point by way of Bentata Tunnel, one of the eleven underground galleries. By midnight the troops were in their positions, making themselves as comfortable as possible in the icy cold. Meanwhile, Lt.-Col. Cyrus Peck, Adjutant Lt. Sydney Douglas Johnston, the battalion’s artillery liaison officer, and three runners were still on the move to where the battalion commander intended to set up his Battle Headquarters. Finding Bentata Tunnel so crowded with troops the party could make little forward headway, Peck located an exit and the men started following a sunken road that led to the front. Within minutes they understood the advantage presented to the Canadians by the tunnel system as they were forced to dodge German artillery while slipping and sliding through mud. “Going forward the mud was terrible,” Peck later wrote. “In one place I had to get out of my boots, climb on the bank of the sunken road and then pull out my boots after me.” They had covered only a short distance when a shell landed in their midst. The artillery officer and two runners were killed by the explosion, which also wounded the other runner and threw Johnston into the air, leaving him badly injured. The still-conscious Johnston insisted on accompanying Peck only to collapse a few minutes later from loss of blood. Peck turned him over to stretcher-bearers and proceeded on alone.24

  With his Battle Headquarters section shredded, Peck sent word that Captain Gordon Tupper of No. 3 Company was to report to him and become the battalion second-in-command. This was insurance in case Peck became incapable of command, for during the past few days he had been increasingly weakened by an undiagnosed sickness that by the night of April 8 forced his admission in a brief diary notation that he was “very ill” with stomach cramps and occasional bouts of vomiting.25

  Tupper was ill-pleased by Peck’s summons and pleaded to remain with his company, which along with No. 4 Company was to lead the attack. The two men were locked in an intense, but polite debate, when Major John Hope solved the problem with his timely arrival. Having been wounded the previous day, Hope had been evacuated to the rear. Knowing the battalion was short officers and not wanting to miss the offensive, Hope had checked himself out of hospital and a much-relieved Peck quickly gave him the battalion’s second-in-command assignment while Tupper returned to his men.

  Tupper came from a stalwart Conservative family. His father, Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, and grandfather, Sir Charles Tupper, had both held important federal cabinet postings. Tupper’s grandfather had even served briefly as the country’s prime minister, assuming the position on May 1, 1896, only to be voted out of office in a resounding defeat ten weeks later. Major Reginald Tupper, who had been wounded during the April 22, 1915, charge on the woods, was George Tupper’s older brother. Young George had enlisted when he turned eighteen and received an officer’s commission in late 1915. Taking over No. 3 Company during the Somme fighting, he had established a reputation as a strict but fair disciplinarian. “Slim, supple, with a light moustache, carrying himself well, he looked little more than the mere lad he was; yet he had the poise and judgement of maturer years without losing the winsomeness of youth,” Captain Hugh Urquhart observed.26

  A few minutes before Zero Hour, Tupper sat in the dimly lit tunnel, jotting a note to his father:

  I am writing one of these “in case” letters for the third time, and, of course, I hope you will never have to read it. If you are reading it now you will know that your youngest son “went under” as proud as Punch on the most glorious day of his life. I am taking my company “over the top” for a mile in the biggest push that has ever been launched in the world, and I trust that it is going to be the greatest factor towards peace.

  Dad, you can’t imagine the wonderful feeling; a man thinks something like this: Well, if I am going to die, this is worth it a thousand times. I have “been over” two or three times before, but never with a company of my own. Think of it—one hundred and fifty officers and men who will follow you to hell, if need be!

  I don’t want any of you dear people to be sorry for me, although, of course, you will be in a way. You will miss me, but you will be proud of me. Mind you, I know what I am up against, and that the odds are against me, I am not going in the way I did the first time, just for sheer devilment and curiosity. I have seen this game for two years, and I still like it and feel that my place is here.… Good-bye, dear Father and Mother, and all of you. Again I say that I am proud to be where I am now.27

  Not far from Tupper, Pte. Percy Twidale of No. 4 Company anxiously remembered a dream he had one night days before he enlisted in March 1916. In his dream, Twidale had been advancing through No Man’s Land when a large chunk of shell casing slammed into his body and cut it in two at the waist. The two halves had been cast two to three feet apart and Twidale had sadly “wondered how I could get joined together again.” This attack was the battlefield christening for the twenty-four-year-old farmer from the Calgary area. Although assigned some weeks earlier to the 16th Battalion, Twidale had been imme
diately seconded to the 1st Entrenching Battalion to work on road and rail construction behind the lines. Sent to the Canadian Scottish only a few days earlier, the young soldier barely knew the men in his platoon and was a stranger to them.28

  In the early morning hours, the order came to leave the tunnel for the forward trenches. Weather was bitter—“squally showers of hail and sleet which chilled the bone; through this gloom the light of dawn was faintly struggling in.” On the right, Tupper stood with his men while Twidale shivered over on the left as part of Captain James Scroggie’s No. 4 Company. Lt. Charles Stanley Bevan’s No. 1 Company was in the secondary trench and would come up behind on the right, while No. 2 Company under Lt. Morton Joseph Mason would follow on the left.

  At 0500 hours, the great bombardment that had been raging suddenly shifted gears and the rolling barrage began with the sky to the rear flashing with flame and streaks of fire hissed overhead that threw “a weird gleam over the wet ground and the slimy sides and stagnant water of the crater depths.” Some men prayed out loud; others jostled each other good-naturedly and cracked jokes; many stared quietly ahead with unreadable faces. Weapons were checked and rechecked. Tupper and Scroggie each had a company piper at his side.29

  Seconds before the whistles blew, Twidale had a waking vision. “In front of me there was a bed with white sheets on it and my sister was kneeling by this bed with a white night dress on, praying for me.” Suddenly Twidale shed his fear. No matter what happened he was ready. Then, “somebody yelled, ‘We’re away!’ and we went over the top.” Despite the eerie realization that everything before him precisely mirrored his pre-enlistment dream, Twidale never faltered. He strode toward his fate into No Man’s Land.30