by Mark Zuehlke
Fifteen thousand men formed the leading companies of the twenty-one battalions that charged through gaps opened in the Canadian wire and entered a maze of water-filled craters and destroyed trenches left over from past battles. Scattered across No Man’s Land were pockets of rusting wire entanglements the men had to pick a way through. Mud sucked at their boots and, at times, they waded through mucky swamps of brown water thick as gumbo.
The German response was immediate—a heavy counter-barrage that sent shells shrieking over the heads of the Canadian Scottish but did little other damage because across the front their fire was mostly long. Well before Zwölfer-Stellung—the trench that marked 1st Division’s Black Line—the Can Scots came under fire from German machine guns hidden in a string of craters. Men started to fall, but the platoons had trained precisely for this kind of moment. While one section slipped sideways and started throwing out covering fire, the other sections charged the guns, killing the crews with bombs and bayonets. The Canadian Scottish losses were heavy, but the new platoon tactics prevented the advance from stalling despite the unrelenting fire coming at them from both their front and flanks. “It was evident that these weapons were scattered everywhere in an irregular pattern on the shell-pitted ground over which the Battalion had to go forward. Men began to drop singly, others fell in huddled groups.” The action became “a running fight, men rushing from shell-hole to shell-hole, the bodies of the fallen, indicating by their position the locations of the enemy’s guns towards which this fighting was directed.” One by one the machine-gun nests were silenced. Then, about 30 yards short of the sunken Arras-Lens road that passed within a few yards of the Zwölfer-Stellung trench, a line of German infantry opened fire from a deep ditch in front of the road. The men of Nos. 3 and 4 Companies ran straight into this devastating fire, gained the ditch, and then cleared it after a fierce mêlée of bayonet fighting. Many men were killed, their bodies left sprawled in the ditch. Among them was Major Gordon Tupper.31
Private Twidale came out of the ditch and stepped out on the road just as a shell exploded in front of him. A large piece of shell casing spun toward him, sickeningly mirroring the dream, only to strike his rifle and bend it “almost double. Instead of being cut in two, I threw the rifle down and picked up another rifle” from a fallen comrade. In that moment a piece of shrapnel pierced his leg, cutting clean to the shin-bone. Twidale hobbled forward, but the rest of No. 4 Company quickly pulled far ahead.
To the left, No. 3 Company gained Zwölfer-Stellung with little further difficulty, but No. 4 was struck by machine-gun fire coming from a gap that had developed between the two companies. Breaking quickly into platoon formation to assault the gun from three sides, the men went forward only to be thrown back. Around the gun emplacement, the bodies of those killed lay in a fan-shaped configuration. The survivors dived into the cover of shell holes. No. 4 Company was pinned down. One of the men, twenty-four-year-old William Johnstone Milne, could see the gun position clearly. Slinging a bag of Mills bombs over one shoulder, Milne crawled under fire through the mud to within throwing range and chucked several bombs into the position. Milne managed to either kill or wound the gun crew and gain control of it. His action enabled the Canadian Scottish to secure Black Line and prepare to move on Red Line as scheduled.32
Private Twidale did not join the next phase of the attack. He hobbled instead toward the rear with six German prisoners. Once they were handed into the waiting cage, Twidale carried on to the battalion dressing station. He sat down outside, but when his turn came was unable to stand. Twidale’s leg was broken, his combat experience destined to last just twenty minutes because the war would end before his injuries healed.33
Meanwhile the battle raged on. No. 4 Company again met trouble, this time as it closed on Zwischen-Stellung and was struck by fire from two entrenched machine guns. A rifle grenadier knocked one gun out, but the other was protected within a concrete bunker concealed behind a large haystack. Once again, Milne crawled to within a few yards of the position, jumped up, and threw several Mills bombs into the gun aperture. The gun crew was killed and other Germans holding the trench fled, presenting perfect targets to the Canadian Scottish, who cut many of them down with rifle and Lewis machine-gun fire. In the midst of this confusion, Milne was seen moving behind a small knoll that was suddenly struck by German artillery fire. His body was never found. On June 8, 1917, the young Scot, who had immigrated to Canada to take up farming near Moose Jaw, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.34
When they paused at Red Line the Canadian Scottish “could see that the success which had been theirs had also come to the assaulting troops everywhere in sight. On the high ground to the left, the 2nd Canadian Division men, easily distinguishable by the dark patches on the point of the shoulder, were busily digging in or moving about from place to place; similarly engaged down the slope to the right as far as … nine tall elms—the landmark which so clearly defined the junction of the Canadian Corps and the Third Army—was a long line of Highlanders and infantry wearing on the arm the bright red patches of the 1st Canadian Division. From north to south, behind the entire length of this ragged line of forward troops, advanced groups of men … all … moving at a deliberate pace, maintaining excellent intervals just as on the manoeuvre area.”
At the head of one small group approaching Red Line trench were two Canadian Scottish pipers, Pipe Major James Groat and Piper Allan McNab, both “playing lustily.” Right behind the pipers was Lt.-Col. Peck and RSM James Kay. Peck’s personal servant and Kay’s batman were a few steps back, the latter carrying a large crock of rum under each arm—a sight that elicited a hearty cheer from the ranks.35
Peck’s servant hovered close, fearful the battalion commander might collapse at any moment. As Peck looked along the trench his physical illness was matched by a sickness of the heart. He estimated that between 350 and 500 men had fallen and as many as seventeen officers had been either killed or wounded. Lt. Bevan was among the dead and Captain Scroggie had been wounded. That left only one company commander unscathed. Despite these losses, Peck judged “the whole action magnificent.” Officer casualties were later found to number twenty of the twenty-one who entered battle. This figure included Peck, ordered to hospital by the Medical Officer. Seven officers had been killed. As Major Hope came forward to assume command of the battalion, Peck started for the rear accompanied by two runners. A blinding snowstorm had descended on the battleground and Peck’s party were lost for two hours before chancing upon an entrance to Bentata Tunnel.36
In less than ninety minutes the Canadian Scottish had lost almost as many men as the October 7-9 battle in the Somme had claimed, but this time fewer other ranks had died. Of the total 321 other rank casualties 99 perished, as opposed to 131 of 331 at the Somme.37
After seizing the Red Line, the 2nd and 3rd Brigade battalions became “spectators” for the rest of the April 9 battle. At 0940 the creeping barrage had pushed beyond the Red Line and 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade passed through to carry 1st Division’s next objectives. Blue Line duly fell, as did Brown Line. The latter objective was indeed not protected by the trench that had been reported and so was taken without any resistance. From here, 1st Brigade pushed onto the crest of Vimy Ridge and captured German artillery in Farbus Wood and Station Wood. “Between two and three o’clock the same afternoon, standing on the crest of the Ridge between Farbus Wood and Station Wood looking eastward, it was possible to realize fully the meaning of the victory of the morning.”
Major Hugh Urquhart, now serving as 1st Brigade’s Brigade Major, could see the next German trench line far beyond Vimy Ridge and realized it was there for the taking. But the “prize, however, could not be grasped. The troops had reached the final objectives as outlined in operation orders; the impetus of the attack was spent: the right flank was swung back over a mile; the guns could not be moved over the shell-torn ground. For the time being it was impossible to carry out any appreciable exploitation.”38
A
t corps headquarters, Byng had realized the opportunity and appealed for cavalry to take over the advance only to be told none was available. There was little time to worry about the potential opportunity lost, for on the left flank the fighting still raged as 4th Division struggled to fight its way through to Vimy Ridge’s highest point, Hill 145, and the knoll to its left nicknamed “the Pimple.” A storm of machine-gun fire had shredded the assault battalions and then chewed up the reserve forces until only the 85th Nova Scotia Battalion, a work battalion virtually untrained for combat, remained. At 1745 hours this battalion attacked and, in an hour’s fighting on a night rendered pitch black by the blinding snowstorm, cleared the Germans off Hill 145. But the Pimple remained in German hands for three more days until 10th Infantry Brigade stormed through a heavy fall of sleet mixed with snow and cleared it on April 12 at a cost of half its men either killed or wounded.
Not until the Pimple fell was the Battle of Vimy Ridge concluded. In all, 40,000 Canadians had been directly involved in the fighting, and of these 3,598 died and 7,004 were wounded. One of the most impregnable sectors of the German front had been breached and the Canadians had taken 4,000 prisoners and overrun 54 guns, 104 trench-mortars, and 124 machine guns. Canadian Corps dug in 4,500 yards beyond its start line astride the Lens-Arras railway.39
Vimy Ridge was indisputably a great Allied victory, for it yielded the capture of more ground, prisoners, and guns than any previous British offensive. For Canada the battle was also a defining moment. For the first time all four Canadian Corps divisions had attacked as one and their determination and skill carried the day. It was Canada’s proudest moment of the war and one that came to symbolize its emergence from colony to nation.
The assault on Vimy Ridge was but a small part of a far larger offensive. To the immediate right, the British Third Army had also won considerable ground while the British Fourth and Fifth Armies had also achieved major gains to the left. Nor did the offensive end with Vimy Ridge’s capture, but the role Canadian Corps played in the later fighting was limited. On April 28, 1st Division’s 2nd Infantry Brigade struck a bulge in the German line called the Arleux Loop to support an adjoining British assault. While the British offensive collapsed, 2nd Brigade achieved “the only tangible success of the whole operation” by pinching off the loop. But the cost was nearly 1,000 casualties. Following this operation 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade teamed up with 2nd Division’s 6th Infantry Brigade in a joint drive on May 2 from Arleux to Fresnoy-en-Gohelle. Although initially successful, German counterattacks soon pushed the Canadians back to their start line.
Meanwhile, the great French offensive intended to break through the German lines into the open country behind had yielded a massacre that cost 200,000 French casualties for a gain of a few miles and about 28,000 prisoners. Gen. Nivelle was sacked and replaced by “the hero of Verdun,” Gen. Philippe Pétain. He inherited an army on the verge of open mutiny with one division refusing orders to return to the line. Some mutineers were executed, many more exiled to Devil’s Island and other French penal colonies, and the mutiny broken. But dissent and resentment lingered in the ranks. Pétain personally inspected the majority of the French units and came away convinced the poilus were determined not to surrender an inch of ground, but they would bluntly refuse more meaningless attacks. Better living conditions were also demanded and longer periods of leave. Pétain promised to do what he could for them. One thing was clear, though—the French Army was spent and it would take months to return it to being capable of offensive action.
Yet for the Allies to assume a completely defensive posture on the Western Front was anathema to generals and politicians alike. If the Germans realized how far French morale had fallen, surely they would capitalize on it with a major counterstrike. Despite public sentiment throughout the Empire that there must be “no more Battles of the Somme,” Field Marshal Douglas Haig decided the B.E.F. had no choice but to launch a new offensive to again try breaking the stalemate. He would strike near the end of July in the blood-soaked Ypres Salient.40
chapter nine
It Isn’t Worth a Drop of Blood!
- JUNE 7, 1917-AUGUST 4, 1918 -
On June 8, Canadian Corps deployed to a new front near the French coal-mining town of Lens. Just two days earlier, Arthur Currie had been knighted, promoted to lieutenant general, and succeeded Gen. Julian Byng as corps commander. Byng’s long intention to see Canadian officers at the helm of the corps was finally realized and he departed on good terms with everyone to command the Third Army. One of Currie’s first acts was to promote Brig. Archibald Cameron Macdonell to command 1st Division. “Archie” to his friends, the silver-haired, Windsor-born, fifty-three-year-old was Currie’s physical opposite, a straight-backed man who looked born to wear a general’s uniform. Macdonell had gone from being a North-West Mounted Police officer to command the Lord Strathcona’s Horse cavalry regiment in South Africa. At the head of 7th Infantry Brigade, he had been twice wounded in 1916 and was one of Currie’s closest friends. “Old Mac,” Currie called him, while the other ranks affectionately referred to Macdonell as “Batty Mac.”
Currie’s giving 1st Division to Macdonell angered Prime Minister Robert Borden, who had favoured Maj.-Gen. Garnet Hughes for the position. The son of Sam Hughes currently commanded 5th Canadian Division, was permanently consigned to home defence duties in Britain, and had been clamouring incessantly to lead a fighting division. But Currie had no use for either Garnet Hughes or his father. “I’ll get even with you before I’m finished,” Garnet Hughes shouted during a three-hour argument in London where he had demanded that Currie reverse his decision.
Sam and Garnet Hughes were soon presented with a gilded opportunity for revenge when it was discovered that, in 1914, Currie had purloined $8,300 intended for the purchase of uniforms for the Victoria 50th Gordon Highlanders to pay off business debts. Currie had nursed this guilt while the regiment’s creditors, who had provided the uniforms and gone unpaid, patiently compiled evidence that proved Currie’s duplicity. In June 1917, they submitted to the government sufficient evidence to paint the new corps commander a thief. Only the intervention of two Canadian generals—Maj.-Gen. David Watson and Brig. Victor Odlum—with a $10,883.34 loan to repay the missing funds with interest prevented his being sacked in disgrace. Scandal notwithstanding, Currie’s promotion stood and so did Macdonell’s.
Currie had spent most of June in London as these proceedings ran their course. Upon his return to corps headquarters, Currie met with the First British Army’s commander. Gen. Henry Horne told him the Canadian’s current assignment was to pin German divisions in front of its line to prevent their being sent to meet Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s July offensive. But the mission was not to be passive. Instead, Horne wanted an attack astride the Souchez River to eliminate a small salient between Avion and Lens’s western outskirts. Two previous attempts by 4th Canadian Division’s 10th Brigade to carry the salient had achieved little but had resulted in 550 casualties.
Wresting the salient from German hands, Currie decided, would cost more in casualties than was warranted. Instead he ordered a series of hit-and-run raids by 3rd and 4th Divisions that convinced the Germans to collapse the salient at the end of June and establish a more defensible line running in front of Avion. This left Lens almost encircled by the British.
On July 7, the Canadians assumed responsibility for a three-mile length of front facing Lens. Years of shelling had reduced the town to rubble “encircled by a wreath of shattered pithead installations.”
Currie climbed a hill behind the lines and spent the day examining the ground. Hill 70 stood on one side of Lens and Sallumines Hill on the other. Hill 70 was an uninspiring barren limestone dome with clusters of brick company-owned miners’ cottages scattered across its slopes. The cellars of these shelled-out ruins had been transformed into protected fighting positions linked together by a spider web of trenches and tunnels. Simple enough to take the town, he realized, but the Germans on the hi
lls would then hit the Canadians with murderous fire. There was also nowhere behind the lines to hide artillery within range of Lens. The guns would have to set up on the open plain.1
“If we are to fight,” Currie told Horne the next day, “let us fight for something worth having.” That something was Hill 70. Take it, dig in, and bleed the Germans when they counterattacked. Horne deferred the decision to Haig, who came to Canadian Corp headquarters on July 23 to hear Currie’s plan. The Canadian general had spent the intervening time well and presented a full operational plan that proposed blasting the Germans off Hill 70 with a massive artillery program—for which he would need more guns. Although Haig’s artillery chief chided that the Canadians had sufficient firepower, the field marshal curtly intervened, saying: “See that General Currie gets the extra guns he wants.”2
Sour weather forced a delay from August 4 to August 15, which suited Currie fine as it gave more time for the meticulous planning and preparations that he favoured. Although Hill 70 was the primary objective, the Canadian offensive would span two miles of front from Bois Hugo on the left to Cité Ste. Elisabeth on the right. Hill 70 lay about 750 yards south of Bois Hugo. From Hill 70’s summit to Cité Ste. Elisabeth the ground was cluttered with wrecked mine works and buildings the Germans had transformed into fighting positions. Responsibility for taking Hill 70 went to 1st Division with 2nd Division given the job of clearing the ground south of it. In 1st Division’s sector, 3rd Brigade would be on the left and 2nd Brigade the right. Three 3rd Brigade battalions would advance on narrow lines to clear the area north of Hill 70 with 16th Battalion brushing past the flank of its northern slope, while the 13th Battalion advanced to its left with 15th Battalion directed against Bois Hugo. The 10th Battalion from 2nd Brigade with 7th Battalion in trail would seize Hill 70 itself, and the 5th Battalion followed by 8th Battalion would clear the southern slope. In all, the two divisions would deploy ten battalions. The attack closely mirrored that on Vimy Ridge with an advance divided into three stages of which the German front line would be the destination for the first bound. Thereafter the German second position running across Hill 70’s crest, designated Blue Line, would be the next objective. The final stage would end at Green Line, a section of frontage running behind the eastern or backslope of Hill 70 that lay 1,500 yards from the start point. Zero Hour was set for 0425 hours.3