"I looked ahead and saw the German front line crashing into pieces;
bits of men, timbers, lumps of chalk were flying through the air, and blending with the shattering wall of fire... I guess it was the most perfect barrage of the war... Instead of a German trench there was only a wide, muddy depression, stinking of explosives."
Gus Sivertz, 3rd Canadian DivisionVimy Ridge was a key German position. In 1915, the French had suffered 150,000 casualties trying to take it. On March 20, 1917, a barrage began which would drop one million artillery shells on the German lines. On April 9, Easter Monday, at 5:30 a.m., behind a creeping barrage — a Canadian technique — the Corps went over the top into "no-man's-land." Three days later, they had taken the Ridge. NMC 111113 |