A Family of Brothers by Brent Wilson

Author:Brent Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2019-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

The Battle of Vimy Ridge

On April 9, the 26th was in 5th Brigade’s leading wave spearheading the corps-wide attack. Private Thomas MacCallum, the soldier blown into the air during the attack on Courcelette, briefly described waiting for his next battle to begin: “[F]ive minutes before the show, you wouldn’t think there was any war at all. Everything was silent. Just at the minute 20 past five o’clock am.,10 the whole earth began to rock with artillery fire.” When the barrage came down on the German front line, the battalion jumped off.

At the outset the attackers encountered awful weather and ground conditions. On the third anniversary of the battle, an unnamed officer from the 26th recalled in a newspaper interview that “it was very dark and a heavy snow storm was raging accompanied by a driving wind. The ground over which we had to advance was a sea of mud and shell holes and very heavy going.” Nevertheless, they made rapid progress through the enemy’s lines. In a letter written on May 5, 1917, to Colonel McAvity, Colonel McKenzie described how “our chaps went over as on parade. Our training was so complete over the ‘tapes’ that we knew the German trenches as well as our own. We were very fortunate indeed and we managed to keep behind the barrage and lost quite few men. . . . I do not know how we ever found the trenches first, second, third and fourth lines which was our objective as the artillery had practically obliterated them.”

Map 3: The Battle of Vimy Ridge.

Mike Bechthold

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