Битва за Вими-Ридж: Канадский прорыв в Первой мировой войне

World War I battle (April 1917)

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was part of the Battle of Arras, in the Pas de Calais department of France, during the First World War. The main combatants were the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in the First Army, against three divisions of the German 6th Army. The battle occurred from 9 to 12 April 1917, marking the commencement of the Battle of Arras and serving as the inaugural assault of the Nivelle Offensive. The objective was to draw German reserves away from the French forces, preparing for a crucial offensive along the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames ridge several days later. The Canadian Corps were to capture the German held high ground of Vimy Ridge, an escarpment on the northern flank of the Arras front. This would protect the First Army and the Third Army farther south from German enfilade fire. Supported by a creeping barrage, the Canadian Corps captured most of the ridge during the first day. The village of Thélus fell during the second day, as did the crest of the ridge, once the Canadian Corps overran a salient against considerable German resistance. The final objective, a fortified knoll outside the village of Givenchy en Gohelle, fell to the Canadians on 12 April. The German 6th Army then retreated to the Oppy–Méricourt line. Historians attribute the success of the Canadian Corps to technical and tactical innovation, meticulous planning, powerful artillery support and extensive training, as well as the inability of the 6th Army to properly apply the new German defensive doctrine. The battle was the first occasion when the four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force fought together and it was made a symbol of Canadian national achievement and sacrifice. A portion of the former battleground serves as a memorial park and site of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.

Vimy Ridge is an escarpment northeast of Arras on the western edge of the Douai Plain. The ridge rises gradually on its western side and drops more quickly on the eastern side. At approximately in length and culminating at an elevation of or above the Douai Plains, the ridge provides a natural unobstructed view for tens of kilometres in all directions. The ridge fell under German control in October 1914 during the Race to the Sea as the Franco British and German forces continually attempted to outflank each other through northeastern France. The French Tenth Army attempted to dislodge the Germans from the region during the Second Battle of Artois in May 1915 by attacking their positions at Vimy Ridge and Notre Dame de Lorette. The French 1st Moroccan Division managed to briefly capture the height of the ridge but was unable to hold it owing to a lack of reinforcements. The French made another attempt during the Third Battle of Artois in September 1915 but only captured the village of Souchez at the western base of the ridge. The Vimy sector calmed following the offensive with both sides taking a largely live and let live approach. The French suffered approximately 150,000 casualties in their attempts to gain control of Vimy Ridge and surrounding territory.

The French Tenth Army was relieved in February 1916 by British XVII Corps (Lieutenant General Sir Julian Byng) and transferred to join in the Battle of Verdun. The British soon discovered that German tunnelling companies had taken advantage of the relative calm on the surface to build an extensive network of tunnels and deep mines from which they would attack French positions by setting off explosive charges underneath their trenches. The Royal Engineers sent specialist tunnelling companies to the ridge to combat the German mining operations and German artillery and trench mortar fire intensified in early May 1916. On 21 May 1916, after shelling the British forward trenches and divisional artillery positions from eighty hidden batteries on the reverse slope of the ridge, the German infantry began Unternehmen Schleswig Holstein, an attack on the British lines along a front, to eject them from positions along the ridge. The Germans captured several British controlled tunnels and mine craters before halting their advance and digging in. Small counter attacks by battalions of the 140th and 141st Brigades took place on 22 May but were ineffective. The Canadian Corps relieved IV Corps along the western slopes of Vimy Ridge in October 1916.

On 28 May 1916, Byng took command of the Canadian Corps from Lieutenant General Sir Edwin Alderson. Formal discussions for a spring offensive near Arras began, following a formal conference of corps commanders held at the First Army Headquarters on 21 November 1916. In March 1917, the First Army headquarters formally presented Byng with orders giving Vimy Ridge as the Canadian Corps objective for the Arras Offensive. A formal assault plan, adopted in early March 1917, drew heavily on the briefings of staff officers sent to learn from the experiences of the French Army during the Battle of Verdun. For the first time the four Canadian divisions would fight together. The nature and size of the attack needed more resources than the Canadian Corps possessed; the British 5th Division, artillery, engineer and labour units were attached to the corps, bringing the nominal strength of the Canadian Corps to about 170,000 men, of whom 97,184 were Canadian.

In January 1917, three Canadian Corps officers accompanied other British and Dominion officers attending lectures by the French Army regarding their experiences during the Battle of Verdun. The French counter offensive devised by General Robert Nivelle had been one of a number of Allied successes of 1916. Following extensive rehearsal, eight French divisions had assaulted German positions in two waves along a front. Supported by extremely powerful artillery, the French had recovered lost ground and inflicted severe casualties on five German divisions. On their return from the lectures, the Canadian Corps staff officers produced a tactical analysis of the Verdun battles and delivered corps and divisional level lectures to promote the primacy of artillery and stress the importance of harassing fire and company and platoon flexibility. The report of 1st Canadian Division commander Arthur Currie highlighted the lessons he believed the Canadian Corps could learn from the experiences of the French. The final plan for the assault on Vimy Ridge drew on the experience and tactical analysis of the officers who attended the Verdun lectures. The First Army commander, General Henry Horne approved the plan on 5 March 1917. The plan divided the Canadian Corps advance into four coloured objective lines. The attack would be made on a front of , with its centre opposite the village of Vimy, to the east of the ridge. The first objective, the Black Line, was the German forward defensive position. The final objective of the northern flank was the Red Line, taking the highest point on the ridge, the fortified knoll known as the Pimple, la Folie Farm, the Zwischen Stellung (intermediate position) and the hamlet of Les Tilleuls. The southern two divisions were to achieve two further objectives, the Blue Line encompassing the village of Thélus and the woods outside the village of Vimy and the Brown Line, which aimed at capturing the Zwölfer Graben (Twelve Trench) and the German second position. The infantry would proceed close behind a creeping barrage by field guns, advancing in timed increments. The medium and heavy howitzers would establish a series of standing barrages further ahead of the infantry against defensive positions. The plan called for units to leapfrog over one another, as the advance progressed, to maintain momentum during the attack. The initial wave would capture and consolidate the Black Line and then push forward to the Red Line. The barrage would pause, for reserve units to move up and then move forward with the units pushing beyond the Red Line to the Blue Line. Once the corps secured the Blue Line, advancing units would once again leapfrog established ones and capture the Brown Line. Conducted properly, the plan would leave the German forces little time to exit their deep dugouts and defend their positions against the infantry. If the corps maintained its schedule, the troops would advance as much as and have the majority of the ridge under control by 1:00pm of the first day.

The experience of the Battle of the Somme led the German command to conclude that the policy of rigidly defending a trench position was no longer effective against the firepower that the Entente armies had accumulated. Ludendorff published a new defensive doctrine in December 1916, in which deeper defences were to be built, within which the garrison would have room to manoeuvre, rather than rigidly holding successive lines of trenches. Along Vimy Ridge, the German forces spent two years constructing fortifications designed for rigid defence. Little reconstruction based upon the new defence in depth doctrine had been accomplished by April 1917 because the terrain made it impractical. The topography of the Vimy battlefield made defence in depth difficult. The ridge was across at its narrowest point, with a steep drop on the eastern side, all but eliminating the possibility of counterattacks if the ridge was captured. The Germans were apprehensive about the inherent weakness of the Vimy Ridge defences. Their defensive scheme was to maintain a front line defence of sufficient strength to defend against an initial assault and move operational reserves forward, before the enemy could consolidate their gains or overrun the remaining German positions. The German defence at Vimy Ridge relied largely on machine guns, which acted as force multipliers for the defending infantry. Three divisions, comprising seven infantry regiments were responsible for the immediate defence of the ridge. The paper strength of each division was approximately 15,000 men but their actual strength was significantly lower. In 1917, a full strength German rifle company was made up of 264 men; at Vimy Ridge, each rifle company contained approximately 150 men. Each German regiment held a zone approximately wide as far back as the rear area. When the Canadian Corps attacked, each German company faced two or more battalions of approximately 1,000 men each. Reserve divisions were kept about back instead of assembling close behind the second line according to the defence in depth theory.

The eight field artillery brigades of the Canadian Corps divisional artillery and two heavy artillery groups were reinforced with British artillery units. Four heavy artillery groups, nine field artillery brigades, three divisional artillery groups and the artillery complement of the 5th Division was attached to the Canadian Corps. Ten heavy artillery groups of the flanking I and XVII Corps were assigned tasks in support of the Canadian Corps. The artillery batteries of I Corps were particularly important because they enfiladed German gun positions behind Vimy Ridge. The British provided twenty four brigade artillery groups consisting of four hundred and eighty 18 pounder field guns, one hundred thirty eight 4.5 inch howitzers, ninety six 2 inch trench mortars, twenty four 9.45 inch mortars, supported by 245 siege guns and heavy mortars. This firepower gave a density of one heavy gun for every and one field gun for every of the corps frontage, representing a considerable average increase, including three times the heavy guns, over the distribution of artillery at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. On 8 February, the First Army issued a 3,000 word artillery plan devised by Horne and his principal artillery commander, Major General H. F. Mercer. Brigadier General Edward Morrison developed and subsequently issued a 35 page multi phased fire support plan called Canadian Corps Artillery Instruction No.1 for the Capture of Vimy Ridge to support the efforts of the infantry. The Canadian Corps received three times the artillery normally assigned to a corps for regular operations. To manage the supply of the increased amount of artillery, Royal Artillery staff officer Major Alan Brooke coordinated communication and transport plans to work with the barrage plans. A 1.6million shell allotment allowed the artillery along the Canadian Corps front to maintain a high rate of fire. Improvements in the quality of the shells compared to those used earlier in the war ensured fewer duds. The introduction of the instantaneous No. 106 fuze greatly improved the effectiveness of the artillery since this fuse burst reliably with the slightest of contact, unlike older timed fuses, making it especially effective at cutting barbed wire before the advance. To maintain communications during the battle, particularly with the artillery, field units laid over of telegraph and field telephone cabling, normally at a depth of 2.13 m. The corps conducted coordinated counter battery shoots before the battle. The First Army Field Survey Company printed barrage maps for all batteries, produced artillery boards and provided counter battery support with their flash spotting groups and sound ranging sections. Using flash spotting, sound ranging and aerial reconnaissance from 16 Squadron and 1 & 2 Balloon Companies of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in the week before the battle, the counter battery artillery under command of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew McNaughton fired 125,900 shells, harassing an estimated 83 per cent of the German gun positions.

In February 1917, the British General Staff released a training pamphlet SS 143 Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action, espousing the return to the pre war emphasis on fire and movement tactics and the use of the platoon as the basic tactical unit. The pamphlet noted the importance of specialist hand grenade, rifle grenade, rifle and Lewis gun sections in suppressing enemy strong points by exploiting different types of weapons to fight forward, allowing other units to advance. Coupled with the observations and suggestions made by Currie in the report he submitted in January 1917 following the Verdun lectures, the Canadian Corps instilled the tactical change with vigour. The corps implemented the tactical doctrine for small units by assigning objectives down to the platoon level. Assaulting infantry battalions used hills behind the lines as full scale models of the battlefield. Taped lines demarcated German trench lines while officers on horseback carried flags to represent the advancing front of the artillery barrage. Recognizing that leaders were likely to be wounded or killed, soldiers learned the jobs of those beside and above them. At the First Army headquarters, a large plasticine model of the Vimy sector was constructed and used to show commissioned and senior non commissioned officers the topographical features of the battlefield and details of the German trench system. Upwards of 40,000 topographical trench maps were printed and distributed to ensure that even platoon sergeants and section commanders possessed a wider awareness of the battlefield. The new measures gave each platoon a clearer picture of how it fitted into the greater battle plan and in so doing, reduced the command problems that plagued First World War operations.

Operations along the Vimy Ridge were accompanied by extensive underground excavations. The Arras–Vimy sector was conducive to tunnelling owing to the soft, porous yet extremely stable nature of the chalk underground. Underground warfare had been conducted on the Vimy sector since 1915. Bavarian engineers had blown twenty mines in the sector by March 1915. By early 1916, German miners had gained an advantage over their French counterparts. British tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers took over progressively from the French between February and May 1916. On their arrival, the British began offensive mining against German miners, first stopping the German underground advance and then developing a defensive strategy that prevented the Germans from gaining a tactical advantage by mining. The German Historical Service estimated that the 6th Army suffered 79,418 casualties during April and May 1917, 22,792 were classified as missing. Crown Prince Rupprecht estimated 85,000 casualties for the 6th Army, with 3,404 men taken prisoner at Vimy Ridge. Losses of the 79th Reserve Division from 1 to 11 April were 3,473 and in the 1st Bavarian Reserve Division 3,133. Casualties from the bombardment amongst reinforcements and Eingreif divisions are additional. Following the defeat, the chief of the German General Staff, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, ordered Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, Supreme Army Command) to conduct a court of enquiry into the defensive collapse of the Arras sector. The court concluded that the 6th Army headquarters had disregarded reports from commanders in the front line noting a possible imminent attack and reserve units were too distant to counter attack before the Canadians could consolidate. The court concluded that 6th Army commander General Ludwig von Falkenhausen failed to apply an elastic defence according to German defensive doctrine. Instead, the defensive system comprised strong points and lines of resistance, which the Allied artillery had isolated and destroyed. Hindenburg removed Falkenhausen from his command and transferred him to Belgium, where he served the remainder of the war as governor general. The Germans did not see the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps as a loss. Contemporary German sources viewed the action, at worst, as a draw, given that no breakthrough occurred following the attack. The Germans did not attempt to recapture the ridge, even during the Spring Offensive, and it remained under British control until the end of the war. The loss of Vimy Ridge forced the Germans to reassess their defensive strategy in the area. Instead of mounting a counterattack, they pursued a scorched earth policy and retreated to the Oppy–Méricourt line. The failure of the French Nivelle Offensive in the week after the Arras Offensive placed pressure on Field Marshal Douglas Haig to keep the Germans occupied in the Arras sector to minimize French losses. The Canadian Corps participated in several of these actions including the Battle of Arleux and the Third Battle of the Scarpe in late April and early May 1917. After the end of the war, Byng was raised to the peerage as Baron Byng of Vimy, of Thorpe le Soken in the County of Essex, on 7 October 1919. The next month, he retired from the military.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge has considerable significance for Canada. Although the battle is not generally considered the greatest achievement of the Canadian Corps in strategic importance or results obtained, it was the first instance in which all four Canadian divisions, made up of troops drawn from all parts of the country, fought together. The image of national unity and achievement is what, according to one of many recent patriotic narratives, initially gave the battle importance for Canada. According to Pierce, "The historical reality of the battle has been reworked and reinterpreted in a conscious attempt to give purpose and meaning to an event that came to symbolize Canada's coming of age as a nation". That Canadian national identity and nationhood were born out of the battle is an opinion that in the late twentieth century became widely held in military and general histories of Canada. McKay and Swift contend that the theory that Vimy Ridge is a source of Canada's rise as a nation is highly contested and developed in the latter part of the twentieth century after most of those who experienced the Great War had died but in 1919 Hopkins had attributed to F. A. MacKenzie the recognition " that Dominions sharing the common burden shall share the common direction of the Empire's war policy" and related Lloyd George's commitment that the Dominions would not again be engaged in wars without consultation.

A figure standing on a flag covered stage located in front of the statue of Canada Bereft. A large crowd of thousands of people are watching.]] The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is Canada's largest overseas war memorial. Located on the highest point of the Vimy Ridge, the memorial commemorates Canadian Expeditionary Force members killed during the First World War and those killed in France during the First World War with no known grave. A section of preserved trenches and a portion of a tunnel have been made accessible to visitors. The memorial was designed by Toronto architect and sculptor Walter Seymour Allward, who described it as a "sermon against the futility of war". The memorial took eleven years and cost $1.5million ($ million in present terms) to build. The unveiling was conducted on 26 July 1936, by King Edward VIII accompanied by President Lebrun of France and a crowd of over 50,000 people, including at least 6,200 Canadian veterans and their families.|group="Note"

The Prime Minister of Canada, Mackenzie King, was absent as he had not fought in the war and was reluctant to meet veterans. Mackenzie King's harsh treatment of Byng during the 1926 King Byng Affair caused many veterans to despise him and he felt that a war veteran from the Cabinet should attend in his place.