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Chapter Six
Journey to Vimy: Canada's Soldiers Come of Age
Passengers are quietly chatting and sipping coffee aboard our high-speed train as it slices through the French countryside. Fields are a green blur, cattle stand like statues and traffic on the A1 Autoroute appears to be crawling as our TGV train sneaks up behind vehicles, leaving them behind. As the Forsythes hurtle northward from Paris to Arras, a small city in the Pas-de-Calais region, time seems to slow, then shift into reverse. We are approaching the Western Front.
I try to imagine the reality of this bucolic place almost a hundred years ago during the Battle of Arras. Troops from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland had dug in for the spring offensive with the goal of punching through German lines. Armies were locked in a terrible stalemate, facing constant shellfire, snipers, relentless mud and a fear that surely gnawed at each man on both sides of the conflict. The Canadians were focused on Vimy Ridge, and among the soldiers amassed was my great-uncle Albert Ernest Rennie, a farm labourer from Ontario. He would survive the Vimy assault, serving with the 18th Battalion, but he was killed just four months later during preparations for the Hill 70 assault.
Our train pulls into Arras at midday. A war memorial dominates a plaza across from the train station. The city was only three kilometres from the front lines and heavily bombarded during the war; the names of civilians and enlisted men killed are etched into cold, grey stone. This journey to Vimy Ridge begins with a slight detour to my great-uncle’s grave. My wife and I rent a car and drive just beyond Vimy to Lens, then weave westward to the small mining village of Sains-en-Gohelle. Archives available on the internet have helped pinpoint my great-uncle’s grave: Row D. Grave 17. Plot 2. Technology has also allowed me to gaze down via satellite images to this very row of headstones.
The cemetery sprawls behind a red brick wall in the centre of the village. French tricolours shift in the breeze. Hundreds of Canadian, British and Chinese Labour Corps workers are buried here in precise rows, grass neatly clipped to the edge of the headstones. To my knowledge I’m the first from my family to stand at Albert’s grave. It is difficult to articulate the hollow, empty sensation that creeps over me, but a man I knew very little about has become all the more real to me. We locate a flower shop, purchase one red and one white blossom, then stab them into the soil in front of Albert’s marker. I write a message in a registry tucked behind a small brass door, a small gesture to honour Albert Ernest Rennie’s sacrifice, and a life cut so very short at age twenty-one.
We are back on the road, winding southward now toward the Vimy Monument. Turning a corner in the village of Givenchy-de-Gohelle we see the monument perched on the ridge above us. This was a prime strategic location that the Germans had seized just three months into the war. From here they could see everything moving on the Artois and Douai Plains, and spent the next two years building forts, tunnels and machine-gun bunkers and stringing miles of barbed wire. It was truly a fortress. British and French troops tried to dislodge them in 1915 and 1916 at a horrific cost of 190,000 lives. Numbers beyond our ken.
Now it was the colonials’ turn and for the first time all of the corps fighting together. Four Canadian divisions, some hundred thousand men—with help from the British 5th Division—began arriving in the fall of 1916 to begin preparations under Commander Julian Byng, who had tasked General Arthur Currie (at the time the 1st Division Commander) to analyze what had gone wrong during battles at the Somme and Verdun. One thing was certain: the Canadians were highly innovative, rehearsing their attacks so that each soldier knew his part in the battle. Individual soldiers were also issued maps, not just the officers and NCOs. They practised on large-scale replicas of German defences, pursued trench raids to capture prisoners and gather intelligence information, and used aerial photos to learn more about the enemy’s intricate trench systems. Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew MacNaughton drew on new optical and acoustical sciences to pinpoint German field guns to be destroyed in order to help clear the way for the infantry.
Almost six miles of new tunnels were built; “saps” or dead-end subways were also extended beneath German positions to eavesdrop and to plant explosives. The skills of Canada’s loggers, miners and railway builders were of critical importance to help build the infrastructure necessary to bring in men, supplies and munitions for the elaborate and highly detailed attack. A week before the main event, the largest artillery barrage ever unleashed began to soften defences. A million shells were fired, a hellish noise heard clear across the English Channel in London. The Germans later described this as the “Week of Suffering.”
Cold rain mixed with a slushy blizzard ushered in Easter Monday, April 9, 1917. When “Zero Hour” arrived at 5:30 a.m., Canadians began storming the ridge, aided by a creeping artillery barrage that advanced a hundred yards every three minutes. Timing was critical. By that afternoon the Canadians had seized three of the four main objectives. Hill 145, the highest point on the ridge, offered the most resistance and was taken three days later. The Canadians defied the naysayers and delivered the first significant breakthrough of the war. The French press called it “Canada’s Easter Gift to France.”
Standing at the base of the Vimy Monument, I turn my back to April winds ripping across the Douai Plain. I search countless rows of soldiers’ names etched into the base of the monument, looking for my friend Bill Ferrer’s great-uncle. He was among 11,168 Canadians reported missing in action in France whose remains were never found; their names memorialized in these marble slabs that cleave the sky. One of the young Canadian interpreters says the remains of soldiers still emerge from nearby farmers’ fields. The earth gives them back up to the living, and in some cases remains have been identified through DNA testing and these soldiers receive military burials with full honours. I eventually locate Bill’s great-uncle, run my hand across the letters, Frank Ferrer.
Canada’s victory at Vimy came at a horrific cost: 3,598 killed and 7,004 wounded. Today that would be like eliminating the entire population of Port Hardy, BC, and maiming everyone living in Sechelt, BC. Vimy was the first significant British victory in thirty-two months, regarded by many Canadians as a watershed moment in the country’s development. No longer was Canada a mere colony or dominion of Britain; its citizens stepped forward and exceeded expectations, setting the stage for further military achievements. Hill 70, Passchendaele and the Hundred Days Campaign followed; British Prime Minister David Lloyd George called Canadians the “Shock Troops of the Empire.” This contribution warranted Canada a separate signature at the Treaty of Versailles at war’s end.
Contents
The Vimy Myth
Keeping Vimy Alive
Article: Lessons of Vimy
Lieutenant Adair Carss, 102nd Battalion, CEF (1891–1916)
Captain Donald Mackenzie Moore, 16th Battalion, CEF (1877–1915)
Private Frederick Farran Bradshaw Darley, PPCLI (1891–1916)
Article: Victor Gordon Tupper, MC: His Biography and Letters
The Vimy Foundation
Sidebar: From Our Listeners
The Vimy Myth
The late historian and author Pierre Berton traced the Vimy battle in his highly popular book, Vimy, which was told through the voices of the men who experienced it. During one of Berton’s visits to Vancouver, Greg Dickson spoke with him about why Vimy took on mythic status with many Canadians:
Vimy was a myth because, first of all, we won. Dieppe is also a myth because we lost. But it’s better to have won than to have lost. But it was really the only time that the Canadian Corps was together, advancing in line up that precipitous hill. From the point of view of the war, it didn’t really mean a hell of a lot. It gets about one line in most of the histories, but for Canada it was everything. First we had done something that nobody else thought we could do. The Germans didn’t think so; they said there would be enough left to go home in a boat. And the French didn’t think so; they tried. And the English didn’t think so; they tried and failed. It was a combination of good generalship, tough soldiers, but above all very careful preparation. We had something nobody else had...it’s why we lorded over the Americans. Don’t forget, it was the first Allied victory of the war, and this is 1917 and the war started in 1914. So people are hungry, especially in this country, hungry for a victory. It brought people together. It gave us a myth and legend, and that’s why we celebrate it still. That’s why schools and streets are named Vimy. The word is part of the Canadian lexicon.
Keeping Vimy Alive
By Cameron Cathcart
Cameron Cathcart is a former broadcaster and television producer with a career spanning forty years, including thirty years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. As chair of the Vancouver Remembrance Day Committee since 2003, he leads a team that organizes and conducts the annual November 11 ceremony at Victory Square. A keen amateur historian, he initiated in 2010 the annual Vimy Day Commemoration at Victory Square, developing the “Generation to Generation” ceremony at the Vancouver Cauldron a year later. In 2012 he set in motion the formation of the all-cadet Vancouver Flag Party.
In 2009 he was awarded the prestigious Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation for his outstanding service in promoting awareness of veterans’ issues in Canada. In 2013 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his “dedicated service to his peers, the community and to Canada.”
We asked him about his own journey to the Vimy Monument and about the meaning of this battle in our history.
Vimy. It is an iconic name and place that resonates deeply with Canadians today. Has done among the older generation for much longer. My personal awareness of Vimy was not fully realized until recently.
World War I was unknown to me as a child, perhaps because none of my family was involved. Whereas World War II left an imprint because my parents occasionally hosted young men from Commonwealth countries training to be pilots and my father was always listening to the radio for news from the front.
As I got older my interest in military history focused on the Second War, which seemed more relevant to me. I was appalled by the senseless causes, questionable leadership, miserable trench warfare and tragic loss of life that was the legacy of the First War. It solved nothing and led to the next war.
I now have a better understanding of Canada’s decision a hundred years ago to be involved in the First War, the terrible price of lives lost, and how by our actions we emerged at the end with greater political independence. To widen my interest I decided to take a first-hand look and joined a tour of First War battlefields in the fall of 1981.
From the highway in the broad valley below, Vimy appeared impressive yet lonely. I could see the ridge rise steeply eastward and tried to visualize the relentless artillery barrage before thousands of troops found their footing and charged up the ridge, many to their deaths and, for most, victory.
Driving into the vast Vimy battlefield park deeded by France to Canada as a “free gift in perpetuity,” I was primed on the carefully rehearsed preparations for the great battle, but those details were quickly put aside as the Vimy Monument, magnificent with its twin pillars reaching skyward, came into view.
The road leading to it cuts through a cratered battlefield. Sheep were scattered among the pines, planted in the 1920s, grazing to keep the grass neatly trimmed and preventing humans from injury or death if they ignore posted warnings of unexploded bombs and shells.
Farther along, preserved trenches laced a field with sand-bagged walls, duckboards and machine-gun firing points so that visitors could “feel” the experience of trench warfare. I lingered for some time trying to confront the terror of war without success.
Extensive tunnelling took place before the Battle of Vimy Ridge, used by Canadian troops as they prepared to attack enemy defences above. Remnants of these, dug into ancient chalk beds, have been reopened. As I moved along the tunnels dozens of names of soldiers and regimental badges were carved into the walls, as if frozen in time, the authors long dead.
Approaching the monument itself I felt a mix of excitement and emotion. It is a stunning commemoration of one of the most hard-fought battles of the First War, which Canadian historians call a “turning point in our history.”
The monument has no fewer than nineteen statues, carved individually or in clusters. The iconic pillars stand as sentinels but equally compelling to me was Canada Bereft gazing down the slope of Hill 145 where the Canadian infantry charged up the ridge through bitter rain and sleet early on April 9, 1917.
Before the Battle of Vimy Ridge a soldier named William Grey wrote home. A poignant line from his letter reads: “If you get word I’m missing just make up your mind that I’m gone, as usually one is never found.” He survived.
I’ve read that one of the ironies of the First War was that it took more than twice as long as the war itself to finish burying the dead. I faced the wall where the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers are inscribed. I began to comprehend the overwhelming numbers of those who didn’t survive, are lost forever, and who left someone to grieve at home.
It has been said the most powerful act of remembrance of Canada’s dead in the First War was the engraving of those names. I agree. The Vimy Monument does not glorify war. It is a memorial of national respect.
[Click here for Lessons of Vimy]
Dianne Rabel’s students have a deep appreciation for and understanding of what those young warriors must have experienced. The compelling profiles that follow were researched and written by the Prince Rupert students. We appreciate their contribution.
Lieutenant Adair Carss, 102nd Battalion, CEF (1891–1916)
By Devin Harris, Prince Rupert
His name: Adair Carss. Like many others he died for his country, but in his case he didn’t have to. Adair was born in Rapid City, Manitoba and grew up in Victoria, BC. When he was a young man his family moved to Prince Rupert where his father set up a law practice. Adair wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps so he studied law at UBC, with the goal of becoming his father’s partner.
Adair’s life leading up to enlistment was studded with athletic and dramatic accomplishments, glamorous parties and academic studies. He eventually achieved his goal of joining his father, Alfred, at the bar and joined Carss & Carss in Prince Rupert. Adair’s life was wonderful. He had an excellent career, working side by side with his father, attending all the upscale parties as one of Prince Rupert’s most eligible bachelors and participating in every possible athletic activity. But like thousands of others, he felt the need to serve his country. On May 5, 1916, in Victoria, at the age of twenty-five, he became a lieutenant in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
The war was already very much under way when Adair enlisted. The supply of soldiers was dwindling and by 1916 soldiers were shipped overseas quickly and spent less time than earlier men had in preparation. Because of his education and leadership ability he became an officer immediately. Appointed to the 102nd Battalion Northern British Columbians, Adair saw action within a few short months. After disembarkation in France he became an early casualty. On July 24, 1916, he was wounded but was soon cleared and able to rejoin the battlefield.
Adair met his demise on September 23, 1916, at the Battle of the Ancre Heights (Regina Trench) and his death occurred in an unusual way. Soldiers form bonds with one another; they make friendships which make their job so much harder; no one would want to see a friend die and would likely, if given the opportunity, try to save him and do anything in his power to help. But Adair did not die for a friend. He went to assist a mortally wounded German soldier. It takes great character to stay by a friend who is dying; it takes even more to stand by your enemy, to be the last reassuring voice this person hears, someone whom you may have just been trying to kill. The German soldier had a concealed grenade and hurled it at Adair when Adair went to his aid. Adair showed great bravery and compassion but was not shown the same. He died later that day of his wounds. A popular and influential citizen had passed away, and his death seemed particularly cruel and unjust.
Adair’s father, who was appointed a judge during the war years, was devastated. Alfred Adair did not last long after his son’s death. He was ill, and in hopes that expert treatment would restore him to health, he sought treatment in Rochester, New York. But it was too late and Alfred Carss died on April 14, 1919. Adair’s mother, Annie, and his younger sister were alone.
Adair Carss may not have left behind a wife and child, but he did leave behind a legacy of loyalty, success and bravery. It takes great character to leave an exciting life for one in the trenches, with torrential rain, rats, lice, danger and fear your daily companions. Adair showed great character and sadly paid the ultimate price. He is buried in Albert Communal Cemetery in northern France. Adair Carss is a name that should always be remembered. Rest in peace.
Captain Donald Mackenzie Moore, 16th Battalion, CEF (1877–1915)
By Kenny Ree-Hembling, Prince Rupert
Donald Mackenzie Moore was born in 1877 in Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick. His religion was Wesleyan. Moore stood at five feet ten inches and he had grey eyes. He had a brother named C. Archie Moore and his mother’s name was Ann Rogers Moore.
Near the turn of the century Donald Moore moved to the West Coast as did his cousin, Cyrus Peck. Cyrus was six years older and Donald’s best friend. The men settled into life on the north coast and fully participated in the business and social activities of the new city of Prince Rupert. On Moore’s attestation paper he called himself a cannery man living in Prince Rupert, BC; however, this tells only a small part of the story. Cyrus Peck and Donald Moore were partners in business and had holdings in newspapers, insurance, sawmills, canneries and so forth. They were incorporated as Peck, Moore & Co. Together they built the Cassiar Cannery and Donald oversaw the operations. The Prince Rupert Directory of 1910 lists Donald as president of Georgetown Sawmills. Donald and Cyrus were two very busy entrepreneurs, well respected and a vital part of life in this city when the Great War broke out.
In addition to pursuing all of these business interests, Donald Moore was active in the community. He was a member of the prestigious Prince Rupert Club, whose members included the most influential and powerful people in the city.
Like his cousin, Donald was active in the local militia, the 68th Regiment Earl Grey’s Own Rifles. This experience, his age, his leadership ability and his standing in the community meant he was obvious officer material. Following the declaration of war, he and Cyrus wasted no time in going south to enlist. On November 6, 1914, he boarded SS Prince George en route to Victoria. Donald enlisted on November 9, 1914, at the age of thirty-seven. He was assigned to the 30th Battalion initially, a nominal role. Later both he and Cyrus were transferred to the 16th Battalion, the famous Canadian Scottish, as officers.
Donald Mackenzie Moore was not in the war for very long. He was reported wounded and missing in the Battle of Festubert on May 24, 1915. Festubert was a bloodbath, and at least three more men from Prince Rupert died in a stretch of five days during the ten-day battle. The bodies of three of those four men were never found. One was Lionel Crippen of the 7th Battalion, well known for his salted herring business at Dodge Cove and for his employment as city clerk in Prince Rupert. The other two were Private Harold Christie Medcalf, a farmer, also with the 16th Battalion, and Sergeant Colin Milburn, a clerk, with the 19th Battalion. When the battle at Festubert was over, Canadians had gained nine hundred metres of ground with a loss of 661 Canadian lives. Citizens of Prince Rupert were horrified at the deaths of so many prominent local men.
Cyrus Peck refused to believe that his cousin could have died, and he denied in the press for months that it could be so. Often families would cling to the hope that their loved one had been taken prisoner. Much later, when no evidence of a body or prisoner status had been found, Donald was presumed to have died on May 22, 1915, in battle. His name can be found on the Vimy Memorial on the north wall, section 3, as well as on the Prince Rupert cenotaph. His name was also inscribed on a brass plaque dedicated to the fallen members of the Prince Rupert Club. The present whereabouts of this plaque are unknown.
Donald Moore was paid for ninety-two days of service, earning a total of $451.10.
Like thousands of others, he answered the call to come to the aid of the motherland, and paid the ultimate price within months on the killing fields of France.
Private Frederick Farran Bradshaw Darley, PPCLI (1891–1916)
By Seamus McConville, Prince Rupert
Frederick Darley had an interesting history; while living in Prince Rupert only a short time, he became a local war hero. Darley was born in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim, Ireland, on September 13, 1891. His parents were Henry S. Darley, a captain in the Imperial Army, and Charlotte E. Darley. He studied at Mountjoy School in Dublin and at Dublin University.
Fred and several of his brothers emigrated to Canada at a time when young men were flocking to the Canadian West from the British Isles. He arrived in Halifax on April 8, 1913, and entered the service of the Canadian Bank of Commerce three days later. He was sent to Prince Rupert, a young city, incorporated only three years before.
Fred was a popular young man about town and was seen at local dances and social occasions. He stayed with the bank for about eighteen months. He joined the 68th Regiment Prince Rupert Light Infantry. But on February 9, 1915, Fred went south to Victoria to enlist with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. It appears he was in great health when he enlisted. He was six foot one, which was quite tall for the time, and declared fit for battle. Fred and five older brothers signed up, all with different Canadian battalions in six different cities.
Fred was attached to the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) as a private in February 1915 and shipped off to Europe. He was immediately put into battle in the Ypres area and soon suffered an injury. The war diaries state that the brigade was under constant heavy shelling from German artillery and lost a few men to that. A day before his injury, a lieutenant and captain were wounded in the Polygon Wood, which is where the PPCLI was holding the trench. The next day, an unceremonious entry in the war diary of April 26 reads, “Still hold same trenches (Casualties 9 men wounded).” Fred Darley was one of those injured. He was hit in the head by shrapnel and rendered unconscious for close to four days. As it turns out, this battle was the infamous Second Battle of Ypres, where German forces, against the Geneva Convention, attacked the Canadian positions with chlorine gas. This battle ended with two thousand Canadian soldiers dead and countless others injured. The head injury was tragic because at this time Canadian soldiers fought without helmets. According to the medical report, Fred remained semi-conscious for about five weeks. He underwent an operation in Boulogne, France, for one of the fractures in his skull. The doctors also reported “a piece of brain about the size of a small orange was fungating”—in other words, the portion of brain protruding from the skull was necrotizing: the tissue was dying. Th e good news was it disappeared after a few weeks. He was in the hospital in Leeds, England, for close to nine weeks, and then Northern General Hospital for three weeks. He was struck off strength from the PPCLI on May 3, 1915.
After the initial injuries he suffered, Fred recovered remarkably well. On the medical paper dated August 3, 1915, it says he was “in fair physical shape.” It did note, however, that he still suffered some of the effects of the injury, such as when bending down his blood throbbed in his head, and he had a loss of hearing in his left ear and some memory problems, such as becoming confused when two people talked at the same time. A very positive development was that he had no headaches and his memory was “fair.” He also had a few scars, such as one just above his eye where the skull was depressed, at which the medical examiner stated that the “pulsing of the brain can be seen from the depression.” There was also a smaller scar at his hairline.
On November 18, 1915, he was discharged from the army, fourteen months after he had begun his service. The Pensions and Claims Board finally approved his pension on September 29, 1916. He was to receive $384 a year. The Prince Rupert Daily News published a photograph of him in his hospital bed with the report that he was getting better and would be returning to Rupert soon. Sadly, his return to Prince Rupert never materialized because on November 22, 1916, Fred Darley died at the age of twenty-five because of complications from the injuries he suffered at Ypres. He is buried at Hanwell Cemetery in the United Kingdom, and his sacrifice, along with that of many others from Prince Rupert, is commemorated on the Prince Rupert Cenotaph.
Four of the brothers survived the war, but three weeks after Fred’s injury, his brother Cecil was killed in action at Festubert. This Irish-Canadian family paid a cruel price.
[Click here for Victor Gordon Tupper, MC: His Biography and Letters]
The Vimy Foundation
The Vimy site will be enhanced by a permanent visitor centre, expected to be built by April 2017. The Vimy Foundation is raising donations to add to the Governmentof Canada’s five-million-dollar contribution. For further information, visit vimyfoundation.ca.
From Our Listeners
Private Buddy McKie of No. 3 Company: Slightly built, Buddy found himself in command of a platoon of rough and ready loggers and miners, as the 102nd was described in their regimental history as “The biggest, heaviest Battalion in the Empire.” [Read more]
Lieutenant Jack Hudgins: He was at Vimy, where his brother still lies in the mud somewhere, and was in the midst of about eight other major battles. It must have destroyed him as he rose from a ploughboy to a lieutenant in a few years, but when I knew him he just let life happen.[Read more]
Joseph Buchan, Vimy Trench Survivor: As child I was a little afraid of him and Granny often entertained us in a separate room. I knew he had been wounded. His wrist was scarred and wouldn’t bend. [Read more]
Gordon Robertson Writes Home: Canadians were regarded as a force to be reckoned with by their enemies after the military success at Vimy. Joan MacKay tells us her father Gordon Stuart Struan Robertson wrote about a rising optimism just two days after the Vimy Ridge victory: [Read more]
Graffiti in the Tunnels: A few years ago, a television documentary, Vimy Underground, was produced, which tells the story of these caves and of some of the men who carved graffiti in the trenches. [Read more]
James Lennox Dugan, Missing in Action: Three people from two sides of my family all served together in the same battalion before the links of the family were forged. James Lennox Dugan is my maternal great-uncle and was an enlisted man. [Read more]
Remembering George James Waters: I had felt many times that it was more than good fortune that was guiding me in my journey to know my grandfather. I almost felt his hand upon my shoulder many times on this journey. [Read more]
Postcard from the Front: After searching for a number of years for information on my great-uncle Hugh McDonald’s World War I service history, I was finally rewarded when I discovered his regimental number and an old postcard he sent home as they were preparing for the battle to take Vimy Ridge. [Read more]
A Canadian Pilgrimage: Half a million people pay homage at the Vimy Monument each year. As Wendy Kerry can attest, experiencing the National Historic Site can have the power to change lives. [Read more]