The Allies wished to clear the Germans from the mining district of Northern France of which Lens is the chief town. But their way was barred by the enemy who held Vimy Ridge. In 1915, the French tried to capture this ridge and fought for it with desperate bravery; but they were not able to drive out the enemy from his strong position. In the spring of 1917, the British took up the task; and it was the Canadians who were the chief means of completing it.

Very careful preparation was made before the fighting began. The British staff officers got some plasticine and made a careful model of the ridge and the places round about it. This model was made to scale, chiefly from the observations of the airmen. It showed the trenches, roads, tracks, railways, and streams, as well as all the ups and downs of the country.

Staff officers and those who were to lead in the attack on Vimy Ridge spent many hours in studying this model. Such careful plans were made for the attack that when the fighting did take place the losses on the British side were light, sad as they were. After the ridge had been won, the model was compared with the ground, and was found to be wonderfully correct.

Vimy Ridge itself was a piece of ground about 600 feet above sea level at its highest point. The Germans had turned it into a kind of fortress of very great strength. The western face of the ridge formed a more or less gentle slope, while the eastern side was steeper. Away to the east stretched a wide plain like a prairie; and it was in order to command this plain with artillery that the British wished to take the ridge.

They knew well enough how heavy was the task before them. The Germans had not held the position for more than two years without making the best of it as a means of checking their foes. The slopes were cut up by lines of trenches, one behind the other. The face of the hill had been tunnelled deeply; and in these tunnels were large numbers of German soldiers who had made themselves quite at home in their burrows. They had very comfortable quarters in Vimy Ridge, and thought they were going to stay there for a long time. All over the slope guns of various kinds were placed ready to fire upon an attacking party.

It seemed madness to send any attacking party against such a fortress. But the British commanders knew their work and they knew their men. They had a large store of munitions which had been collected for a long time; and they had numbers of the newest and heaviest guns placed in position for playing upon the western face of the ridge.

Besides they had ready a strong force of some of the best British troops, men who had seen long service and who had learnt many lessons in the art of war. Among these were some of the brave Canadians who were to have the post of danger for that great day.

The attack was made in the early hours of Easter Monday. For some time before the word was given to attack, the big guns had kept up a terrible fire upon the slopes of the ridge. The noise of the bombardment was deafening and was quite sufficient to make the enemy crouching in their trenches and tunnels quake with fear—as indeed many of them did.

Speaking of this terrible gunfire, a German prisoner afterwards said, “You English have never been through such a bombardment. You don’t know what it means. We do. You’d have to give in yourselves.” This fire had been kept up by the British guns for no less than a fortnight. Then the British leaders thought the time had come for the bayonet attack.

At half-past five on Easter Monday morning the word was given and the Canadians went at once “over the top.” It was a wet morning, and it was not long before they looked like scarecrows in a prairie cornfield; but they swung on laughing and cheering and joking. The rain was on their backs which was to their advantage. “Our first stretch,” said one of them afterwards, “was about 600 yards of fairly level ground of what we call ‘No Man’s Land.’ Next we came upon a maze of trenches in which we found nothing but dead men and smashed guns.

“Our first objective lay far behind these trenches, and we reached there within an hour, climbing all the way up a gentle slope. On our left front stood a village, with a haystack standing in a field to the south of it. That haystack was known to be a strongly prepared machine-gun position.”

The speaker was wounded not long afterwards and was carried off to the dressing station and thence to London. He did not see the rest of the fighting of that day. But he heard with pride how his comrades had cleared the fortress of Vimy Ridge of its German defenders; how they had pushed on in the face of machine-gun and rifle fire and had done stern work with the bayonet; and how they had finished their work completely before night came on.

The last point of the ridge to be captured was known as Hill 145. Here the Germans had a very strong machine-gun position, but after stern fighting they were at last cleared out, and the Canadians went on to finish their task. They swept over the top of the ridge and down the steep eastern slope, clearing away the last parties of the enemy and taking many prisoners.

The fighting at Vimy was afterwards said to be “the most successful single day’s work in all the operations on the Western Front since the beginning of the war.” It was successful for three reasons. First, because the artillery prepared so well for the attack; second, because the officers had learnt their lesson from that useful little plasticine model; and third, because the Canadians were among the bravest of the brave.