Canadians who fought in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in France are being honored and remembered by thousands of Canadians on Sunday 9th April. One hundred years ago more than ten thousand Canadian soldiers died or were injured during the World War One battle that took place on the same ground where the Vimy Memorial is expected to host the gathering. Between the 9th and 12th April in 1917, the Canadians fought a brave fight against the heavily fortified Germans along the seven-kilometre long ridge. Over fifteen thousand soldiers took part, and the terrible toll of over three and a half thousand dead and seven thousand dead is a terrible statistic.
Canadians to honor their dead at Vimy
The gathering is expected to include about twenty-five thousand people, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Prince Charles, and French President François Hollande, The Star reported online. "There will also be performances by famous Canadians such as Paul Gross and Lorena McKennitt," they wrote.
The Canadian Prime Minister, who flew into France on Saturday will also visit the site at Juno Beach to "commemorate Canada’s contributions in World War Two." There are many dead Canadian soldiers lost in the soil of France and it is fitting and right that surviving Canadians take the time to stop and remember and grant them respect. At Sunset on Saturday, the eve of the battle that happened 100 years ago, Canadian military held a remembrance ceremony.
The Battle of Vimy Canadian corps
The Battle of Vimy Ridge formed a part of the Battle of Arras and the Canadian Corps were the main combatants. The attack that took so many Canadian lives was a diversionary battle so that the French Nivelle Offensive could go ahead. The ridge was captured on the second day and then the fight went on to the final objective which has been described as a 'fortified knoll outside the village of Givenchy-en-Gohelle.
The successful outcome of the battle was the result of a combined effort and a great deal of planning. British Royal Engineers worked on tunneling and some German positions had explosives laid underground to destroy surface fortifications before the assault. The battle was originally scheduled to happen on Easter Sunday 2017, but this was abhorrent to the many Christians in the forces at the time.
In His book "Canada at Vimy," Eberts Macintyre, the first and most comprehensive book by a Canadian veteran of the battle wrote, "It was nauseating to contemplate the horrors that the representatives of two Christian nations would inflict on each other at the time of the Easter festival each believing that he was in the right."
