#3rd howitzer platoon

[rhk111sblog]

The A-29B Super Tucano Aircraft of the Philippine Air Force (PAF) seems to be operating on a Buddy System, sharing one Electro-Optical/Forward Looking Infra-Red (EO/FLIR) “Ball” for every two Aircraft while the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) used their newest Assets like the Super Tucanos, Autonomous Truck Mounted-howitzer System (ATMOS) and Hermes Drones to make a devastating strike against the New People's Army (NPA) even under the cover of Darkness

[greatworldwar2]

• Battle of Kohima

The Battle of Kohima proved the turning point of the Japanese U-Go offensive into India in 1944 during the Second World War. The battle took place in three stages from April to June 1944 around the town of Kohima.

The Japanese plan to invade India, codenamed U-Go, was originally intended as a spoiling attack against the British IV Corps at Imphal in Manipur, to disrupt the Allied offensive plans for that year. The commander of the Japanese Fifteenth Army, Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, enlarged the plan to invade India itself and perhaps even overthrow the British Raj. If the Japanese were able to gain a strong foothold in India they would demonstrate the weakness of the British Empire and provide encouragement to Indian nationalists in their decolonization efforts. Moreover, occupation of the area around Imphal would severely impact American efforts to supply Chiang Kai-shek's army in China. The objections of the staffs of various headquarters were eventually overcome, and the offensive was approved by Imperial General Headquarters on January 7th, 1944. Part of the plan involved sending the Japanese 31st Division (which was composed of the 58th, 124th and 138th Infantry Regiments and the 31st Mountain Artillery Regiment) to capture Kohima and thus cut off Imphal. Mutaguchi wished to exploit the capture of Kohima by pushing the 31st Division on to Dimapur, the vital railhead and logistic base in the Brahmaputra River valley. The 31st Division's commander, Lieutenant General Kotoku Sato, was unhappy with his role. He had not been involved in the planning of the offensive, and had grave misgivings about its chances. He had already told his staff that they might all starve to death. He and Mutaguchi had also been on opposite sides during the split between the Toseiha and Kodoha factions within the Japanese Army during the early 1930s, and Sato believed he had reason to distrust Mutaguchi's motives.

Starting on March 15th, 1944, the Japanese 31st Division crossed the Chindwin River near Homalin and moved north-west along jungle trails on a front almost 60 miles (97 km) wide. Because of a shortage of transport, half the artillery regiment's mountain guns and the infantry regiments' heavy weapons were left behind. Only three week's supply of food and ammunition was carried. Although the march was arduous, good progress was made. The Indian troops were the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade under Brigadier Maxwell Hope-Thompson, at Sangshak. Although they were not Miyazaki's objective, he decided to clear them from his line of advance. The Battle of Sangshak continued for six days. The parachute brigade's troops were desperately short of drinking water, but Miyazaki was handicapped by lack of artillery until near the end of the battle. Eventually, as some of the Japanese 15th Division's troops joined the battle, Hope-Thompson withdrew. The 50th Parachute Brigade lost 600 men, while the Japanese had suffered over 400 casualties. Meanwhile, the commander of the British Fourteenth Army, Lieutenant General William Slim, belatedly realised (partly from Japanese documents that had been captured at Sangshak) that a whole Japanese division was moving towards Kohima. He and his staff had originally believed that, because of the forbidding terrain in the area, the Japanese would only be able to send a regiment to take Kohima.

Kohima's strategic importance in the wider 1944 Japanese Chindwin offensive lay in that it was the summit of a pass that offered the Japanese the best route from Burma into India. Through it ran the road which was the main supply route between the base at Dimapur in the Brahmaputra River valley and Imphal, where the British and Indian troops of IV Corps (consisting of the 17th, 20th and 23rd Indian Infantry Divisions) faced the main Japanese offensive. Kohima Ridge itself runs roughly north and south. The road from Dimapur to Imphal climbs to its northern end and runs along its eastern face. In 1944, Kohima was the administrative centre of Nagaland. North of the ridge lay the densely inhabited area of Naga Village, crowned by Treasury Hill, and Church Knoll. South and west of Kohima Ridge were GPT Ridge and the jungle-covered Aradura Spur. The various British and Indian service troop encampments in the area gave their names to the features which were to be important in the battle e.g. "Field Supply Depot" became FSD Hill or merely FSD.

Before the 161st Indian Brigade arrived, the only fighting troops in the Kohima area were the newly raised 1st Battalion, the Assam Regiment and a few platoons from the 3rd (Naga Hills) Battalion of the paramilitary Assam Rifles. Late in March 161st Brigade deployed in Kohima, but Major-General Ranking ordered them back to Dimapur, as it was felt initially that Dimapur had more strategic importance. Kohima was regarded as a roadblock, while Dimapur was the railhead where the majority of Allied supplies were stored. As the right wing and centre of the Japanese 31st Division approached Jessami, 30 miles (48 km) to the east of Kohima, elements of the Assam Regiment fought delaying actions against them commencing on April 1st. Nevertheless, the men in the forward positions were soon overrun and the Assam regiment was ordered to withdraw. By the night of April 3rd, Miyazaki's troops reached the outskirts of the Naga village and began probing Kohima from the south. The next day, Ranking ordered the 161st Indian Brigade to move forward to Kohima again, but only one battalion, 4th Battalion Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Laverty, and a company of the 4th Battalion, 7th Rajput Regiment arrived in Kohima before the Japanese cut the road west of the ridge. Besides these troops from 161st Brigade, the garrison consisted of a raw battalion (the Shere Regiment) from the Royal Nepalese Army, some companies from the Burma Regiment, some of the Assam Regiment which had retired to Kohima and various detachments of convalescents and line-of-communication troops. The garrison numbered about 2,500, of which about 1,000 were non-combatants.

The siege began on April 6th. The garrison was continually shelled and mortared, in many instances by Japanese using weapons and ammunition captured at Sangshak and from other depots, and was slowly driven into a small perimeter on Garrison Hill. They had artillery support from the main body of 161st Brigade, who were themselves cut off 2 miles (3.2 km) away at Jotsoma, but, as at Sangshak, they were very short of drinking water. The water supply point was on GPT Ridge, which was captured by the Japanese on the first day of the siege. Some of its defenders were unable to retreat to other positions on the ridge and instead withdrew towards Dimapur. Some of the heaviest fighting took place at the north end of Kohima Ridge, around the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow and tennis court, in what became known as the Battle of the Tennis Court. The tennis court became a no man's land, with the Japanese and the defenders of Kohima dug in on opposite sides, so close to each other that grenades were thrown between the trenches. On the night of the 17/18th of April, the Japanese finally captured the DC's bungalow area. Other Japanese captured Kuki Picquet, cutting the garrison in two. The defenders' situation was desperate, but the Japanese did not follow up by attacking Garrison Hill as by now they were exhausted by hunger and by the fighting, and when daylight broke, troops of 161st Indian Brigade arrived to relieve the garrison. The British 2nd Division, commanded by Major General John M. L. Grover, had begun to arrive at Dimapur in early April. By April 11th, the Fourteenth Army had about the same number of troops in the area as the Japanese. The British 5th Brigade of the 2nd Division broke through Japanese roadblocks to relieve 161st Brigade in Jotsoma on April 15th. After a day's heavy fighting, the leading troops of the Brigade (1st Battalion, 1st Punjab Regiment) broke through and started to relieve the Kohima garrison. By this point, Kohima resembled a battlefield from the First World War, with smashed trees, ruined buildings and the ground covered in craters.

Under cover of darkness, the wounded (numbering 300) were brought out under fire. Although contact had been established, it took a further 24 hours to fully secure the road between Jotsoma and Kohima. During April 19th and into the early hours of April 20th, the British 6th Brigade replaced the original garrison. 6th Brigade observers were taken aback by the condition of the garrison; one battle hardened officer commentated: "They looked like aged, bloodstained scarecrows, dropping with fatigue; the only clean thing about them was their weapons, and they smelt of blood, sweat and death." Miyazaki continued to try to capture Garrison Hill, and there was heavy fighting for this position for several more nights, with high casualties on both sides. The Japanese positions on Kuki Picquet were only 50 yards (46 m) from Garrison Hill, and fighting was often hand-to-hand. On the other flank of Garrison Hill, on the night of April 26th, a British attack recaptured the clubhouse above the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow, which overlooked most of the Japanese centre. The Japanese reorganised their forces for defence. Their Left Force under Miyazaki held Kohima Ridge with four battalions. The divisional HQ under Sato himself and the Centre Force under Colonel Shiraishi held Naga Village with another four battalions. To support their attack against the Japanese position, the British had amassed thirty-eight 3.7 Inch Mountain Howitzers, forty-eight 25-pounder field guns and two 5.5-inch medium guns. The Japanese could oppose them with only seventeen light mountain guns, with very little ammunition. Nevertheless, the progress of the British counter-attack was slow. Tanks could not easily be used, and the Japanese occupied bunkers which were very deeply dug in, well-concealed and mutually supporting.

While the British 6th Brigade defended Garrison Hill, the other two brigades of 2nd Division tried to outflank both ends of the Japanese position, in Naga Village to the north and on GPT Ridge to the south. The monsoon had broken by this time and the steep slopes were covered in mud, making movement and supply very difficult. In places the British 4th Brigade had to cut steps up hillsides and build handrails in order to make progress. On May 4th, the British 5th Brigade secured a foothold in the outskirts of Naga Village but was counter-attacked and driven back. On the same day, the British 4th Brigade, having made a long flank march around Mount Pulebadze to approach Kohima Ridge from the south-west, attacked GPT Ridge in driving rain and captured part of the ridge by surprise but were unable to secure the entire ridge. Both outflanking moves having failed because of the terrain and the weather, the British 2nd Division concentrated on attacking the Japanese positions along Kohima Ridge from May 4th onwards. Fire from Japanese posts on the reverse slope of GPT Ridge repeatedly caught British troops attacking Jail Hill in the flank, inflicting heavy casualties and preventing them from capturing the hill for a week. However, the various positions were slowly taken. Jail Hill, together with Kuki Picquet, FSD and DIS, was finally captured by 33rd Indian Infantry Brigade on May 11th, after a barrage of smoke shells blinded the Japanese machine-gunners and allowed the troops to secure the hill and dig in. The last Japanese positions on the ridge to be captured were the tennis court and gardens above the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow. On May 13th, after several failed attempts to outflank or storm the position, the British finally bulldozed a track to the summit above the position, up which a tank could be dragged. A Lee tank crashed down onto the tennis court and destroyed the Japanese trenches and bunkers there. The terrain had been reduced to a fly and rat-infested wilderness, with half-buried human remains everywhere. The conditions under which the Japanese troops had lived and fought have been described by several sources, as "unspeakable".

The situation worsened for the Japanese as yet more Allied reinforcements arrived. Nevertheless, when the Allies launched another attack on May 16th, the Japanese continued to defend Naga Village and Aradura Spur tenaciously. An attack on Naga Hill on the night of May 24th gained no ground. Another attack, mounted against both ends of Aradura Spur on the night of May 28th, was even more decisively repulsed. The repeated setbacks, with exhaustion and the effects of the climate began to affect the morale of the British 2nd Division especially. The decisive factor was the Japanese lack of supplies. The Japanese 31st Division had begun the operation with only three weeks' supply of food. Once these supplies were exhausted, the Japanese had to exist on meagre captured stocks and what they could forage in increasingly hostile local villages. The Japanese had mounted two resupply missions, using captured jeeps to carry supplies forward from the Chindwin to 31st Division, but they brought mainly artillery and anti-tank ammunition, rather than food. By the middle of May, Sato's troops were starving. He considered that Mutaguchi and the HQ of Japanese Fifteenth Army were taking little notice of his situation, as they had issued several confusing and contradictory orders to him during April. On 25 May, Sato notified Fifteenth Army HQ that he would withdraw on June 1st, unless his division received supplies. Finally on the 31st of May, he abandoned Naga Village and other positions north of the road, in spite of orders from Mutaguchi to hang on to his position. Miyazaki's detachment continued to fight rearguard actions and demolish bridges along the road to Imphal, but was eventually driven off the road and forced to retreat eastwards. The remainder of the Japanese division retreated painfully south but found very little to eat, as most of what few supplies had been brought forward across the Chindwin had been consumed by other Japanese units, who were as desperately hungry as Sato's men. Many of the 31st Division were too enfeebled to drag themselves further south. During the Battle of Kohima, the British and Indian forces had lost 4,064 men, dead, missing and wounded. Against this the Japanese had lost 5,764 battle casualties in the Kohima area, and many of the 31st Division subsequently died of disease or starvation, or took their own lives. After ignoring army orders for several weeks, Sato was removed from command of Japanese 31st Division early in July. The entire Japanese offensive was broken off at the same time. After Sato was removed from command, he refused an invitation to commit seppuku and demanded a court martial to clear his name and make his complaints about Fifteenth Army HQ public. At Kawabe's prompting, Sato was declared to have suffered a mental breakdown and was unfit to stand trial. The huge losses the Japanese suffered in the Battles of Imphal and Kohima (mainly through starvation and disease) crippled their defence of Burma against Allied attacks during the following year.

[raven0276]

Hollywood legend Dale Dye earned the Bronze Star for heroism in Vietnam:

Dale Dye is a veteran of the Vietnam war, accomplished actor, author, and entrepreneur, but most of the filmmaking world knows him as Hollywood’s drill sergeant.

After serving in Vietnam as an infantryman and a combat correspondent, Dye served for a number of years before he retired from the Marine Corps and moved to Los Angeles with the idea of bringing more realism to Hollywood films. Despite the door being shut in his face plenty of times, his persistence paid off when Oliver Stone took him on as a military technical advisor for “Platoon.”

That film jumpstarted Dye’s Hollywood career. But before he became the legendary technical advisor who helped shape everything from “Born on the Fourth of July” to “Saving Private Ryan,” Dye, 70, served three tours as a Marine on the ground in Vietnam; a three-time recipient of the Purple Heart and recipient of the Bronze Star (with combat “V”) award for heroism, in fact.

I tried to Google my way to how he earned the Bronze Star award with little results. As far as I know, the story is not known to the general public. So I decided to ask him in an interview at his home, north of Hollywood. This is what he told me.

“I had made it through Hue, in Tet of ’68, and I’d been hit in the hand. Just about blew my thumb off here and I got a piece of shrapnel up under my chin, and I was in the rear. And a unit that I had been traveling with — 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines — they called it rent-a-battalion because it was constantly OPCON/ADCON to various things, and they were really hot, hot grunts. I mean these were good guys. And so I heard that they were going on this operation, and I knew all the guys, you know the 3rd Platoon of Echo Co. was my home. And so, I said I well I’m going. They said ‘ah you’re not ready for field yet.’ I said ‘yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m going.’

So I packed my shit and off I went. And I joined up with Echo Co. 2/3 … and we were involved in a thing called Operation Ford and it was either March, I guess March, of ’68 and the idea was that there had been a bunch of [North Vietnamese Army] that had escaped south of Hue, or been cut off when they were trying to reinforce Hue. They had moved south of Hue along this long spit of sand — I think it was battalion-strength — and they had dug in there according to reconnaissance guys who had been in the area, and they were waiting for ships or boats to come down from North Vietnam and pick them up and evacuate them and get them out of there.

So the idea was that 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines was going to be sent in and we were going to sweep, I think north to south along the perimeter along that peninsula. And then there were guys who were gonna block in the south — another battalion, I think. And so we started walking — spread out as you usually are — and hadn’t really run into much. We were running through a few [villages] and sweeping them and taking a look, and then we started hitting boobytraps. And these were pretty bad because they were standard frag in a can — fragmentation hand grenade inside a C-ration can tied to a tree, pin-pulled, fishing line attached across the trail — you hit the fishing line, it pulls the frag out, spoon pops and the frag goes. Or we were hitting 105mm Howitzer rounds that were buried. So we got a few guys chewed up pretty bad.

And there was this one guy named Wilson who was walking maybe two or three ahead of me, and he should have known better than to go through this hedgerow. But I guess squad leaders were pushing us on or something like that, [and] Wilson went through the hedgerow and he hit a frag. Frag dropped right below his feet and blew up. So everybody was down and I could see what happened, so I ran up to see if I could help Wilson out. He had multiple frag all over him. It blew his crotch out, blew his chest out, and he had holes all over his face where the shrapnel had come up this way so I got a Corpsman up and we went to work on trying to save him. You had to play him like a flute. We tried to close his chest — and in those days we didn’t have all the medical gear, the QuikClot and all that sort of thing — we just did it with an old radio battery [and] piece of cellophane we got off it and closed his chest.

And we tried to breathe into him, but you had to play him like a piccolo, because the sinuses had shrapnel holes and you had to stick your fingers in there to make sure he didn’t leak air. Anyway, we kept him alive until they got a helicopter to come in and we got him out. He died on the way back to Danang. But they had noticed me go up and see what I could do for this guy.

So we continued to march and then we got hit really, really hard in the flank. And for some reason, I was out on the flank that got hit. And I was walking around by a machine gunner, name of Beebe, Darryl Beebe, Lance Corporal, and he had the M-60. And so they hit us really hard.

The third platoon commander, Lt. “Wild” Bill Tehan, ordered the platoon to pull back to this line of sand dunes where we had some cover from the fire. Beebe and I couldn’t get back. We were just trapped out there. And they started hitting us with grenades and 60mm mortars, and we couldn’t move. We couldn’t get back and we couldn’t go forward. And Beebe’s [assistant] gunner got killed, and he had ammo, maybe 20 meters up to the side. And I crawled over and got all his ammo and then crawled back to Beebe and started loading the gun. Off we went, and we just ripped them up. We tore into these bunkers that were taking us under fire. And Hell, I even pulled out my pistol and went to work. I mean we fired everything we had, threw every grenade we had.

We must have hurt them. I know we hurt them because I killed two or three that I saw get up and go and I shot at them and down they went. So I guess we suppressed enough fire where we could pull back and we pulled back. And at that point, I think it was mortars or 81s or the 105 battery that was supporting us, I don’t remember what. Anyway, they hit the bunker complex. And Tehan went up and he looked and we killed a bunch of them. The machine gun, the single machine gun had just killed a bunch of them. And so I guess they marked me down as number two guy, having done two good things.

And then we got hit again, I think it was the next day. We had moved on, and we got hit again, and a corpsman and a couple of other people got hit. And I went up and pulled them out of the line of fire, and treated the corpsman. It was a very embarrassing thing because the corpsman was a guy by the name of Doc Fred Geise and I knew him real well. But he’d taken one in through the chest and I saw him go down, so I dropped my pack and went running up to him and they were firing all over me and one NVA that I didn’t even see, dumped a frag that hit right behind me. And boom it went off, and the next thing I knew, I was airborne. And I could feel stuff running down my legs. And I said, ‘ah, shit, I’m hurt.’ But I didn’t feel anything in particular, just dazed, you know the bell rung. And it was my canteen. That frag had blown out the bottom of both of my canteens, so I had water all over me.

Anyway, so I got up to Fred, and he had one through and through. And so, he was working on a guy who had taken one in the upper arm, broke the bone and I fixed him up the best I could then I got to Geise but there wasn’t much I could do. I stuffed the gauze in the entry wound, and wrapped it up the best I could — I was just winging it — what I could remember from first aid.

And he carried morphine syrettes. They look like those little tubes of toothpaste you get in a travel kit. And they have a plastic — they look like a little tube of Colgate — cover on the needle. And the needle has a loop in it, so you bite or pull the plastic off and break the seal with that little loop, throw that away, then you hit them in a muscle and inject that amount of morphine. I knew that.

But there was fire coming at me. I was working literally on my belly because the crap was just cutting right through us. And rounds were hitting so close they were just blowing dirt all over us. Mud and water and all that sort of thing. But I tried to stay focused and get Doc Geise injected with morphine.

Well I pulled the plastic off the morphine syrette and I hit him three or four times in the thigh, you know trying to squeeze this morphine in. It wouldn’t go. And I couldn’t figure out — you know the poor guy’s thigh is worse than the gunshot wound — like a pin cushion. And I finally figured it out, ‘oh shit, I forgot to break the seal,’ so I break the seal and finally get morphine in him. But oh, God.

He was saying, ‘Dye, you asshole, you idiot,’ you know. And I’m just, ‘sorry, Doc.’

So anyway, we had a bad night that night because they had moved out of their fortified positions and they were trying to break through us. And we had a pretty serious fight that night.

I think that was the first and only time I burned through every round of ammunition I had and then also borrowed a bunch of ammunition. And in fact, we had a bunch of medevacs that had been taken out on amtracs, and the company gunny had kept their weapons. And so we were over there scavenging all night, getting loaded magazines. We only had the 20-round magazines at that point for the M-16, and a lot of 16s were going down. You know, they were not the best piece of gear we ever had.

So anyway, then we went on ahead and we had another three or four days with four or five sharp fights but nothing as spectacular. And we got to the rear, and I said well okay, I’ve got to go here. I’m going to go somewhere where I can go through my notebooks, and I had a little story about the corpsman, and I had a little story about this guy, and a little story about Beebe and the machine gun, and so on and I realized, a lot of that involved me, which I wasn’t real happy about, you know, mentioning my part in it. But Lt. Tehan and the company commander really decided that I had done something spectacular, or out of the ordinary, let me put it that way.

And so they got Simmons and Beebe and Lt. Tehan and three or four other guys to write a statement that said this is what Sgt. Dye did. And the next thing I knew, my captain called me in and said ‘I hope you got a clean uniform and some boots that aren’t completely white,’ and I said, ‘oh no sir, I don’t.’ He said ‘well we’re getting you some because the general is going to pin a Bronze Star on you and that’s the first thing I ever heard about it. First time I ever heard that, you know. But that’s the story.”

Here is the full citation for the award, which Dye received on Sep. 9, 1968:

For heroic achievement in connection with operations against insurgent communist (Viet Cong) forces in the Republic of Vietnam while serving as a Combat Correspondent with the Informational Services Office, First Marine Division. On 14 March 1968, during Operation Ford, Sergeant Dye was attached to Company E, Second Battalion, Third Marines when an enemy explosive device was detonated, seriously wounding a Marine. Reacting instantly, he moved forward through the hazardous area and skillfully administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the injured man. A short time later, the unit came under intense hostile fire which wounded two Marines. Disregarding his own safety, Sergeant Dye fearlessly ran across the fire-swept terrain and rendered first aid to the injured men while assisting them to covered positions. On 18 March 1968, Sergeant Dye again boldly exposed himself to intense enemy fire as he maneuvered forward to replace an assistant machine-gunner who had been wounded. Undaunted by the hostile fire impacting around him, he skillfully assisted in delivering a heavy volume of effective fire upon the enemy emplacements. Ignoring his painful injury, he steadfastly refused medical treatment, continuing to assist the machine gunner throughout the night.

His heroic and timely actions were an inspiration to all who observed him and contributed significantly to the accomplishment of his unit’s mission. Sergeant Dye’s courage, sincere concern for the welfare of his comrades and steadfast devotion to duty in the face of great personal danger were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.

Sergeant Dye is authorized to wear the Combat “V”.

For The President,

H.W. Buse, Jr.

Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps

Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific

Story by Paul Szoldra

The Giant Killer book & page honors these incredible war heroes making sure their stories of valor and sacrifice are never forgotten. The book which features the incredible life of the smallest soldier, Green Beret Captain Richard Flaherty and several of the other heroes featured on this page is available on Amazon & Walmart. God Bless our Vets!

[esprit-de-corps-magazine]

THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE: Part 1: Preparing The Attack

(Volume 24-03)

By Bob Gordon

 Prior to assaulting the ridge, the Canadian Corps had to dig tunnels, lay pipelines, and stockpile munitions. It was a Herculean effort of logistics.

 On January 19, 1917 British First Army Commander General Sir Henry Horne ordered Lieutenant-General Julian ‘Bungo’ Byng, commander of the Canadian Corps, to be prepared to attack Vimy Ridge in the spring. For the first time in the war, the Canadian Corps would fight a separate and distinct operation, with all four infantry divisions together. From right to left, in ascending numerical order, they were to attack up the southwestern slope of the ridge and occupy the summit.

The geography of northwestern France is uniformly flat and low, rising only gradually above sea level. Topographical elements that appear insignificant carry tremendous weight locally. Vimy Ridge is just such a commanding feature. Roughly seven kilometres in length, Vimy Ridge runs from northwest to southeast between Lens and Arras. Even at its highest points Hill 145 — the highest and most important feature of the Ridge and where the Vimy monument now stands — and a bulbous rise at its north end known as ‘The Pimple’ the ridge never rises more than 150 metres above sea level. Yet despite its modest dimensions, it is the highest feature for dozens of kilometres.

The German positions on the summit overlooked the Canadian trenches and many kilometres into the rear of their positions. Sergeant Walter Draycot, serving in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, learned how much the Germans could see from documents captured during a raid. After the battle he wrote home that the Germans “had nearly as accurate description of our trenches as we had; how they were held, and of what strength in men, whether they were in good condition or otherwise, what new work was going on … These facts I discovered by taking a map from a prisoner after a successful raid by our troops.”

The Germans overlooking the Canadians did so from deep and complex fortifications. A Corps appraisal estimated that the ridge was protected by 34,000 metres of fire trenches, 15,000 metres of communication trenches, and over 9,000 metres of barbed wire entanglements.

The Allied war council decided that the first step in their plan for 1917 was a Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge. After the Canadian Corps had pushed the Germans off of that vantage point, it would be possible for the British and French armies’ offensives to start. With the Canadian Corps occupying the summit of Vimy Ridge, these attacks would be free from German flanking fire. At the same time, forward artillery observers on the ridge could overlook German movement and direct fire on German installations.

The plan for the Canadian attack was simple. Burst out of the trenches, race up the slope and capture the top of the ridge. The exact same plan that had been tried time after time on the Western Front by armies wearing uniforms of every colour. The Germans had occupied the ridge in October 1914 and fought off a six-division counterattack. In the summer of 1915 the French had suffered 100,000 casualties in a second unsuccessful assault. That fall a British attack had failed despite 40,000 casualties. Altogether 300,000 men had been killed or wounded on the slopes of Vimy Ridge.

Now it was the Canadians’ turn. LGen Byng was determined to succeed. To this end, the preparation phase was meticulous, methodical, and on a scale never seen before. Brigadier Victor Odlum, commanding officer of the 11th Brigade, put it simply: “Our fights are won or lost before we go into them.” Training was undertaken in an entirely new manner and the execution of the plan was to be revolutionary.

The Canadian plan was organized to the last detail. Four objective lines had been identified for the troops. Moving progressively deeper into the German defences, they were known as the Black, Red, Blue and Brown Lines. Times for the assault troops to reach each of these lines and for the next attackers to pass through the previous wave, all coordinated with a creeping barrage rolling forward over the German positions, were precisely scheduled.

The overall artillery plan was the brainchild of Major Alan Brooke, a staff officer on loan from the Royal Artillery. Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew McNaughton, formerly an engineering professor at McGill University, was the head of the Canadian counter-battery office (CCBO) and responsible for using Canadian artillery to destroy the German artillery. His counter-battery work was remarkably effective. The Germans had assembled 212 artillery pieces to support the defence of the heights. When the Canadian troops left their trenches on Easter Monday, four out of five German guns had already been destroyed. McNaughton described the exercise as “intense neutralization.”

Moving these millions of shells to the front was only one of the many logistical challenges that had to be overcome. Small arms ammunition, mortar and Mills bombs, as well as wood, concrete and sandbags for endless trench and tunnel construction also had to be brought forward. The 100,000 troops assembled for the attack needed food and water daily as did the more than 50,000 horses with them. Feeding these needs was a huge challenge, particularly when it all had to be done under the watchful eyes of the Germans atop Vimy Ridge.

Daily consumption of 600,000 gallons of water required installation of 70 kilometres of pipeline as well as its maintenance and repair. Even fed and watered, some horses were simply worked to death. Stephen Beames of the Canadian Field Artillery later wrote: “Our wretched, emaciated, starving, shivering horses died as we were forced by swearing, raving provost marshals to flog them into starting heavy loads of shells.” The War Diary of the 1st Canadian Field Artillery Brigade took note of the casualties amongst the horses on Sunday, April 8, the day before the assault: “Many horses died during the past few days owing to so much hauling of ammunition and cutting down of hay and straw ration.” The day after the battle the 3rd Division was so short of horses that officers were ordered to turn their saddle horses over to the Divisional Pack Train to be used as beasts of burden.

The Canadian Corps had entire units devoted to building and maintaining railroads, trenches and tunnels. Foresters and a crude sawmill supplied all the lumber for these projects. Communications required that some 4,200 kilometres of telephone and telegraph wire and 40 kilometres of communication cable be laid. The two months before the battle saw furious construction work ongoing everywhere behind the Canadian front.

Bridging work was undertaken under the command of the artillery. Major Crearer, 11th Field Battery, officer commanding the road construction, handled those duties in the sector of the 1st and 3rd Canadian Field Artillery (CFA) Brigade. On April 4 the brigade’s war diary noted: “Work started on bridges under 3rd Brigade, C.F.A. control on route over trenches in the coming advance.” Two days later it stated: “A standard gauge railway has been built and is now completed up to the 2nd How. (howitzer) Battery. Bridges made and trenches filled in up to 500 Crater …”

Immediately behind the Canadian line, the ground underneath the city of Arras was honeycombed with mines and tunnels. Tunnelling companies expanded these ancient catacombs linking them together and to the Canadian lines. Eventually, the Canadians had constructed a total of 12 large subways leading to the front line. The largest, the Grange, was over two kilometres long with innumerable side passages housing offices, infirmaries, dormitories, and caverns to hold the assault troops. After a tour, Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Sharpe, CO of the 116th (Ontario County) Battalion, described the underground system as “the most wonderful tunnels and dugouts … There is room here for a small tramway and it is entirely electrically lighted.”

Preparing subways and dugouts was a piece of cake compared to the work that other tunnellers had to do. Miners were also excavating deep tunnels more than 20 metres underground beneath the German defensive system. The objective was to excavate large caverns under the German defences, fill them with explosives and detonate huge land mines in conjunction with the attack. Other blind saps stopped just short of craters in no man’s land. When the attack commenced, they were to be blown open thereby providing the assault troops with direct, protected access to no man’s land.

The infantry assault troops had weaponry only slightly advanced from the disastrous fall battles on the Somme. However, the Corps was entirely reorganized before Vimy. The platoon of approximately 30 men became the basic combat unit. It was diversified to include riflemen, rifle-grenadiers, bombers and Lewis machine-gunners who used their various weapons in combination to suppress German fire and destroy machine guns and strongpoints.

The Corps also trained in an entirely different way. The level of openness was astonishing to experienced officers. Captain Ian Sinclair of the 13th Battalion recalled: “Troops throughout the ranks knew their objectives, the objectives of the units on their flanks, and the overall goals and scheduling of the offensive. They were encouraged to learn and rewarded for it.” They studied aerial photographs and maps. They looked at Plasticine models of the Ridge.

Safely behind the lines near Servins, they walked over fields with German trenches and positions marked on them exactly where they were known to be. “We got to know every part of that front,” Private Percy Twidale, a long-serving member of the 16th (Canadian Scottish) Battalion told an interviewer decades later, “which was a great help on the day of action.” Captain Sinclair concurred, noting that “Everybody down to the lowest Private knew exactly what the plan was from beginning to end … The timetable was clear to all involved.” At the time, an unheard of 40,000 maps were prepared and distributed to every officer and NCO involved in the operation.

Abandoned were the wave tactics employed on the Somme in 1916, when poorly trained troops of Kitchener Army’s advanced in lines, like automaton, only to be cut down by German machine-gun fire. Brigadier Griesbach of the 1st Brigade issued brigade orders on March 24, 1917 specifying that, “As long as an enemy machine gun is firing, it is clear that our people cannot advance in any sort of formation, and they must instead advance in short bounds or by stealth.” Byng concurred. He ordered his officers to fight “with the discipline of a well-trained pack of hounds. You find your own holes through the hedges. I’m not going to tell you where they are. But never lose sight of your objective. Reach it in your own way.”

By Monday, April 2, the final phases of the preparations were underway. The barrage that had gone on sporadically for weeks suddenly erupted with a new level of fury. In the week before the attack 50,000 tons of high explosives fell on the German defenders. The Canadian guns fired almost continuously. On occasion literally melting their gun barrels, they fired one million shells. So many, with such devastating effect, that the Germans on the receiving end named the period Woche des Leidens (the week of suffering).

“Once again trebled is the raging hurricane of fire,” one Bavarian soldier wrote in his diary. “The thunder of the heavy guns drowns any other noise. The rumble of the unparallelled storm is deeper now than the Somme.” Another experienced German soldier noted, “My dugout is four metres under the ground, but yet is not quite safe from the British who bombard us like the very devil.” Yet another wrote: “Men are constantly being killed and wounded.”

A German general staff account of the battle quoted an unnamed soldier: “What the eye sees through the clouds of smoke is a sea of masses of earth, thrown up and clouds of smoke rolling along … spitting fuses, slow burning gas shells, exploding trench mortars …” He also identified the psychological strain it imposed: “How long did this nightmare last? The sense of time seems intensified so that every second is divided into one hundred moments of fear.”

The bombardment was fiercer, and more accurate, than any that had preceded earlier battles.

On the Canadian side of the lines reports on artillery fire recorded in war diaries were workmanlike. “Weather fair and warm. All wire suspected is engaged, some 3,800 rds. expended by our 18 Pdr. Batteries. 4.5” Hows. busy on Trench Destruction. At 8 P.M. our Heavies put up a very good trial barrage. No hostile shelling of any extent during the past week.” By Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917 all of the preparations for the attack were complete.

Next month: The attack begins. After months of planning and preparation the Canadian Corps goes over the bags on a snowy, sleety Easter Monday morning.