BS: Vimy Ridge 2: 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded

Subject: BS: Vimy Ridge : 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded 2
From: gnu
Date: 06 Apr 17 - 08:37 PM

Had to add the '2' as the original thread was closed. You can search the original thread.

As we edge towards the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge, I think of my Uncle Bill. I think of the horror he told me about. I think of the pride... yes, the pride, that a nation felt. Canada. And it still does. A small country in the British Commonwealth that turned the tide of the war. I think of many things. I think of the Cape Breton coal miners who dug the underground tunnels. I think of... I gotta stop because I heard stories from guys that were there and it makes me weep.

Vimy was the turning point in the war. Canucks made that happen. But Canucks then embraced something that has since been twisted into a glorification. When it is said "Lest we forget.", politicians and some others who lay wreaths say we are thanking the fallen for their sacrifice. Of course we do but that's not what 'they' want and that's not what "Lest we forget." means. "Lest we forget." means, "Let's never do this again." That is how we honour the fallen. To do less is to dishonour the fallen.

Thanks Uncle Bill. I won't forget.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge : 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded 2
From: gnu
Date: 06 Apr 17 - 08:48 PM

Highlight and search...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaywRnWrhzI

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge : 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded 2
From: gnu
Date: 06 Apr 17 - 08:51 PM

Here is one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaywRnWrhzI

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge : 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded 2
From: Teribus
Date: 07 Apr 17 - 04:39 AM

Thanks for posting that link gnu, very informative.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was not fought in isolation, it was part of the larger offensive called the Battle of Arras, pity that that wasn't mentioned, but there again that wasn't probably seen as being relevant to what the documentary was about. Up until this battle was fought the largest single territorial advance of the war in a single day had been made at the juncture of the British and French Armies on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Advances made during the Battle Arras surpassed that achievement.

Vimy involved 4 Canadian Divisions and 1 British Division ~170,000 men opposed by 3 German Divisions ~45,000 men. Throughout the documentary emphasis is placed on meticulous planning, extensive training and preparation coupled with innovative thinking, the application of new technology and the fact that lessons had been learned from previous encounters and successfully applied.

The makers of the documentary failed to mention that the bulk of the massive tunnelling effort had been completed for an offensive operation planned by Haig nine months before in the late Summer/early Autumn of 1916. Haig was overruled and instead was forced to attack on the Somme:

Underground 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.[51] 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. From spring 1916, the British had deployed five tunnelling companies along the Vimy Ridge and during the first two months of their tenure of the area, 70 mines were fired, mostly by the Germans. Between October 1915 and April 1917 an estimated 150 French, British and German charges were fired in this 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) sector of the Western Front. In May 1916, Operation Schleswig-Holstein, a German infantry attack, forced the British back 640 metres (700 yd), to stop British mining by capturing the shaft entrances. From June 1916, the Germans withdrew many miners to work in coal mines in Germany.

In the second half of 1916, the British constructed strong defensive underground positions and from August 1916, the Royal Engineers developed a mining scheme for a big infantry attack on the Vimy Ridge proposed for autumn 1916, although this was postponed.

After September 1916, when the Royal Engineers had completed their network of defensive galleries along most of the front line, offensive mining largely ceased although activities continued until 1917. The British gallery network beneath Vimy Ridge eventually grew to a length of 12 kilometres (7.5 mi).

The Canadian Corps was posted to the northern part of Vimy Ridge in October 1916 and preparations for an attack were revived in February 1917. British tunnelling companies created extensive underground networks and fortifications. Twelve subways, up to 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mi) long were excavated at a depth of 10 metres (33 ft) and used to connect reserve lines to front lines, permitting soldiers to advance to the front quickly, securely and unseen. Often incorporated into subways were light rail lines, hospitals, command posts, water reservoirs, ammunition stores, mortar and machine gun posts and communication centres.

The Germans dug a number of similar tunnels on the Vimy front, to provide covered routes to the front line and protection for headquarters, resting personnel, equipment and ammunition. The Germans also conducted counter-mining against the British tunnellers and destroyed a number of British attempts to plant mines under or near their lines.

Prior to the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the British tunnelling companies also secretly laid 13 mines under German positions to destroy surface fortifications before the assault. To protect some advancing troops from German machine-gun fire, as they crossed no man's land during the attack, eight smaller Wombat charges were laid at the end of the subways, to allow troops to move more quickly and safely enter the German trench system, by creating an elongated trench-depth crater that spanned the length of no man's land. At the same time, 19 crater groups existed along this section of the Western Front, each with several large craters. To assess the consequences of infantry having to advance across cratered ground after a mining attack, officers from the Canadian Corps visited La Boisselle and Fricourt where the mines had been blown on the First day of the Somme. Their reports and the experience of the Canadians at The Actions of St Eloi Craters in April 1916, where mines had so altered and damaged the landscape as to render occupation of the mine craters by the infantry all but impossible, led to the decision to remove offensive mining from the central sector allocated to the Canadian Corps at Vimy Ridge. Further British mines in the area were vetoed following the blowing by the Germans on 23 March 1917 of nine craters along no man's land as it was probable that the Germans were aiming to restrict an Allied attack to predictable points. The three mines already laid by 172nd Tunnelling Company were also dropped from the British plans. They were left in place after the assault and were only removed in the 1990s. Another mine, prepared by 176th Tunnelling Company against the German strongpoint known as the Pimple, was not completed in time for the attack. The gallery had been pushed silently through the clay, avoiding the sandy and chalky layers of the Vimy Ridge but by 9 April 1917 was still 21 metres (70 ft) short of its target. In the end, two mines were blown before the attack, while three mines and two Wombat charges were fired to support the attack, including those forming a northern flank.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge : 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded 2
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Apr 17 - 10:09 AM

Vimy can be called "The Battle That Defined Canada As A Nation."

World War I needn't have happened. It did, and people died. There was great courage, great cowardice, great incompetence, and it proved that we always fight the current war with the tactics of the last. World War I created World War II, which created the Indochina debacles, and Malaya, and the Congo, and the Korean War and the problems which still exist there today, and the Middle Eastern Mess, to name but a few.

It also gave a boost to aircraft and air travel, wrapping perhaps twenty years of advancement into four or five. As it seems every war does, new ways were created in medicine and science in general. The arts also were given a kick, jolting them from complacency.

People died, men, women, children, some horribly. Nations had to rebuild. Governments tumbled.

Yet our infantries still slogs along "bent double, like old beggars." Our navies "strive to make red war yet redder." And people who would simply like to be left alone to live their lives and raise their children die, some horribly.

(Before you say anything at all, remember that I am a combat veteran (Infantry), and may you never see what I have seen.)

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge : 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded 2
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 17 - 11:36 AM

For every year we grow older, the fallen forever young lose more and more.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge : 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded 2
From: Teribus
Date: 07 Apr 17 - 01:25 PM

"we always fight the current war with the tactics of the last."

That may well be true of how it starts out in some cases. It certainly was not the case with regard to the First World War from 1916 onwards - you even acknowledge that yourself in your post:

"It also gave a boost to aircraft and air travel, wrapping perhaps twenty years of advancement into four or five. As it seems every war does, new ways were created in medicine and science in general. The arts also were given a kick, jolting them from complacency."

Rapparee, with the greatest respect, you hold no monopoly, you are not the only person on this site who has seen active service so your last sentence in parenthesis is patronising and insulting in the extreme.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge 2: 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 17 - 03:56 PM

I thought not. But then again I ain't gonna study war no more.

Please keep your patronizing insults in your labor party thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge 2: 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded
From: meself
Date: 07 Apr 17 - 04:59 PM

Wait - I'm confused: you "thought not" - so who made the "patronizing insult"? Clarification?

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge 2: 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded
From: Raggytash
Date: 08 Apr 17 - 02:54 AM

"may you never see what I have seen"

Hmm .......... sounds pretty good to me, not offensive in the slightest, a heartfelt wish that wars would not occur, nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge 2: 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 17 - 09:28 AM

Having weighed the risk and benefits Of a discussion of war and what it does to each of us, I believe there is an opportunity here.
We all share a profound effort to be true to ourselves. We share an effort to resist evil. We make promises to ourselves.
What differs is the nature of those promises.

I define war as a fundamental evil that easily flourishes in the nature of our mind's malleable wiring. Others will have words such as sacrifice, courage, honor and other learned concepts that have been programmed deliberately. No matter what we have learned all our souls are corrupted by war. It is so debilitating we have tried to make it a drone push button affair to no avail from he suffering of the soul.
War may as well be waged by machete.
In the war between the Hutsies and Tutus many of us saw how 800,000 people were slain by machete in the first 2 months. The truth is I do study war to uncover the antidote. Some say religion but I say it is our susceptible wiring to our emotions which can be unconsciously removed from our conscious control with the simplest programing.

We are all damaged from war. Some heal and others are caught in an angry love hate conflict for life. This results in suicide, radicalization or agonizing anger. The only people who are immune from harm are social psychopaths. A total lack of empathy actually protects them.

The rest of us can be programmed to war or not to war. It depends upon the type of boot camp you attend. It is disheartening or some to consider that personal freedom is not as free as you have believed.

There lies the conundrum. None of us are as free as we thought, yet to own your own mind you must first accept this contrary POV.

It can be done as easily as the means that Hutus and Tutsies were no longer enemies in less time it took a million people die by murder.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge 2: 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 17 - 09:39 AM

edit: disheartening for some...
      a million people to die by murder.

Subject: RE: BS: Vimy Ridge 2: 3598 Dead, 7000 Wounded
From: gnu
Date: 08 Apr 17 - 03:41 PM

I didn't mean to star a 'war'. Totally the opposite... Lest we forget.

I'd just as soon this thread was deleted.

gnightgnu

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I closed the thread, gnu. I wish some people didn't see every thread as an invitation to a debate. -Mod