6/14/2023 0 Comments Vimr purpose![]() At Vimy Ridge, the Corps inherited a battlefield badly scarred by years of previous fighting. The bulk of Canada’s army on the Western Front - the 100,000-strong Canadian Corps, with its various British and Canadian support units - had moved into the VimyĪrea after the fighting at the Somme ended in the autumn of 1916. Had been killed and wounded in previous efforts to recapture the ridge. German forces had been entrenched on the heights of the ridge since nearly the beginning of the war in 1914, despite several attempts to dislodge them. To the west and south were the British lines and unoccupied France. To the north and east of the ridge are the Douai plain and the important coal mining city of Lens - in 1917 both were occupied by Germany. Vimy Ridge is an unusually prominent, 9 km-long escarpment rising amid the open countryside north of the town of Arras. War could be seen (atop Vimy Ridge) than from any other place in France.” As one Canadian observer noted at the time, “more of the Capturing this high ground would also give the Allies an important geographic vantage point, with sweeping views over enemy positions to the east. Attacking the ridge would helpĭivert German resources from the French assault. The Canadians, fighting as part of the larger British effort in what became known as the Battle of Arras, were ordered to seize the high strategic strong point of Vimy Ridge, on the northern flank of the British attack. Further north, theīritish would launch a diversionary assault near the French town of Arras - seeking to pin down German resources there, to give the French a greater chance of success in Champagne. With this in mind, in April 1917, the French armies under their newly appointed commander General Robert Nivelle, made plans to launch a massive offensive against German lines in the Champagne region of France, around the Aisne River. Germany to focus more of its forces on the Western Front. ![]() A Russian withdrawal would effectively bring the war to an end in the East, allowing The Russian Revolution was also underway, with the revolutionists threatening to pull Russia (one of the key Allied nations) out of the war. Time was of the essence: all the armies were depleted from years of fighting and struggling to fill their In the spring of 1917, the French and British planned a new offensive in the hope of breaking through the German lines and ending the stalemate. Millions of soldiers on both sides had been killed and wounded in battles that brought the war no closer to an end. On the Western Front - a vast line of trench works stretching from the North Sea through Belgium and France to the Swiss border. The opposing Allied and German armies were stuck in a stalemate Part of Arras Offensiveīy 1917, after three years of fruitless slaughter, the First World War had become a struggle of attrition. Canadian machine gunners dig themselves into shell holes on Vimy Ridge, France, April 1917 (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-1017).
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