By Joe Corrigan
When General Julian Byng was developing the battle plan for
the coming assault on Vimy Ridge he sent General Arthur Currie to the Somme and
Verdun to learn from the British and the French what went wrong with those
battles and make his recommendations. Currie was a stickler for detail and the
information he came back with was pivotal in the success achieved by the
Canadian Corps during the attack on April 9-12, 1917. Some of the resulting
tactics were new and some were refinements of things that had been tried at the
Somme and Verdun but needed to be tweaked. The following is a summary of the
innovations that the Canadians implemented in the attack:
·
Counter
Artillery Barrage – The traditional role of the artillery was to
focus on attacking infantry. Both sides traditionally followed this approach.
The Canadian Corps’ head of Artillery was a 29 year old professor named Andrew
McNaughton. McNaughton would become the commander-in-chief of the Canadian Army
at the start of World War II. At Vimy Ridge he spearheaded efforts to develop
artillery tactics. The idea of the Counter Barrage was to pinpoint the location
of enemy artillery and, during the attack, target the German guns to knock them
out so they couldn’t focus on the Canadian infantry. McNaughton used aerial
reconnaissance and gun flash spotting along with microphone listening posts on
the ground to determine the location of the enemy’s batteries. This work was all
theoretical as the Canadians couldn’t try it out for fear of tipping their hand
before the actual day of the attack. That would have allowed the Germans the
opportunity to re-position their guns, spoiling weeks and months of detailed
calculations. The gunners tried to isolate and elimination one gun position
prior to the assault to test their theory but they missed. Despite the
skeptics, McNaughton’s team was confident of their methodology and calculations
and prepared for the attack.
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| Vimy Artillery |
·
Creeping
Barrage – This tactic was tried at the Somme with limited success.
The idea was for infantry to follow closely behind an artillery barrage that
was designed to keep the enemy in their trenches until the moment the attacking
troops would be on top of them. The barrage would then be directed to the next
line of trenches. It wasn’t successful at the Somme because of lack of
coordination between the infantry and artillery. Troops got too close to the
barrage and were killed by friendly fire or they lagged behind and the Germans
had time to man their defenses before an attack could be launched. At Vimy
Ridge the barrage would be timed and the infantry was given specific
instructions as to how fast they should move. The result was something known as
the “Vimy Glide”. The troops moved forward at a pace of 100 yards every three
minutes. This pace proved fast enough to stay out of harm’s way but close
enough behind the barrage so that the Germans had no chance of mounting an
effective defense.
·
The
“Week of Suffering” – Prior to the Battle of the Somme, British
artillery pounded the German lines with millions of shells. The theory was that
this much artillery fire would destroy all the barbed wire and eliminate all
the Germans from the front line trenches. The problems were that the shells
used, either high explosive or shrapnel, were ineffective at clearing away the
barb wire which was still intact when the British troops went over the top on July
1st. They also didn’t have the desired effect on the German troops
who, with their strategy of defense in depth, weathered the barrage reasonably
well and had time enough to collect themselves and man their guns to meet the
attackers. The result was over 50,000 casualties on the first day of battle
alone. The Canadian’s 1,000 artillery pieces also let loose a million shell
barrage of their own in the week prior to the assault on Vimy Ridge. The
difference was in their use of explosives that detonated on contact with the
barbed wire resulting in a clearer path for the troops to advance during the
attack.
·
Indirect
Fire – At the start of the war, Canada had more machine guns
than their British counterparts. The machine gun battalions at Vimy Ridge added
their fire power to that of the artillery shells. At long range the machine
guns bullets added an extra element of devastation to the bombardment. This
tactic, introduced at Vimy Ridge, was adopted in widespread fashion by both
sides for the rest of the war.
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| Vimy Machine Guns |
·
Infantry
Training – One of the problems at the Somme was that the British
troops did not have a firm idea of their objectives. If their leaders were
killed or put out of action, the survivors had no idea where to go. To ensure
that this didn’t happen at Vimy Ridge, Byng and Currie set up models of the
ridge in the rear areas and had the attacking battalions practice on them. The
Canadian troops were let in on the secret plans for the attack and knew what
they had to do every step of the way. The troops were given maps and, other
than not knowing the actual date of the attack, were as well informed as their
officers as to the strategies. Their platoons were re-organized into integrated
fighting units. In the past, infantry, grenadiers and machine gunners fought in
separate units. These divisions were eliminated and the platoons had elements
of all three types of weapons so, when they came upon an enemy stronghold, they
had the resources to effectively deal with it. Coupled with this was the
independence of movement that allowed the platoons flexibility as opposed to having
to walk towards the enemy in long lines that were easy targets for machine
gunners.
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| General Byng |
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| Vimy Map |
The next installment of “In Flanders Fields” will deal with the actual attack itself. The British and French were skeptical that the Canadians could take the ridge; a defensive strong-point that had cost those two armies over 160,000 casualties in the years prior to 1917. The Canadian Corps would cement its reputation as an elite fighting force as a result of the battle of Vimy Ridge.
Joe Corrigan has been Museum Manager at Lang Pioneer Village since February of 2003. He has been a lifelong student of history. His specific areas of interest are Canadian and world political, military and sports history with a particular focus on biographical works. Joe has been interpreting Sir John A. Macdonald at the Museum's Historic Dominion Day event since 2007. 
