Fitting memorial

By Ted Barris

Thomas Allen, 300 pages, $35

Reviewed by Ian Stewart

NO Canadian veterans of the First World War's historic Battle of Vimy Ridge are alive today.

The last survivor was Winnipeg's Charles Reaper, who died in 2003, at the great age of 103.

Through a masterful use of oral histories, personal letters and memoirs, Toronto-based historian Ted Barris has created a fitting memorial to the ordinary Canadian soldiers who, like Pte. Reaper, fought 90 years ago in the War to End All Wars.

Rarely have the thoughts and feelings of so many spoken so clearly though the widening mist of history.

For the first time in the First World War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, the men of the four Canadian divisions stood together to fight as a national army.

Although most were of British birth or ancestry, all races and creeds were represented within the ranks of these patriotic volunteers.

Their triumph at Vimy Ridge is remembered as Canada's victory in the Great War, mythologized as the catalyst for Canada coming together as a nation and bestowed a place on the international diplomatic stage for the young dominion.

Although Canadians had fought valiantly in many of the war's great battles, we can learn from Barris's account how this one battle affected virtually every citizen.

The men who suffered through Vimy came from every city, town, hamlet, fishing village, mining camp and prairie settlement in Canada.

They tell a poignant story, and perhaps we might come to some understanding of the tragedy our grandparents and great-grandparents' generation faced.

The Canadian officers and men were under no illusions about what they faced at Vimy, the French town close to the Belgian border and about 140 kilometres north of Paris.

The entrenched Germans had the upper hand, and the British and French armies had suffered almost a million casualties trying to take the Ridge in 1915 and 1916.

But the Canadian commanders were determined not to repeat the mistakes of earlier battles. Although quite detailed, Barris's account of the innovative battle tactics the men learned in their months of rigorous training is clearly written and accessible to readers who might find military strategy overwhelming.

The morale of the men was high and, as Sgt. Ed Russenholt of Winnipeg's 44th Battalion wrote, "[W]e had mastered the job and we were the finest troops on Earth." (Some of a certain age will remember Russenholt as CBC Winnipeg's first TV weatherman.)

However, imagine other thoughts echoing in the minds of 20,000 young soldiers ready to go over the top at Vimy Ridge on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917.

One, Ellis Sifton of Brantford, wrote to his mother, "Will courage be mine at the right moment if I am called upon to stare death in the face?"

Might they, many feared, break faith with those who had died in the mud, gas and carnage of Ypres and the Somme, with the thousands lying nameless in crater graves dotting the butcher shop of the Western Front?

The Canadian victory was swift and decisive, as R.L. Fennell, a sniper with Winnipeg's 27th Battalion, related, "We walked over.... It was like a piece of cake."

The "walk over" cost Canada 3,958 lives and 7,104 wounded. Sifton, who worried if he could find courage, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for gallantry.

The battle ended when the 44th (Winnipeg) and 50th (Calgary) battalions captured the Pimple, the Ridge's highest point of land. This hill, Barris tells us, is where the Vimy War Memorial stands today.

There are innumerable books on Canada's role in the First World War.

Two Pierre Berton titles, Vimy and Marching as to War: Canada's Turbulent Years, 1899-1953, are good starting places.

On the Internet, the best and most detailed information on the Battle of Vimy Ridge comes from the exceptional Library and Archives Canada and Veterans' Affairs Canada websites.

However, a must read is Canadian Joseph Boyden's award-winning novel Three Day Road (2005), which offers a horrifying but realistic view of life in the trenches. It can only be compared to Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 classic All Quiet on the Western Front.

Barris, a journalism teacher in his day job, has written six other books on military history, three of them comprising a trilogy on the Second World War.

Barris's narrative fittingly ends with the story of the Vimy War Memorial's building and the pilgrimage of thousands of Canadians to its dedication on July 26, 1936, when O Canada was first sung as a national anthem.

Winnipeggers should visit Vimy Park and take note of the memorial to the 44th Battalion.

This memorial to the battalion's dead stood on Vimy Ridge until the national memorial was erected. It was taken down by veterans and rebuilt in the park.

Ian Stewart is a Winnipeg writer and teacher.

His grandfather, Charles Stewart, was at Vimy Ridge with the 38th Battalion (Calgary).

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 8, 2007 $sourceSection$sourcePage