From Vimy To Victory

Hugh Brewster captures the remarkable heroism, sacrifice, and victories of Canadian soldiers during the Great War. All was not quiet on the Western Front during the last years of WWI. Soldiers faced mud, trench foot, bombardments, barbed wire, snipers, and poison gas. Despite dreadful odds, the Canadian Corps moved forward, reaching deep inside enemy-occupied Belgium. The war cost Canada 60,661 of its finest citizens and thousands more who were wounded in body and mind. After their hard-won victory at Vimy Ridge, Canadians earned the admiration of the world -- and a reputation as soldiers who could get the job done. From that moment in 1917, Canadian soldiers proved themselves again and again on the bloody battlefields of Passchendaele, Lens, Hill 70, and Amiens, during the Hundred Day's offensive. From Vimy to Victory is presented in an engaging and accessible scrapbook style, with facts and details accompanied by first-person accounts, letters describing life at the Front, wartime diaries, and numerous images, maps, and diagrams that bring World War I to vivid life.

April 9, 2007 marks the 90th anniversary of the pivotal World War I battle - one that many historians view as the battle that defined Canada as a nation. At Vimy Ridge, Canadian soldiers achieved what more experienced soldiers from Britain and France could not - taking the strategic position of Vimy Ridge from the Germans. It was the battle that helped a young country discover its national pride, as for the first time, Canadians fought as Canadians, and achieved a significant victory.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the 2018 JW Dafoe Book Prize Longlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction 2018 Runner-up for the 2018 Templer Medal Book Prize Finalist for the 2018 Ottawa Book Awards A bold new telling of the defining battle of the Great War, and how it came to signify and solidify Canada’s national identity Why does Vimy matter? How did a four-day battle at the midpoint of the Great War, a clash that had little strategic impact on the larger Allied war effort, become elevated to a national symbol of Canadian identity? Tim Cook, Canada’s foremost military historian and a Charles Taylor Prize winner, examines the Battle of Vimy Ridge and the way the memory of it has evolved over 100 years. The operation that began April 9, 1917, was the first time the four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together. More than 10,000 Canadian soldiers were killed or injured over four days—twice the casualty rate of the Dieppe Raid in August 1942. The Corps’ victory solidified its reputation among allies and opponents as an elite fighting force. In the wars’ aftermath, Vimy was chosen as the site for the country’s strikingly beautiful monument to mark Canadian sacrifice and service. Over time, the legend of Vimy took on new meaning, with some calling it the “birth of the nation.” The remarkable story of Vimy is a layered skein of facts, myths, wishful thinking, and conflicting narratives. Award-winning writer Tim Cook explores why the battle continues to resonate with Canadians a century later. He has uncovered fresh material and photographs from official archives and private collections across Canada and from around the world. On the 100th anniversary of the event, and as Canada celebrates 150 years as a country, Vimy is a fitting tribute to those who fought the country’s defining battle. It is also a stirring account of Canadian identity and memory, told by a masterful storyteller.

The bestselling, award-winning author of The American Invasion of Canada “has given great drama and immediacy to that turning point in Canadian history” (Maclean’s). On Easter Monday 1917 with a blizzard blowing in their faces, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in France seized and held the best-defended German bastion on the Western Front—the muddy scarp of Vimy Ridge. The British had failed to take the Ridge, and so had the French who had lost 150,000 men in the attempt. Yet these magnificent colonial troops did so in a morning at the cost of only 10,000 casualties. The author recounts this remarkable feat of arms with both pace and style. He has gathered many personal accounts from soldiers who fought at Vimy. He describes the commanders and the men, the organization and the training, and above all notes the thorough preparation for the attack from which the British General Staff could have learned much. The action is placed within the context both of the Battle of Arras, of which this attack was part, and as a milestone in the development of Canada as a nation. “This wonderful book brings to life the amazing men who came across the Atlantic nearly a century ago and won a famous victory which helped change a nation forever . . . the wonderful prose of Pierre Berton is all from the heart and you should share in it.” —War History Online “The cinematic writing plunks the reader in the midst of the actual battle, and a judicious use of quotes from soldiers’ diaries and letters helps provide a ground-level perspective.” —Quill & Quire

How did Canadians come to lead these mobile, well-coordinated, and hard-hitting attacks? The preparations were intense, according to Granatstein, ranging from individual training to massive corps-wide exercises; careful analysis of "lessons learned" studies; expansion of the role of signallers, gunners and engineers; and perfection of techniques like the "creeping barrage." The "fire and movement" philosophy emphasized by Sir Arthur Currie, Commander of the Canadian Corps, increased the use of tanks, machine guns, Stokes mortars, and phosphorus bombs, among other military hardware. Mobility was the key; Canadians used their two Motor Machine Brigades - with guns and mortars mounted on armoured cars and trucks - with great effect. Granatstein is an award-winning historian who has received six honorary degrees for his work on conflict and Canadian history.

National Bestseller At the height of the First World War, on Easter Monday April 9, 1917, in early morning sleet, sixteen battalions of the Canadian Corps rose along a six-kilometre line of trenches in northern France against the occupying Germans. All four Canadian divisions advanced in a line behind a well-rehearsed creeping barrage of artillery fire. By nightfall, the Germans had suffered a major setback. The Ridge, which other Allied troops had assaulted previously and failed to take, was firmly in Canadian hands. The Canadian Corps had achieved perhaps the greatest lightning strike in Canadian military history. One Paris newspaper called it "Canada’s Easter gift to France." Of the 40,000 Canadians who fought at Vimy, nearly 10,000 became casualties. Many of their names are engraved on the famous monument that now stands on the ridge to commemorate the battle. It was the first time Canadians had fought as a distinct national army, and in many ways, it was a coming of age for the nation. The achievement of the Canadians on those April days in 1917 has become one of our lasting myths. Based on first-hand accounts, including archival photographs and maps, it is the voices of the soldiers who experienced the battle that comprise the thrust of the book. Like JUNO: Canadians at D-Day, Ted Barris paints a compelling and surprising human picture of what it was like to have stormed and taken Vimy Ridge.

On the morning of April 9, 1917, troops of the Canadian Corps under General Julian Byng attacked the formidable German defences of Vimy Ridge. Since then, generations of Canadians have shared a deep emotional attachment to the battle, inspired partly by the spectacular memorial on the battlefield. Although the event is considered central in Canadian military history, most people know very little about what happened during that memorable Easter in northern France. Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment draws on the work of a new generation of scholars who explore the battle from three perspectives. The first assesses the Canadian Corps within the wider context of the Western Front in 1917. The second explores Canadian leadership, training, and preparations and details the story of each of the four Canadian divisions. The final section concentrates on the commemoration of Vimy Ridge, both for contemporaries and later generations of Canadians. This long-overdue collection, based on original research, replaces mythology with new perspectives, new details, and a new understanding of the men who fought and died for the remarkable achievement that was the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Co-published with the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies