“Vimy? C’est impossible! Ah, Les Canadiens…C’est possible!”
This remark is attributed to a French general on April 12, 1917 after an aide rushed in with the news that Vimy Ridge had just been wrested from the Germans after a fierce four-day battle on a hill near Arras in Northern France.
The officer found this report impossible to believe at first because British and French troops had been trying to capture this small but strategic height of land since a seasoned German force had dug in there in October 1914. But the Canadian Corps had gained a reputation as tough, disciplined fighters at the Battle of The Somme the year before, so when the French general heard it was the Canucks who had prevailed, he decided it could be possible after all.
When the smoke of earlier battles on the ridge had cleared, there were well in excess of 150,000 British and French casualties, including about 20,000 dead. The flatland in front of the 61-metre-high elevation and the slopes leading to the top were strewn with the corpses of Allied soldiers, whose bodies could not be retrieved due to enemy mortar and machine gun fire from the well-entrenched Huns.
