If you have not read anything about the Battle of Vimy Ridge, you must. These few paragraphs from Pierre Berton’s book Vimy are dedicated to all the Dippers at convention this weekend. (ADDENDUM: You can add the left leaning MSM who only seem to focus on the Canadian who die and not the successes.)
The Germans had held and strengthened this fortress for more than two years and believed it to be impregnable. The French had hurled as many as twenty divisions against it and failed to take it. In three massive attacks between 1914 and 1916 they had squandered one hundred and fifty thousand poilus, dead or mangled. The British, who followed the French, had no better success. Now it was the Canadians’ turn.
…
The Canadian Corps (which included one British brigade) faced an incredible challenge. In one day – in fact in one morning – these civilian volunteers from a small country with no military tradition were expected to do what the British and French had failed to do in two years. The timetable called for most of them to be on the crest of the ridge by noon. and they were expected to achieve that victory with fifty thousand fewer men than the French had lost in their own frustrated assaults.
And thanks to the leadership of Currie, training and retraining on a mock version of the ridge back home, and the success of the creeping barrage, they did it. All in a mornings work. Battles and skirmishes continued on afterwards for a few days, but it was over. The Germans were routed.
In the dressing stations behind the old Canadian lines there was no sleep. Before the Battle of Vimy Ridge was over, the doctors, stretcher-bearers, and medical orderlies would treat 7,004 wounded men. Another 3,598 were past help. In sort, one Canadian in ten was killed or wounded in the four-day battle for the ridge. That is not a high ratio by Great War standards, but to that number must be add another 9,553 casualties suffered at Vimy in the months before the battle. Sniper fire, artillery fire, and trench raids took their toll. Put bluntly, to take vimy Ridge it cost Canada twenty thousand casualties, about a quarter of whom would never go home.
It was on this day that Canada grew up from being “that little British lad across the pond” to “that strapping Canadian chap who helps right the world’s wrongs”.
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By the end of that war the Canadians were the go-to guys when there was a tough mission to undertake.
And then in WWII, D-day. the only force to achieve all thier objectives on time were Landed on Juno beach. The ALL-volenteer force of Canadians!
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AT you got it right. We had our own beach of the five and did our jobs. Strapping Canadians who worked hundreds if not thousands of acres of farm land and knew what hard work was.
You don’t earn a reputation like that by deserting the Afghani children after 33 deaths.
The way the MSM covers this and the way the NDP want to pull out makes me sick. Every nation we help, every child we help defend while they get educated, every women who gets to vote because our soldiers are there will remember.
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Not only is the moraly correct thing to do, every stable country makes the world a safer place for everyone.
Its alot harder to recruit a free man with kids in school and real hope for prosperity to be a suicide bomber.
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actually the Canadians didn’t reach all their objectives on D-Day but they did come closest with a maximum penetration of 10km (a troop of C Sqn, 1st Hussars reached the north end of Secqeville-en-Bessin but being miles from infantry support, turned back); their furthest objective was the Carpiquet airport 16km inland. If there is a publication stating that the Canadians did in fact reach their objectives I would like to see it.
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“None of the assault divisions, including 3rd Canadian Division, had managed to secure their D-Day objectives, which lay inland, although the Canadians came closer than any other Allied formation”
Source, Wikipedia. X2para is right, but the point stands, the Dippers have no damn idea about Canada’s military history.
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absolutley right, they refuse to admit that there even is a Canadian military history, continually spouting about the “peacekeeping myth” and how we aren’t supposed to take sides, Hitler would have been happy with that. They truly are a disgrace.
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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)
’nuff said eh?