Vimy
Pierre Berton
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0771013396
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Book by Pierre Berton
parapet. But, as Claude Williams discovered, this small, 3-inch shell of low trajectory travelled so swiftly there was scarcely any time between the whiz and the bang to take cover. Williams reached the Vimy sector in the late fall, bursting with enthusiasm, a stocky, bespectacled young officer in impeccable whipcord and tightly rolled puttees, his boots and Sam Browne glistening with polish. For more than a year he had chafed with impatience, waiting to get in on the fun; now he had finally
and (though they did not admit it) frightened. The cold was unbelievable. The temperature did not rise above zero Fahrenheit for one month. The ground froze two feet deep, making it impossible to bury the horses and mules that died of cold and exposure. This was not the dry cold that the men of the prairies and the Northwest were accustomed to. Fog and rain mingled with snow and sleet; the water in the shell holes froze overnight; the mud turned hard as granite so that men were actually wounded
shell case that had blown off. All night and all day Black and the others were treated to the nerve-racking whine of these shrapnel bullets and the accompanying howl of the fuses and shell cases hurtling at them. Only a thick wall of sandbags at their backs provided any protection. In those final days, the tempo of activity at Vimy quickened with the intensity of sound as events moved toward a final crescendo. The Canadians raided the enemy trenches every night, probing for scraps of
supplied from the 5th Imperial Division, now seconded to the Corps reserve. As Pecover watched and waited for his turn, he could see that a weird kind of shuffle was taking place up ahead. Into the ghastly limbo of exploding debris, the clumps of attacking Canadians advanced and vanished. Out of it, moments later, straggled other clumps of men-endless groups of shaken Germans. One of the first Canadians into the maelstrom was a young New Bruns wicker, Charles Norman Dale. He stumbled forward
had vanished under the battering of the artillery. Claude Williams felt lost. He and his encumbered gun crew had trouble keeping up. Williams had plotted his route carefully to take him through the hamlet of Les Tilleuls on the Lens-Arras road-not far from the Red reporting line on his map. But he could find no trace of it. At last he came upon a military policeman and asked him where Les Tilleuls might be. “You’re in the middle of it, sir,” the M.P. told him. Williams looked about: nothing. Not