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[+] HONOURING OUR SONS, THE QUEEN'S COMMONWEALTH SOLDIERS KILLED IN THE 'WAR ON TERROR'

[+] HONOURING OUR VETS ON THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VICTORIA CROSS (1856 - 2006)

Sunday, April 09, 2006
VIMY

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY:
April 9, 1917

On Easter Monday at 0530 hours (in the morning), the greatest artillery barrage in military history opened up on Vimy Ridge. In the space of an hour and forty minutes, six million shells - three thousand per second - were thrown onto German positions atop the muddy scarp. "The wall of sound, like ten thousand thunders, drowned out men's voices and smothered the skirl of pipes...as if a hundred express trains were roaring overhead...tons of red-hot metal hurtling through the skies caused an artificial wind to spring up, intensifying the growing sleet storm slanting into the faces of the enemy. The earth reverberated for miles around, as in an earthquake, and the faint booming of the guns was heard by David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, at Downing Street in London." - Pierre Berton, Vimy.

With the Canadian Corps taking the whole of its objective under a daring, rolling forward tactic called the creeping barrage, British forces finally won their first offensive victory of the Great War. Between 1914 and 1916, the French hurled 20 divisions against the ridge in three separate failed attacks, squandering 150,000 men. The Canadians took it with four divisions, and suffered 10,000 casualties - by the standards of the day, a stunning success.

Like ANZAC Day for Down Unders, Canada felt it won its nationhood that day and went on to build the most impressive Allied monument of World War I in honour of its fighting soldiers. The Vimy Memorial stands tallest on the Western Front mourning our fallen sons, and represents more than 66,000 Canadians who sacrificed their lives in the Great War. Men who paid the ultimate price for Europe's sins and stupidity. Brave, young, adventurous, ordinary and heroic men who suffered that later generations might live in peace. Men who once felt dawn. Saw sunset glow.

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Elizabeth the Great

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