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PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:35 pm 
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Historian searches for lost soldiers of Vimy Ridge
Canadian historian is seeking support for project to find soldiers hastily buried after Vimy Ridge battle and now lost in time.

By: Bruce Campion-Smith Ottawa Bureau, Published on Sat Apr 04 2015

OTTAWA—They are the lost soldiers of Vimy Ridge.

Pte. Sanford Wesley Leitch was a 23-year-old who studied at Claresholm Agricultural College in Alberta before he enlisted.

Pte. Levi George Powell, 43, was a bricklayer before the war, who left wife Emma back in England.

At 19, Pte. Cyril Gooding had been a clerk who proudly served six years in the Royal Navy Boys Brigade only to go to war on land, in the mud.

Pte. Alfred Parsons, 19, was from Georgetown, Ont., and listed his occupation as farmer.

Pte. Edwin Ball, 36, whose wife, May, lived in their home on Oxford St., in Winnipeg.

They were soldiers in the 16th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division, known as the Canadian Scottish. 98 years ago, they were part of the famed Easter Monday assault on Vimy Ridge to dislodge entrenched German troops who had repelled past attacks by British and French troops.

The meticulously planned Canadian attack was a stunning success, but one that came at a terrible price.

Thousands of soldiers were killed in the battle, their final resting places the cemeteries that dot the landscape around Vimy in northern France.

Thousands more were lost forever, their bodies consumed in the shell-scarred landscape or buried in hastily marked graves now lost in time.

Among them were more than 40 members of the Canadian Scottish regiment, believed to have been buried in a makeshift grave known as CA40.
Canadian soldiers in the trenches at Vimy Ridge in 1917 during the First World War.

Now noted Canadian military historian Norm Christie is trying to organize a project to find the bodies and give them a proper burial.

“To me it’s part of our heritage, a fascinating piece of history, a living history. This history is still alive in the sense that these people are still missing; their stories are not resolved,” Christie said in an interview.

He’s got a good idea where the bodies are located. But it will take detective work, high-tech engineering and the help of the trench maps that once guided troops into battle to confirm his suspicions.

On April 9, 1917, the soldiers of the Canadian Scottish, wearing their traditional kilts, stepped out of their trenches and into withering German fire.

“The initial waves got decimated by the German machine guns,” Christie said.

“You have to remember that we see Vimy as a victory, but even the units that did very well, out of the 600 attackers, maybe 80 to 100 got killed,” he said.

Pte. William Johnstone Milne, 24, of Moose Jaw, Sask., was awarded a Victoria Cross, the highest honour for military valour, for his Easter Monday heroics in taking out enemy guns during the attack.

“Crawling on his hands and knees, he succeeded in reaching the gun, killing the crew with bombs and capturing the gun,” reads the citation.

Milne then repeated his heroics by taking out a second gun, showing “bravery and resource” that saved lives. He was killed soon after capturing the second gun.

In the days following the attack, burial parties moved across the ravaged terrain, churned and laid bare by relentless shelling, with the grim task of gathering bodies.

The large craters that pockmarked the landscape served as ready-made graves. And it’s in one of those craters where some 44 soldiers of the Canadian Scottish were collected and buried, the site marked with a cross, given the name CA40 and marked on a map.

The bodies were supposed to have been exhumed after the war and moved to a proper cemetery for burial. But Christie has found no evidence they were ever relocated.

Instead, Christie thinks the missing men of the Canadian Scottish, including Milne, Leitch and the others, remain where they were first buried, several kilometres south of Vimy between the villages of Neuville-Saint-Vasst and Thélus.

“We had the map reference. That’s when we started checking out the battlefield,” Christie said.

In a field tilled by local farmers, Christie found a circular, slightly depressed patch, the reminder of a battlefield crater of nearly a century ago. He believes the bodies are about nine metres below the surface.

“You can see in that area there is a series of craters and there’s one in the middle that roughly matches the details in the map references,” he said.
Canadian machine gunners take over shell holes at Vimy Ridge, France in April 1917.

Canadian machine gunners take over shell holes at Vimy Ridge, France in April 1917.

With this preliminary work done, Christie now needs the help of engineers and ground-penetrating radar to look for the telltale signs of mass burial. If the search reveals a grave, he will then need resources for the actual dig.

Christie, an author and documentary maker who has King and Empireprofiled Canada’s war action in television series such as King and Empire, relates the tale of the Canadian Scottish soldiers in a documentary titled The Missing, part of the The Great War Tour series that will air this spring on TVOntario.

Christie says Canada has a duty to ensure the missing soldiers get a proper burial.

“Even after all this time, you have to fulfil your obligation to these people,” he said.

Christie is certain any dig would turn up some bodies as well as dangerous, unexploded bombs. That’s because even before the Canadian offensive, this terrain had been the scene of fierce fighting and horrific losses.

“You’re going to find all sorts of stuff. You’re in a no man’s land that is one of the most severe battlefields of the war,” Christie said.

But the question is whether the search will reveal the soldiers of the Canadian Scottish.

He praised the support so far from local French officials, including the mayor of Thélus, local police and the bomb disposal squad, whose assistance will be essential to take away the ordinance.
A figure representing Canada mourning her fallen sons looks down from atop the Vimy Ridge memorial.

A figure representing Canada mourning her fallen sons looks down from atop the Vimy Ridge memorial.

Canada’s department of national defence has a casualty identification program but only gets involved once remains have been reported and identified as likely being Canadian.

While the department is reviewing the evidence that Christie has given them, “to date there is no confirmation that there are any remains at the CA40 site,” spokesperson Jessica Lamirande told the Star in an email.

“There is currently not enough information on a potential grave to support an investigation at this time. However, if remains are found and identified as likely being Canadian, the department would engage,” she said.

Today, the missing men of the Canadian Scottish have no grave. Instead, the tribute to their deaths is the soaring memorial atop Vimy Ridge. Their names are among the 11,285 names carved into the monument’s Croatian limestone ramparts, all soldiers who went missing in action in France and have no known graves.

“What would be very important would be to recover the bodies for 2017, the 100th anniversary, and have a new cemetery dedicated,” Christie said.

“Millions of Canadian families have Great War roots. It’s part of everyone,” he said.

Posted The Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015 ... ridge.html


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