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Neglected Victory the Canadian Corps at Hill 70 Neglected Victory the Canadian Corps at Hill 70 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Wilfrid Laurier University Canadian Military History Volume 19 | Issue 1 Article 3 3-27-2015 Neglected Victory The aC nadian Corps at Hill 70 Matthew altheW rt Recommended Citation Matthew Walthert (2010) "Neglected Victory The aC nadian Corps at Hill 70," Canadian Military History: Vol. 19: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol19/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. : Neglected Victory The Canadian Corps at Hill 70 Neglected Victory The Canadian Corps at Hill 70 Matthew Walthert any historians regard [the combining the descriptions of Battle of Hill 70] as the Abstract: For 90 years, the Battle of Hill individual soldiers with the actions “M 70, 15-25 August, 1917, was largely outstanding achievement of the ignored or forgotten by Canadian taken by smaller units that led to 1 [Canadian] Corps,” writes Terry historians. This, despite the fact that Corps-wide success on the battlefield. Copp. He is correct that the battle, General Arthur Currie, who commanded It will analyze why the Hill 70 battle fought in and around the town the Canadian Corps for the first time has remained relatively obscure and of Lens from 15-25 August 1917, in the battle, declared it “a great consider what this says about our and wonderful victory” and “the was an outstanding victory for the hardest battle in which the Corps has collective memory of the Great War. Canadians, but it has not received participated.” Why is this so? Against In most works that deal with Hill the same attention as other Canadian tough odds, the Corps captured the high 70, the role of the artillery has been battles of the Great War. Why is this? ground and caused heavy casualties emphasized as the most important While 2nd Ypres, Passchendaele, the amonst the Germans as they counter- aspect of the battle. While the artillery attacked. However, in the days following Last Hundred Days, and Vimy Ridge this success, the Canadians pushed had a significant and crucial part to have all merited book-length studies, their luck too far. Trying to take the play, this essay will also attempt to Hill 70 has been largely neglected. town of Lens, which Hill 70 overlooked, give the “ground pounders” their The only substantial published texts thousands of men were needlessly due, as the hill could not have been on the Battle of Hill 70 come from sacrificed. won, nor held, without them. Nearly G.W.L. Nicholson’s official history, all the war diaries describe brutal Canadian Expeditionary Force, and History. He focused on the mostly hand-to-hand combat for extended Tim Cook’s Shock Troops.2 While unsuccessful secondary attacks into periods of time, as the Canadians Nicholson provides a very good Lens in the days following the seizure fought their way up the hill, and basic description of events, it is of the hill itself. Indeed, Jackson then struggled to hold it through necessarily a top-down history and arbitrarily separated Hill 70 into two numerous German counter-attacks. lacks description of the experiences distinct battles: the attack on the hill Six Victoria Crosses were awarded to of individual soldiers in battle. In and the push into Lens.3 While he the infantry, and like any other battle, fact, Nicholson rarely describes any acknowledged that the capture of countless brave and heroic acts went actions lower than at the brigade the hill was an outstanding feat, he unrewarded. or battalion level and the only non- implied, by devoting the majority Hill 70 was Arthur Currie’s generals mentioned by name are of his article to it, that the failure first battle as commander of the those that were awarded a Victoria to capture Lens overshadowed the Canadian Corps, and he wrote that Cross. Cook’s work gives a great entire operation. These attacks into it was “the hardest battle in which description of the battle from the the town were poorly planned, the Corps has participated,” but also soldiers’ perspectives, but there is undermanned, and under-supported, “a great and wonderful victory.” As still more detailed analysis that can but the number of men involved well, according to Currie, General be done, as Hill 70 represents only a makes the attacks closer to a series Headquarters “regard it as one small fraction of Cook’s two-volume of large-scale raids than a separate of the finest performances of the opus. battle. These attacks into Lens will War.”4 And yet, for 90 years this Geoff Jackson published an be examined in depth later. battle was largely ignored in the article on the battle in the Winter This paper explores the battle historiography. Certainly, when 2008 issue of Canadian Military in greater detail than Nicholson, we talk about the war today, Hill Published© Canadian by Scholars Military Commons History @, Laurier,Volume 2010 19, Number 1, Winter 2010, pp.21-36. 21 1 Walthert - Hill 70.indd 21 4/15/2010 1:26:15 PM Canadian Military History, Vol. 19 [2010], Iss. 1, Art. 3 Left: Canadian soldiers practice bringing a Vickers medium machine gun quickly into action prior to the Hill 70 battle. Below left: Troops of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade receive hot tea at a Soup and Tea Kitchen within a quarter mile of the front line on the night before the attack on Hill 70. during the Battle of Loos in 1915. This is not meant to suggest that Hill 70 was as significant a battle as Vimy, Canadian War Museum (CWM) 19920085-775 Canadian War but merely that it was an important part of the Canadian war effort. It also demonstrated that the victory at Vimy was not a fluke, but a sign of things to come from the Canadian Corps. What, then, can we say about Canadians’ collective memory of the First World War, and Hill 70 in particular? Surely, we are uncomfortable with certain aspects of the war, or at least our perceptions of those aspects. For example, we are horrified by the slaughter that took place in Europe from 1914-1918. And we are even more horrified by the perception that it was all in vain. Indeed, 20 years later, we were CWM 19920085-665 embroiled in an even deadlier war. However, in the Second World War, we knew what we were fighting 70 is never mentioned in the same of a meat grinder of shrapnel and for (to stop the spread of Facism). breath as Vimy, Passchendaele, bullets designed to kill as many Although Canadians who fought or the Somme. Perhaps this is Germans as possible, in keeping in the Great War certainly had their because Hill 70 does not have a with Sir Douglas Haig’s policy for own reasons for fighting, do those ready-made, engaging storyline. The a war of attrition. Still, Nicholson of us who look back, from nearly horrors of the Passchendaele mud, devotes nearly as many pages to 100 years in the future, understand valiantly overcome by the tenacious Hill 70 as he does to Vimy in his them? Maybe not. Instead, many Canadians, may be a more engaging official history. In addition, Hill 70 Canadians think of lines of men, tale. Vimy has been elevated to a was a more thoroughly Canadian mowed down by machine guns. nation-forming battle; it was the first battle than Vimy, where much of the Perhaps, unfortunately, Hill 70, like time the Corps fought together as a artillery and logistical support for the first day of the Somme, plays up whole. Hill 70, on the other hand, was the Canadian infantry came from the that stereotype, since the goal of the conceived as a diversionary attack to British. Hill 70 was largely planned, Canadians was to literally butcher as keep a number of German divisions and for the most part carried out, by many Germans as possible. Therefore, occupied while the Third Battle of Canadians. Vimy was seen as a great no matter how successful they were Ypres got under way further north. victory because neither the French, in achieving that goal, there was There was no romantic splendor to nor the British, had been able to take no way the battle would ever be the battle. The objective was not to it for three years. Hill 70 and Lens remembered the same as some of capture a strategic position (although had been held and fortified by the our other victories. This limitation, the British did want Lens for its coal Germans since 1914, although the though, should not dissuade us from production), but rather the creation British did temporarily seize the hill further study of the battle. http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol19/iss1/322 2 Walthert - Hill 70.indd 22 4/15/2010 1:26:15 PM : Neglected Victory The Canadian Corps at Hill 70 After Vimy, Lieutenant-General standard since Vimy. The most Hill 70, as it would compromise Sir Julian Byng had been promoted important of these exercises was the their position in Lens. By taking from Canadian Corps commander full-scale rehearsal on a taped course the high ground, Currie hoped to to General Officer Commanding representing the actual battlefield.9 draw German reinforcements into Third Army. On 6 June 1917, Currie Deward Barnes, of the 19th Battalion, the open where Canadian gunners was notified that he would be taking recorded his training experiences in could annihilate them with massed over command of the corps, the his diary on 22 July, writing that for shellfire.11 first Canadian to do so, and on 12 At Vimy, the artillery used new June, the king knighted him.5 On the next few days we practiced over continuous wave wireless radios for 7 July, orders came from General tapes, getting ready for Hill 70…the the first time.
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