Today is #VimyRidgeDay in Canada.

Here is a 12-tweet thread on what #VimyRidge is about. Feel free to retweet.

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104 years ago today 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy Julian Byng led the four divisions of the Canadian Corps (who united into one attacking force for the first time during the war) to take Vimy Ridge in Pas-de-Calais in France, as part of the battle of Arras.

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Supported by 1000 artillery pieces, the four divisions (100,000 men) began the attack at 5:30am and the battle lasted for four days. 15,000—20,000 made up the first wave attacking the heavily defended ridge.

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Unlike many earlier battles with artillery firing then soldiers attacking after, the artillery attacked ahead of the soldiers while they moved up. This new method was the ‘creeping barrage’, meant to keep the enemy in cover until the attacking infantry came close.

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Canadian General Andrew Mcnaughton helped train the troops for this, and they would rehearse the advance while also being trained with specialist roles like grenade-throwing and machine-gunning, and engineers would build tunnels for soldiers to advance out of.

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From Canadians charging machine-gun nests or forcing the surrender of Germans in protective dugouts, many brave acts were committed from the battle’s beginning on the 9th. This was in part to intense training and discipline.

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On the morning of 10 April Hill 145, the highest and most main feature of the ridge, and where the Vimy monument now stands, was captured in a frontal bayonet charge against German positions armed with machine guns.

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For the next two days the Canadian Corps, together with the British Corps to the south, would capture more ground, prisoners and artillery pieces than any previous British offensive of the war before.

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The battle would end by nightfall of 12 April when the Canadians took ‘the pimple’, which was another heavily-defended part of the ridge.

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Four Canadians earned the Victoria Cross, the highest medal for military valour, for separate actions in which they captured enemy machine gun positions. They were: Private William Milne, Lance-Sergeant Ellis Sifton, Captain Thain MacDowell and Private John Pattison.

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However, Canadian casualties numbered 3,958 dead and almost 6,000 wounded. When the Vimy Memorial was built on former Hill 145, it had 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were listed as “missing, presumed dead” in France during the First World War.

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Canada gained worldwide attention for this victory, and Brigadier-General A.E. Ross declared after the war, 'in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.'

After his promotion two months later, Byng left the corps & was replaced by Canadian-born Arthur Currie.