The capture of Vimy Ridge, key to
the whole Arras position, after months of careful preparation,
the hard-fought struggle for Lens, and toward the close of the
year the winning of the Passchendaele Ridge, at heavy cost, were
instances of the increasing scale and importance of the
operations entrusted to Currie's men.
In the closing year of the war the Canadian corps played a still
more distinctive and essential part. During the early months of
1918, when the Germans were making their desperate thrusts for
Paris and the Channel, the Canadians held little of the line that
was attacked. Their divisions had been withdrawn in turn for
special training in open warfare movements, in close cooperation
with tanks and air forces. When the time came to launch the
Allied offensive, they were ready. It was Canadian troops who
broke the hitherto unbreakable Wotan line, or Drocourt-Queant
switch; it was Canadians who served as the spearhead in the
decisive thrust against Cambrai; and it was Canadians who
captured Mons, the last German stronghold taken before the
armistice was signed, and thus ended the war at the very spot
where the British "Old Contemptibles" had begun their dogged
fight four years before.
Through all the years of war the Canadian forces never lost a gun
nor retired from a position they had consolidated. Canadians were
the first to practice trench raiding; and Canadian cadets
thronged that branch of the service, the Royal Flying Corps,
where steady nerves and individual initiative were at a premium.
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