72nd Seaforth Highlanders of Canada - waughfamily.ca

SEAFORTH HIGHLANDERS OF CANADAto its former self by the rain of shells it had received intermittently through the winter, and without respite during the past ten days, seemed nothing but a vast expanseof small lakes formed by the linked-up shell-craters. Progress across this ground under the most favourable conditions would have demanded great exertion.As the hands of the officers carefully-synchronizedwatches came to the stroke of half past five on that fateful morning, the western sky seemed to leap into a gigantic flicker of sheet lightning, as the immense concentration of guns began their final smashing of the doomedGerman positions. Simultaneously with the opening of thebarrage the two mines under the Boche right front were exploded, and the 72nd moved forward to the attack, aspromptly and with angry violence, in answer to franticS. 0. S. rockets, the German protective barrage came downon No Man s Land and on the trenches which the Battalion had just left, being particularly heavy in the vicinity of Montreal Crater, which was the left centre of theBattalion s front. There was also intense machine gun fire,particularly from a small hillock of the Ridge to the leftof the Battalion which bore the name of the Pimple. TheBattalion quickly overran the enemy front line, houndingthe Boche from the remains of his shattered dugouts andfrom the easterly lips of the group of mine craters. Strenuous resistance was encountered from the triangle oftrenches formed by Clutch and Cluck trenches, and greatdifficulty was experienced in keeping direction in theblinding sleet and over the maze of water-filled shell-holes.Some of these were 20 feet or 30 feet across and six orseven feet deep.The battle in which the Battalion was now bearing itspart, facing the long and sinister slope of Vimy Ridgewas a very comprehensive and tremendous assault inwhich there were roughly 120,000 men in the stormingline with 40,000 advancing behind them. But it will be48