Family mementos recall the lives of Canadians in World War I ONT Edition

• Published in: Toronto star
• Main Author: Brewster, Hugh
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto, Ont Torstar Syndication Services, a Division of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited 01.04.2007
• Subjects: Byng, Julian; Currie, Arthur; Jemmett, Nan; Langford, Arthur
• ISSN: 0319-0781

Two men dominate any account of Vimy British commanding officer Julian Byng and his most trusted Canadian general, Arthur Currie. Byng was lean, Eton/Sandhurst-groomed and aristocratic (the King called him "Bungo"). Currie was a pear-shaped, self-taught, former real-estate salesman known to the troops as "Guts and Gaiters." Yet Currie cared about his men and couldn't bear to see a single death due to incompetence or poor planning. Byng sent Currie to the Somme and Verdun in late 1916 to see what could be learned from the killing fields. One of Currie's first recommendations was "Give the men maps" - a simple idea but a new one for the British army where maps were reserved for officers. The boost this gave to morale was enormous since it meant that even stretcher-bearer Sgt. [Arthur Langford] was given a plan for exactly what he would be doing on the day of the attack. The taking of Vimy Ridge marked the deepest Allied advance in over two years of war. The King came to [Vimy] and knighted Arthur Currie on the battlefield. The New York Tribune wrote, "Every American will feel a thrill of admiration and a touch of honest envy at the achievement of the Canadian troops... No praise of the Canadian achievement can be excessive." The newly gonged Arthur Currie took command of the Canadian Corps, and from Vimy until the armistice in November of 1918, the Canadians achieved success after success and were regarded as the elite troops of the British Army. Their contribution won Canada a seat at the Paris Peace Talks in 1919. After the peace treaty was signed, it didn't take long for the highest point on Vimy Ridge to be selected as the most fitting location for Canada's memorial to its war dead. Toronto sculptor Walter Allward would devote 15 years to the design and construction of the Vimy Memorial. The plaster models for his 20 sculptures stand in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa - the largest of them depicts a weeping woman, representing a young nation mourning her fallen sons. When King Edward VIII unsheathed this statue to open the Vimy memorial on July 26, 1936, [Nan Jemmett] was there. A photograph shows the teenaged Jemmett in her Vimy pilgrim's beret standing near the King. From the hill, she retrieved a crab- shaped piece of barbed wire, likely shattered by a shell with a No.106 fuse almost 20 years before. Jemmett remembers her father and other veterans seeking out and touching the names they knew among the 11,000 carved on the monument. For her the most moving entries were the ones that simply read "A Canadian soldier of the Great War, Known Only to God."