Queen keen to watch Vimy Ridge documentary
I am hoping the link will work.
Well, it works after a fashion.. but.. only if you are a subscriber.. sheesh..
So.. I am trying to find the schedule for History TV .. but so far.. I can't find diddley...
Queen keen to watch Vimy Ridge documentary
Monday March 26th, 2007
Appeared on page B10
Considering there's some debate about whether the Queen has yet to see last year's hit movie about her, Canadian documentarian Elliott Halpern was quite chuffed to learn Buckingham Palace has put in a request for his "Vimy Ridge: Heaven to Hell."
After screenings at war museums in both Canada and the U.K., Halpern's 90-minute documentary is now considered an authoritative look at how Canadian soldiers wrested France's pivotal Vimy Ridge from the Germans during the First World War - a stunning military triumph that's considered a seminal moment in the birth of Canadian nationalism.
"Vimy Ridge: Heaven to Hell" airs tonight on History Television at 9 p.m.
"We've been told two things: that the Queen is going to the recommemoration of the Vimy Monument and for the 90th anniversary in France on April 9, and that Buckingham Palace has requested a copy of the film before she goes," Halpern said in a recent interview.
"And actually, so has the PMO (in Ottawa) and so has the Governor General. So that's pretty neat and very gratifying - they're all going, so I guess they want to see it to help them prepare for the day."
The documentary is a powerful look at how four divisions of Canadian soldiers did the impossible in 1917 - after months of intricate preparation and an innovative battle plan, they swiftly took the seemingly invincible German stronghold in northern France where thousands of British and French soldiers had previously perished in fruitless attempts to seize it.
"This was a 3-D battle - it was an incredibly unified vision for a battle in the air, on the ground and also underground," said Halpern, whose Toronto-based Yap Films produced the documentary.
"Our mission statement was to show how those three dimensions of the battle were brilliantly put together, and to attempt an explanation on why Canadians were successful in taking a ridge where 200,000 British and French soldiers had died."
The documentary follows historians and archeologists as they excavate large areas of the battlefield, discovering everything from the stray bones of soldiers who were clearly blown to bits and a relatively pristine pack of Craven A cigarettes, to some Canadian artifacts including a metal emblem from a uniform.
They also ventured into the underground spaces where many Canadian soldiers lived while awaiting battle - a network of tunnels that hadn't been explored in 90 years. It was the first time, Halpern said, that such an underground village had been constructed to spare soldiers the common fate of being killed in the trenches before ever going to battle.
The sight of the graffiti from Canadian soldiers adorning the underground walls is particularly moving since it's clear so many of them feared they would not survive the approaching warfare.
Numerous maple leafs were etched by men and boys from places as far and wide as Vancouver and New Liskeard, Ont., long before the symbol was officially adopted for the Canadian flag, suggesting a true sense of nationalism was developing for a country that was not yet 50 years old at the time.
"There were other major achievements after Vimy by the Canadian corps that some would argue were even bigger and more important ultimately to the winning of the war, but Vimy was this massive shift because it was the first and it was such an enormous success," Halpern said.
The intelligence of the battle plan, especially the Canadians' use of wireless communications between those in the air and the troops on the ground, also earned Canada worldwide respect.
"They rethought tactics that had been used before and they added to them," Halpern said. "They actually had observers and pilots in the air using wireless communication to directly send co-ordinates to gun batteries, and that was really extraordinary. As a result they knocked out 83 per cent of the German guns before the battle started, and that was huge part of the victory."
The documentary also follows three soldiers from Goderich, Ont., each fighting in a different dimension of the battle - one by air, one on the ground, and one working in the battlefield tunnels, adding a personal element to "Vimy Ridge: Heaven to Hell."
"The Canadian soldiers are known to be free-thinking, free-drinking, hard-fighting," one historian says during the film. "They're not very prone to saluting at the right times and they're a bit scruffy."
But as the battle loomed, the Germans cared little about the personal habits of the Canadians, according to some German intelligence unearthed during the documentary.
The Germans write of fearing the might of a particular segment of the British army: "Four of the best English attack divisions, the Canadians," the intelligence papers say.
In the end, they had every reason to fear.
On April 9, 1917, all four Canadian divisions attacked side by side, capturing the front line in 30 minutes, a second line two hours later, and within a day, the highest point on Vimy Ridge. The entire German stronghold had fallen by April 12.
"It was a stunning and complete victory, and that's where they became Canadians," Halpern says.
I for one intend to watch
Bruce
