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15 In early twenty-first century Britain, most of the battles of 1914-18 are forgotten by all but specialist military historians. Vimy Ridge is an exception. In part this reflects the fact that the name, like the Somme or Passchendaele, remains in the British folk memory. It is suggestive that in the 1971 Disney children’s film Bedknobs and Broomsticks, set on the southern coast of England in 1940 and featuring mainly British actors, a mentionofVimyRidge(wherethefatherofoneoftheprincipalcharacters had fought) is used early to establish the continuity of the Second World War with British battles of earlier eras.1 The capture of Vimy Ridge is generally regarded in the UK as a solely Canadian success, where the British and French had previously failed. The symbiotic relationship between the Canadian Corps and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of which it formed a part is commonly misunderstood. Forgotten also is the key role played by British units and formations and individual British officers in the 9 April 1917 attack. That Vimy Ridge lies just off a major highway much used by British tourists has maintained the high visibility of the battle in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the Canadian memorial can be seen from the road. The First World War is a popular topic in British schools and many regularly take parties of children on educational trips to Vimy Ridge, attracted especially by the artificially preserved trenches. There, through tours of the Grange tunnel conducted by Canadian students and views of the impressive Vimy memorial, pupils are exposed to a Canadian perspective. Most British teachers are ill-equipped to put the battle into its wider context or point out the contribution that nonCanadians made to the battle. The Battle of Arras, of which the Vimy action formed a part, is largely a forgotten battle. This is strange, for the operation that lasted Vimy Ridge and the Battle of Arras A British Perspective GARY SHEFFIELD 1 16 GARY SHEFFIELD from 9 April to 17 May 1917 was a major offensive that cost 159,000 British and Empire casualties—a daily rate of 4,076 that was higher than for any other major battle. Indeed had Arras continued at the same intensity for 141 days, the length of the Somme offensive in 1916, the losses would have been in the order of 575,000, which would have made it by far the bloodiest British offensive of the war.2 Moreover, the strategic consequences of Arras were profound and the battle marked an important stage in the operational and tactical “learning curve” of the BEF. On 9 April, for instance, two British divisions, 4th and 9th (Scottish), achieved the longest advance to that time by a British unit under conditions of trench warfare—some 5.5 kilometres. The importance of the Arras campaign belies the lack of attention it has received from historians. A survey of the literature published in Britain is instructive. The publication of anecdotal histories based on the writings and reminiscences of participants has become something of a boom industry in recent years, yet to the author’s knowledge, Jonathan Nicholls’s Cheerful Sacrifice is the only popular history of Arras that has been published in the UK.3 In Britain, the phrase “Battle of Arras” is more likely to be associated with the minor British armour/infantry counterattack against advancing German forces on 21 May 1940. Astoundingly, one book on European battlefields edited by a noted military historian included an entry on the 1940 action but ignored the major battle of 1917 altogether.4 All this contrasts with the publication in Britain of at least five popular histories of Vimy Ridge, in which the Canadians take centre stage, including books by Canadian authors Herbert Fairlie Wood and Pierre Berton.5 Scholarly attention to the Battle of Arras is patchy; the only major study of the battle is the relevant volume of the British official history published in 1940.6 However, there are some short treatments of specific parts of the Arras campaign.7 British author Jonathan Walker has recently produced an excellent study of the Bullecourt operations on Fifth Army’s front and several recent authors have covered the Australian angle of this battle.8 Surprisingly, neither Tim Travers, nor the team of Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson has covered Arras in any detail in their influential books on command in the BEF. A common theme is that the capture of Vimy Ridge was...

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