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125 The Sappers of Vimy Specialized Support for the Assault of 9 April 1917 BILL RAWLING William Withrow was not a stereotypical warrior and his death was not what one would have expected of a soldier on the Western Front. On 4 May 1917, less than a month after the capture of Vimy Ridge, he was watching a baseball game when he collapsed and died; an autopsy concluded that he had succumbed to heart failure. He was forty-eight years old. Withrow was not killed by artillery fire, the most common cause of death for Canadian soldiers in France and Belgium, and he was not in the infantry, the branch that suffered most in the course of the 1914-18 conflict, but he is an example of what a modern battlefield had become since the American Civil War initiated industrialized warfare. Having served in an infantry militia unit in Toronto in the late nineteenth century, Withrow joined the 3rd (Ottawa) Field Company in 1914 and then served in the 2nd Pioneer Battalion as the Lewis machine gun officer before being posted to Canadian Corps headquarters in early 1917 to take command of the topographical section. There he was responsible for the production of specialized maps showing German defences which could be used for planning, for setting up rehearsals and even for orientation in the assault itself.1 As a post-war report noted, more than 40,000 such maps were issued at Vimy, enough to ensure that every NCO in the attack would have one.2 William Withrow was a member of the Canadian Engineers, whose work at Vimy Ridge will be described in the pages that follow. The Canadian Engineers, a corps since 1903, was something of a multi-purpose organization in that it incorporated those technical elements of the army that did not fit logically elsewhere. By 1917 it included light railway troops, which were responsible for the construction and operation of the tramways which brought supplies 7 126 BILL RAWLING close enough to the front to be transported to the trenches by lorry, wagon or animal. It also incorporated surveyors and cartographers and sundry workshops. For the assault on Vimy Ridge, the chief engineer, Canadian Corps, Brigadier-General W.B. Lindsay, had under his command six army troops companies (normally answering to army headquarters), the Corps Light Railway Company, a composite railway company and a Canadian permanent base company. To ensure the necessary labour was available, Lindsay relied on the 1st through 4th Canadian entrenching battalions, several labour companies, the 67th Canadian Pioneer Battalion, the 5th Division Pioneer Battalion (the rest of the division was in England), the 123rd Canadian Pioneer Battalion and No. 2 Forestry Detachment, complete with sawmill.3 Such were the personnel and material resources available at the corps level; none of these units, nor those listed below, could accomplish their tasks without working parties provided by infantry battalions, which would lead to no shortage of difficulties, as we shall see. Within each division was a pioneer battalion of over a thousand men whose training gave them a combination of engineering and infantry skills. For the assault on Vimy Ridge the 1st Division incorporated the 107th Pioneer Battalion, the 2nd had the 2nd Pioneer Battalion, the 3rd Division had the 3rd, and the 4th Division had two, the 67th and the 124th.Eachdivisioncouldalsocountonthreefieldcompaniesaveraging 218 sappers each, men recruited largely for their civilian skills. With the addition of an entrenching unit, those responsible for engineer tasks numbered between 2,402 and 3,310 per division, averaging almost thirteen percent of such a formation’s strength.4 The field companies began arriving in the shadow of Vimy Ridge in the last days of 1916 and soon started work. Each field company was assigned to the infantry brigade that shared its number. Thus, the 11th Field Company arrived at the zone allotted to the 11th Brigade on 22 December and by the end of the month began executing a “scheme of development.” Digging communication trenches and constructing dugouts allowed the concentration of troops and supplies for offensive operations, as well as improved forward trenches and barbed wire obstacles to protect the build-up.5 Such work was not carried out in the most benign conditions, one officer noting that, “This is said to be the coldest French winter in twenty years. Coal is scarce, and costs 46 francs per 1000 kilos at the minehead.” He also noted how “Frost coming out...

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