After a winter spent fighting the Germans along the deadly "crater line", the 100,000 men of the Canadian Corps assault Germany's impregnable fortress – Vimy Ridge – on Easter Monday, April 1917. It is one of the most brilliantly planned attacks of the war. Sweeping to victory, and consolidating their gains, the Canadians establish their reputation as elite troops, but at a cost – 21,000 dead, wounded and missing.

 

Running time: 47 minutes

 

With historian Norm Christie as our guide, we explore the battlefields, cemeteries and monuments of the First World War. In their own words, the men who fought tell their stories, and we discover how the naïve, amateur soldiers of 1914 became, by 1918, perhaps the most feared, efficient and deadly Allied Corps on the Western Front – the Canadian Corps.