Urquhart, George Robert Alexander

“The Canadian Railway Troops proved their worth soon after their anival. In February and March, 1917, the Germans had made a strategic retreat on the Somme, and the first of the railway battalions to alTive were able to push forward standard gauge and light railway lines with surprising speed .in spite of the atrocious weather and the thoroughness of the destruction wrought by the enemy during the retreat.

“In April, 1917 began the battle of AlTas, and it is here that the Canadian Railway Troops, and, in fact, the Canadians in general, scored one of their greatest triumphs, an event which is still looked on as an important turning point in Canadian history. On Easter Monday, April 9,1917, against seemingly impossible odds, the Canadians, under Sir Julian Byng, later to be Baron Byng of Vimy and Governor General of Canada, attacked and captured Vimy Ridge, then the strongest German fortress on the Western Front. After all the frustrations and horrendous losses of the Somme campaign, the capture, in a matter of hours, of this strategic position seemed nothing less than a miracle. For several weeks prior to the opening of the attack the weather had been extremely bad, and the ground in the battle area was like a quagmire. Nevertheless, the Canadian Railway Troops had laid rails to within a short distance of the front line. Then, as soon as the infantry advanced on that memorable Easter Monday, the railway battalions constructed new lines on the heels of the fighting men. Supplies and ammunition were carried forward on standard and narrow-gauge lines, and the wounded were evacuated over them to the very doors of the field ambulance dressing stations and the casualty clearing hospitals. It was the first time in the war that such work had been accomplished. Within a week of the opening of the campaign, trains were running to the top of Vimy Ridge, and by the end of April light railways were running forward to the British ration dumps which were now some distance ahead across the level plain.

“In the summer of 1917 began the Passchendaele campaign which, in many ways, was worse than the Somme, a year before. Here, the drainage system of the low-lying ground had been completely destroyed by the incessant shellfire with the result that the entire terrain became a seemingly endless sea of mud of an especially tenacious variety. Attempting to attack over such ground with the enemy firing evelything possible at you is warfare of the most horrifying and gruesome kind. Eventually, in the late autumn of 1917, the attack bogged down and petered out with little accomplished beyond adding greatly to the ever lengthening casualty lists. By this time some people were seriously wondering if the war would ever end, if it did, whether there would be anyone left to see the day. During all this tragic time the Canadian Railway Troops were as determined and successful as ever, building and rebuilding, sometimes many times over, the railways which had become the lifelines of the Canadian forces. The difficulty of the task facing the Canadian Railway Troops in the Ypres salient may be gauged from the fact that during the summer of 1917 the average number of breaks in the light railway lines due to enemy shellfire was about 100 per day (more than four every hour), in the areas of the Second and Fifth British armies alone.

“Constructing and maintaining these ever-extending railways required very great quantities of supplies plus the transportation systems to deliver them to where they were needed. Some material came from England, but much was shipped from Canada. A major source of rails and track supplies came from track of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific railways in Alberta and British Columbia. Consolidation of these lines, following their takeover by the Dominion government, had left many miles of track redundant, for the two lines paralleled each other, often only a few hundred yards apart, for many miles. In 1917 and 1918 this track was taken up and the rails, fish plates and other material were shipped to France for use on the Western Front.