April 15 1917 (battle of Vimy Ridge)

Dear Eve, 



You must've heard in the news by now, how the glorious battle of Vimy Ridge was taken from the Germans. I am writing from one of the many medical tents, which are now full of the men who were wounded at the battle, including me. I'll save you the concern, i was only shot in the arm, and aside from cuts and bruises, i am in stable condition. That is more than i can say for the other soldiers who were severely wounded, and lest we forget the dead. I will say this, we fought tooth and nail, and we emerged victorious against the Germans. It was a grandiose victory, and one that we will not so easily forget for hundreds of years. The battle was at the time under the command of General Sir Julian Byng, in charge of all three Canadian Corps., including mine. My soldiers and i were told by our commander, Arthur Currie, that we were to leapfrog over one another in an attempt to have the momentum to storm the ridge. On the ninth, we began the fight. Our artillery bombarded the position, and from what i heard, that have so much as 1.6 million rounds of ammunition, so the explosions we heard all through out the day. After the barrage slowed down, our intel learned that so much as 83 percent of the German fortifications were hit, and so we began our assault. We stormed the lines of trenches, successfully taking each line until we were upon the ridge. Our final objective was the brown and blue lines, which encompassed the town of Thelus and the outskirts of Vimy. By afternoon arrived, we had most of the ridge under our command, and already i could hear the soldiers cheering. I had to agree with them, the sheer effort it took to take this trench that not even the French and the British were able to take was astounding. The battle was not without losses though, by the twelfth, we had ten thousand casualties, and the wounded were everywhere. This was my first real taste of the war Eve, and already i can see the extreme volume of death and destruction that occurred. May god have mercy on whoever was killed in this horrid conflict, because i think they will find little solace in this minor victory when they look down upon it from heaven. 

Getting better soon, Daniel Wadsworth

(perfect song for the topic)

Sources: 
Canadian at War 1914 - 1918  Donald M. Santor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vimy_Ridge,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPkmIwwobA