The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 3

THH VANCOUVER SUN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2003 A3 Vimy veteran a peacenik about Iraq 'This is a battle of conquest and it's because of the oil says Canada's last survivor of the Battle of Vimy Ridge RIDGE 1917. i5 Is By RANDY BOSWELL CanWest News Service OTTAWA Canada's last surviving veteran of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, a 104-year-old retired electrician now living in California, marked the 86th anniversary of the fight that forged a nation by congratulating his native country for keeping out of the "conquest" of Iraq. He also denounced the U.S.-led attack as a "war for oil" and warned that the occupation of Baghdad is a mere prelude to establishing an American "empire" of the Middle East. "I don't go for this war stuff, and I don't care who knows it," an unwaveringly alert Clifford Holliday told CanWest News Service Tuesday from his home in Gardena, Calif. "If the leaders of the world had to put in two days fighting in something like that, there'd be a great change in the world.

U.S. President George W. Bush wouldn't have lasted five minutes on the ground." Holliday who was named to the Legion of Honour by the government of France in 1999 for his service during the war that NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF CANADACANADIAN PRESS FILES Stretcher bearers and German prisoners bring in the wounded soldiers on Vimy Ridge In France In this April 1917 photo. from silent film to "talkies," Holliday built a successful career and met silver screen stars such as Mary Pickford, Fred Astaire and Ingrid Bergman. He was active in electrical workers' unions for decades.

And after retiring in 1970, he devoted his energy to volunteer work on a host of causes aimed at improving life for senior citizens, a mission that earned him a statewide advocacy award from the California legislature in 1989 and personal congratulations from president Bill Clinton in 1998. Holliday is one of just 13 known surviving veterans who fought for Canada in the First World War, said Janice Summerby, com-munications chief with the department of veterans affairs. He is also the only one among the 13 believed to have been present at Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917, she added. More than 100,000 Canadians fought in the battle to take the ridge, a strongly fortified position for the Germans, who had already inflicted terrible defeats on British and French troops at the site. The Canadian-led victory in April 1917 has been hailed as a turning point in the war and because this country's soldiers were fighting for the first time under a unified Canadian command a milestone in Canada's progression toward independent nationhood.

Almost 3,600 Canadians died taking the strategic French ridge. Another 7,000 were inj ured. Last week, a private member's bill was passed in the House of Commons declaring April 9 of each year Vimy Ridge Day. And the new Canadian War Museum, now under construction in Ottawa, is expected to celebrate its grand opening in 2005 by displaying a rare Canadian battle flag from Vimy, thanks to a loan from the Imperial War Museum in London. Holliday doesn't mind, he says, talking about his distinction as the last Canadian soldier at about war.

But he's more inter ested, he insists, in pushing for peace. "I've always been interest- ed in human welfare, in humanu beings," ril to vrnf ways to solve international conflict. "I can't think of hardly anybody I know who's for the war in Iraq," he says, condemning the "brainwash and propaganda" being served up by the U.S. government and media. He claims that reporting on anti war demonstra tions has virtu- ally disap peared in the past 10 days, and insists that if he was a few decades younger, he'd be waving a placard himself.

"You're darn right I would. Our hope is in the young people, not the warriors and war mongers they're all too close to the caveman age." Holliday acknowledges that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a menace to his people and the world, but argues that the U.S. government ha, in the past, helped keep him in power. Now, he says, global stability is "hanging in the balance" because the U.S. failed to build a multinational coalition of allies before marching to Baghdad.

"France is against it, Germany is against it, Russia is against it, China is against it, Canada is against it. That's a huge part of the world population. "This is a battle of conquest, sidered too young at first, but thanks to a soldier friend of his sister's, was given the job of bugle boy and issued a uniform. "I never touched a bugle in my life." He remembers shipping overseas and training in England, and then again in France, before being sent to the front with his comrades. After his second injury in late 1917, he was assigned to a supply unit in England where he finished out the war packing boots for soldiers still in battle.

It was there that he celebrated the November 1918 armistice with Derbyshire locals "oh, it was a wild time" and met his future wife, Annie. After the war, he learned the electrical trade in Winnipeg. A co-worker, originally from California, offered him a job in Los Angeles, and Holliday whose father was originally from Smiths Falls, Ont, but whose mother was a North Dakota native set off for the States in March 1922. Specializing as an electrician with movie studios and theatres that were beginning to convert Who will be next? They'll keep going until they take them all." Holliday, who was born in Plumas, Man. in 1898 and enlisted with Winnipeg's 43th Battalion, Cameron Highlanders, at the outset of the First World War, has mostly impressionistic memories of his teenage years in the trenches of France and Belgium.

He was wounded twice once from a single bullet that sliced through the flesh of both legs and another time from a blast of shrapnel that struck his jaw and cheek. He recalls, above all, how a 30-minute machinegun slaughter at Vimy reduced a mighty throng of Canadian soldiers to a bloodied fraction of survivors. "I can't remember the names. I'm too scattered now. But just before dawn I remember our battalion went in with 1,100 strong and when we came out, there were 127 men on their feet who answered the next roll call." Holliday was a farm boy from a small town "110 miles away" from Winnipeg when he was talked into enlisting in November 1914 at the age of 16.

He was con liberated that country in 1918 expresses some pride in his record as a soldier in the early 20th century. But he is adamant about the need for world lead ers at the dawn of the 21st to find other Clifford Holliday was a 16-year-old fN in and it because of the oil. They'll install all the old sheiks, pay them a lot ot money, and then they 11 subjugate canwest news service the other nations farm boy when he enlisted in 1914. oneatatime. Journal gives firsthand view East of fighting at Vimy Ridge Buy any Mac NOW at Simply Computing and save $400 on Microsoft Office While Quantities Last! Purcbase must be made at the same time.Savings based on a Microsoft Office selling price of $7 19.

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Rebate will be based on the amount paid for toe paper (up to $30 US excluding taxes). ro trenches, dugouts and tunnels, protected by barbed wire and defended by machine-guns and artillery. Knowing what they were up against, the Canadian commanders took extra measures to prepare for the battle. Engineers built light railways and great tunnels into the ridge, and the troops rehearsed their roles and tactics behind the lines until each man knew exactly what he was required to do. The Canadians swarmed up the slopes under a creeping barrage, bombing the Germans out of their dugouts with grenades.

They skirted strong points and attacked in small platoons from the flank or the rear, as they had been trained to do. The Canadians also used homemade technology to locate enemy guns and smash them, including primitive oscilloscopes and microphones used to detect the sound of German artillery and map their locations. Their elaborate preparations paid off. The Canadians took the crest of Vimy Ridge that afternoon. Three days later they conquered Hill 145 and "the Pimple," a German stronghold at the north-em tip of the ridge.

"Our casualties (on April 9) were in the neighborhood of BRUNO SCHLUMBERGEROTTAWA CITIZEN Elsie Gates, owner of John George Piercey's First World War Journal. 2,000," Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey wrote. "The reserve line was held by a few hostile machine guns which caused the only serious casualties troops suffered." Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey speaks little of the filth and misery the soldiers endured in the trenches. Fleas and lice infected men with trench fever. Some soldiers got blood poisoning after scratching themselves bloody with grime-encrusted fingernails.

Others suffered trench foot from standing in muddy water hour after hour, a condition that could lead to ampu-tatioa Soldiers were also susceptible to boils and other skin conditions brought on by a monotonous diet of corned beef, hard biscuit, bland jam and sweetened tea. Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey notes that the most difficult job for his artillery brigade came after the battle. "The difficulties overcome in getting the guns over the Vimy Ridge through mud sometimes two or three feet deep, are probably the hardest ever experienced by this Bde. brigade." Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey's journal was passed on to Mrs. Gates by her late husband's family.

Ironically, Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey survived the war but "died of sickness" a week after the Armistice, according to his med-. ical records at the National Archives of Canada. The records show that Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey was diagnosed with "anemia, chronic splenic," and listed as "dangerously ill" on Nov. 16, 1918. He died two days later, aged 30.

Appended to Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey's journal is an account of his death written by Lieutenant-Colonel (later Sir) E.W.B. Morrison, a former Ottawa Citizen editor-in-chief: "A few days after the Armistice (Nov. 11, 1918), Col. Piercey was taken ill with an ulcerated tooth and after going through the entire war unhurt, eventually died of a gum boill i.e. blood poisoning." At Vimy, the Canadians accom-plished what the French and British had failed to do, smashing German lines and winning strategic high ground that had become an essential element of the German defence.

Previous attacks by the British and the French had cost 190,000 casualties, without dislodging the Germans from their ridge. Ottawa Citizen am 9VI2 Account provides loan a. human perspective of watershed victory "April 9, 1917 At zero hour 5:30 a.m. the big advance on Vimy Ridge commenced. A wonderful series of barrages were put up on the German frontl" From the war journal John George Piercey of the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery By BRUCE WARD CanWest News Service With those few words, Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey outlines what would become a momentous victory for Canada's soldiers on that long-ago Easter Monday.

The Canadian casualty list at Vimy topped 10,600, including 3,598 dead. But the battle forged a stronger, more sovereign Canada. Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey's hand-written diary of daily life at the front is a rough draft account of what historians consider Canada's first great military victory. The journal belongs to Elsie Gates, 87, of Ottawa, who is sharing its contents with readers to mark the first Vimy Ridge Day. Parliament passed a bill last week designating April 9 as Vimy Ridge Day, in honour of the four divisions of the Canadian Corps who fought in the watershed First World War battle.

"I'm interested in history and this gives you an idea of what it was like for the men," said Mrs. Gates. "They were very brave." The "wonderful series of barrages" Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey mentions was laid down by 983 guns along with 150 machine-guns. The Canadian troops, each man fortified by a shot of rum and a hot meal, began moving up the ridge at dawn. Bedevilled by driving wind, snow and sleet, they climbed over shell craters and the knee-deep mud churned up by the bombardment.

"Our troops had very little difficulty reaching the German front and support lines I and before dark the whole Ridge of Vimy was in our hands," Lieutenant-Colonel Piercey recorded in his journal. Yet the odds were against the Canadians. The Germans had fortified the slopes of Vimy Ridge with an elaborate system of Win $1000 every month EPSON at Simply From $259 Sign up instantly for a Simply Credit Card, OAC each purchase enters you in a monthly draw for $1000 cash. Instant approval under $2000, OAC. Minimum 3 months to pay on every purchase.

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