In the days leading up to yesterday’s 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, I spent a good part of the time reading news reports and tweets and looking into my own ancestors’ military records to determine whether or not they fought at Vimy.
Not until a few days ago did I even think about looking at the April 9, 1917 entry in the war diary for my grandfather’s 19th battalion to see if Vimy was mentioned. It was.
Service file
To find out if any of your ancestors fought at Vimy, look at their Canadian Expeditionary Force service file on Library and Archives Canada’s website for the number/name of their battalion.
LAC is digitizing all 640,000 service files alphabetically, and March 15 announced it had reached the name McGee. Today, it appears they have reached McLelland. But check all surnames in your family. LAC uploads new records every two weeks and I have found Youngs already digitized.
When searching for a digitized service file, choose Yes next to Digitized File.
War diaries
After you have found your ancestor’s battalion, look for the battalion’s war diaries.
In his book, Canadians at War 1914-1917, A Research Guide to World War One Service Records (Global Genealogy, 2010), Glenn Wright writes, “The diaries consist of a summary of the day’s events and, more importantly, a series of appendices that may include operational orders, messages, correspondence, maps, reports on operations, intelligence summaries, lists of honours and awards, and so on.”
War diaries search engines
LAC provides two ways to look for the diaries: the old search engine and a new one. What I like about the old search engine is that when you find the battalion’s war diaries, you can easily select any of the many images.
With the new search engine, you can skip only five images at a time, which makes looking at 400 files rather tedious, especially if the diary page you want is in the middle. Then again, this is still faster than travelling to an archival centre and looking at microfilm. What I do like about the new search engine is that it is easier to identify the diary dates and appendices.
Once you find the battalion’s diary, look at the entry for April 9, 1917 to see if there is any reference to Vimy.
March 1917 diary entries describe preparations
A Royal Montreal Regiment veteran advises to also look at the diary pages for March 1917 and the various appendices to learn about the preparations leading up to the Battle of Vimy.
He wrote in an email to me, “These will give you a feel for the preparations and training which went on in advance of the actual Vimy operation.
“Then you will want to follow not only the April diary, but also the numerous appendices for that month as well because these contain the operations orders, a couple of sketch maps, and post-op reports.”
CEF Study Group’s Vimy diaries
If looking for the April 9 diary entry one image at a time seems tedious, read Dianne Nolin’s blog post, Canada 150 — Vimy Ridge, where she shares a link to the Canadian Expeditionary Force Study Group’s Vimy diaries project that is somewhat like one-stop shopping.
Ms. Nolin writes, “During the 90th anniversary of Vimy Ridge, in 2007 the CEF Study Group undertook the ‘Vimy Project’ by gathering all the war diaries for those days for each unit that participated in the attack on Vimy Ridge… most are represented.”
In the CEF Study Group’s list, the links to the war diary entries appear next to each battalion.
Vimy — Google Street View
Whether or not your ancestor fought at Vimy, you should explore Google’s new interactive Street View of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and surrounding area. You can climb the stairs, read the inscriptions of the names of the soldiers who died, and walk through the area. The Google Street View experience includes a full tour of the trenches where Canadian soldiers once fought, and a trip down into the dank tunnels where officers drew up plans for the historic battle. Incredible. If my grandfather was only alive to see this.
Genealogy Research Toolbox
For more Canadian military resources for family historians, visit the Military section in my Genealogy Research Toolbox.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai yesterday told a group of Ottawa high school students during a surprise visit to their school, “We have to challenge society, we have to challenge communities, we have to raise our voice.”
The program for the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa’s 23rd annual conference is now available online. It will take place in Ottawa, from September 29 to October 1.
Blogs