The attack began on Easter Monday (April 9th), 1917. The soldiers moved along cautiously as the artillery ignited to fire on enemy positions, rendering opposing artillery impotent. Still more guns joined in firing the continuous line of shells in a tactic called the creeping barrage, where shells would fire just in front of the troops and give them cover as they advanced toward the
Prusso-German trenches. The attack was carefully planned for almost half a year before the Canadian Corp went into action.

What seperated this from any other attack though, was the fact that Vimy Ridge was one of the most fortified bastions of defence in the war, and previous attempts to capture it by the French and British proved in vain. They suffered almost one hundred seventy thousand casualties trying to take the ridge. The hope of the Allied Commanders was that capturing the ridge would break the bloody stalemate that had persisted on the western front for a great length of time, and allow a long sought breakthrough.

It began a week in advance of this date, when the Corp launched an artillery barrage so loud that it could be heard all the way in London. The was referred to by the Germans as "The week of suffering". When the troops finally did go over the top, they managed to capture the ridge with minimal casualties in comparison to previous attempts by the French and British. The troops endured savage fighting, and perservered. The ridge was thiers for the cost of three thousand dead, and about seven thousand, six hundred injured.

To ensured that the commanding general of the Canadian Corp, Sir Arthur Currie, had enough men at his disposal for the feat, he had engineers dig cavernous shelters beneath the Vimy trenches. This allowed some twenty thousand Canadians to flood into the battlefield. He had predicted that this would be a hard fight, and planned accordingly. The overwhelming numbers of the Canadians were one of the factors which led to thier success. The Corp's training and Currie's planning had paid off. Vimy Ridge was in the hands of the Allies.