Most Canadians witnessed the ceremony rededicating the Vimy monument to the 3598 Canadians who died in that successful assault on a stronghold that had defied the attempts by others for two and a half years and at the cost of a reported 200,000 lives.

It was a stupendous achievement which owed much of its success to the wise Canadian leaderships of Currie and Bing. Bing had observed the senseless butchery that was the pattern of assault by the British and other Commonwealth countries and he studied their failings and evaluat- ed the tactics being employed that were resulting in such huge death tolls. He then discarded some and restructured others and made changes that he put into place.

These changes included the discarding of the shelling practices of the heavy artillery batteries which were used to pulverize enemy positions but were lifted when the assault commenced.

This permitted the enemy to recover and return to their posts and be ready as the Commonwealth troops advanced across "no man's land."

The result was wholesale slaughter by machine guns and other weapons.

The commanders of these men regarded them as nothing more than gun fodder and did nothing to eliminate the weaknesses in the strategies and tactics they employed. These were virtually identical tactics in use earlier when cavalry was the primary assault weapon. Bing and Currie were cut from a different cloth and valued their soldiers. They formed a renewed use of the artillery barrage: They invented the "Creeping barrage" which advanced ahead of the assault troops and kept the enemy away from their weapons and giving the assault a chance to overrun the enemy positions. This alone saved many lives.

Today, our young men in Afghanistan, and the Americans and British in Iraq, are engaged in wars totally different to those of 1914-1918 and W.W.2. The enemy is unrecognizable: he carries no identification and could be the civilian standing a few feet away.

This is, again, the time to recognize that the game has changed and serious study of the methods and equipment in use should be re evaluated. War has morphed into conflict where death is dealt out indiscriminately and without warning and regardless of the victims or the costs. The enemy purports Godlike values but act like the agent of the Devil.

Modern advances in technology should be adaptable to the detection of roadside bombs or land mines. Equipment should, and probably could, be upgraded to offer better protection from the worst of high explosives. That is the responsibility of our government to approve and fund such undertakings. The 1914-18 war took the lives of five of my family and the fiancé of my aunt. I don't want to witness the eradication of any more men and women to give those who put them in harms way new photo ops. The price is too high.

At this time there are a few W.W.2 veterans who survived that conflict still denied veterans support programs by this and the previous government simply because their places of birth were elsewhere other than Canada. All are long time citizens of Canada and many answered Canada's call for recruits during the Korean War, but that according, to our political elite, doesn't count.

To include these veterans might cost a dollar or two, but those souls, now long dead, can be recognized: they don't require support. Sometimes one wonders about the moral values of those who are so selective and quick to forget the sacrifices of the living survivors who fought to save civilization.
K. Hayward
        Mono