October 1916 The Canadians start to arrive on the Vimy sector from the Somme battlefields in the south and load up on artillery and rations. For the coming battle a total of 42,609 tonnes of ammunition and 2,465 tonnes of daily rations are put together for the Canadian Corps. The Canadians also have access to 245 heavy guns, four 12-inch howitzers and the Royal Naval divisions' naval guns among other heavy artillery. For many it is their first glimpse of the devastated landscape.

		Over the tangle of wire in front lay the no man's land about which we had heard. Not two hundred yards away were the Germans in their trenches...we craned our necks and stared. Jumbled earth and debris, jagged wreckage: it looked as if a gigantic upheaval had destroyed all the surface and left only a festering wound. Everything was shapeless, ugly and distorted.
		Will Bird, author of Ghosts Have Warm Hands