94- Year- Old Hagersville "Boy"
W.W. I Veteran Returning
To Scene Of Vimy Battle
by Margaret Clause & Kirk Brown
It's been 75 years since the Battle of Vimy Ridge, but for John "Juney" Close a veteran of that World War I conflict, it seems like only yesterday.
Mr. Close, who will mark his 96th birthday on July 4th, along with thirteen other Vimy Ridge Veterans, is leaving this first weekend in April, 1992, on a return journey to France to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the legendary battle and honour the memory of the 10,000 Canadian soldiers who lost their lives there. The trip is being funded by the Canadian Ministry of Veterans' Affairs.
It was on Easter Monday of seventy-five years ago (1917), following years of Allied effort that the Canadians created a plan of attack based on bold, innovative strategies. The Canadian boys withstood sizeable losses in the battle, but took Vimy Ridge in a matter of hours.
On that day the Canadian Army did something no one else had been able to achieve. They ripped open a permanent hole in the German front lines at Vimy Ridge. The British and French were unable to do it, but the Canadian soldiers were successful. Because of Vimy Ridge, it is said Canada came of age...because of Vimy Ridge it is said our country found its manhood.
For the 30,000 Canadian young men, most in their late teens, who conquered the Ridge that day, the victory was sweet and turned World War I around for the Allied forces and gave fellow Canadians at home a sense of national identity.
Recruitment
Mr. Close, a member of the Royal Canadian Legion—Branch 164, Hagersville, who now resides in Simcoe, has a vivid memory for a man of his age and has no problem recollecting the events of his life more than seven and a half decades
'There was a recruiting meeting in the Garnet United Church on March 11, 1916. Six of us to join "C" Company in Hagersville. Some of our friends, the next day, heard about the recruiting meeting and came in to sign too," said Mr. Close. "My parents had both passed away, and I was making my home with
my uncle, Ham Cherry, at Garnet. I was helping out on the farm and was 19 when I signed up.  Mr. Close said at that time if you didn't go, somebody else would.
 
John H. Close, a member of the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 164, Hagersville, is leaving this weekend for France to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in which he participated. A total of 14 Vimy veterans, all in their mid-90's, are making the trip which is funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Mr. Close will be accompanied by his daughter, Margaret Clause of Garnet.	Photo by Kirk Brown.

W.W. I Veteran Returning To Vimy Ridge
(Continued from Page 1)
have to. "We knew what we were getting into. There were no illusions about that. We didn't want to be conscripted, so we volunteered."
He said everyone who joined up knew what it was like because there was enough wounded vets arriving home and they told them about the mud and the trenches.
Mr. Close recalls "C" Company training at the Hagersville Armouries (now the Community Centre) under the supervision of an old English soldier by the name of Battridge, who claimed "if we didn't train he'd see we did."
It was about the first of July he was transferred to Camp Borden and trained there for several months before shipping out to England and then on to France.
The Battle
"We stayed in the Tunnel the night before. The Royal Canadian Regiment was the one up nearest to the Front Line. Everybody had a buddy in the army. I had a fellow named Andy Doughty from Nanticoke. That evening an officer asked Andy to come with him up top. In about an hour later, they brought their bodies back down in two sandbags. That was kind of a shake-up for me, you see, because we were chums," said Mr. Close.
In the morning, he recalls pulling up out of the tunnel. "It was snowing a little bit and they placed us along what they called the 'jump off' trench, waiting for the barrage to open. When it opened I followed the barrage along with the rest."
"You had to lie down on your tummy sometimes because it was better than standing up. You just had to remain about 150 yards behind the incoming shells," he said.
This sort of military advance was referred to as "going over the top" and means jumping out of the trench and attacking.
"A rear barrage was laid down ahead and you keep behind this barrage. Machine gun bullets from the Germans would come through our barrage," said Mr. Close.
When the barrage opened, it fell on the German front line trenches. Behind the frontline were the brigade machine gunners. These gunners would get a sweep in before the barrage reached them. Although the German machine gunners ran the risk of being wiped out, those bursts of fire power were deadly.
Wounded
"There was an officer waved to four of us to follow him. There was quite a mound about eight feet high and not very wide. I could never understand why he didn't go around...we could have gone around it. But privates don't tell officers what to do," explained Private Close.
"When we got on top, he was instantly killed and the two with him. I had the end of my rifle shot off, a bullet went right through it and the bayonet fell off," he said. "As my leg came up, a bullet ripped in the bottom it, and travelled along underneath and came out my hind end and made quite a hole."
Mr. Close said he began to crawl back on his hands and knees thinking he'd been hit by a brick not realizing he'd been the recipient of a German bullet. On my way back he encountered a fellow soldier.
I said to him, "What's wrong
with my backside?" He replied, "You've got a big hole in it."
On his way back he saw a fellow soldier waving at him and Mr. Close hobbled over. There was a fellow warrior in the mud, up to his waist. Another wounded slider came along to help and the two of them pulled him out using a nearby plank.
"A Sergeant was laying there and I counted 16 bullets in his arms and legs and he was obviously dying and there was a fellow sitting on a mound with his foot blown off," explained Mr. Close.
He remembers six wounded Germans appeared from somewhere. "I motioned to them back where the dressing station side was (Allied side), and I tagged along behind them and was patched up and innoculated for lockjaw.
That evening there was a long train full of the Vimy Ridge wounded headed for Boulogne and in the morning a doctor made Mr. Close a stretcher case. The following night he was transported to England on a hospital ship.
"We crossed the English Channel that night and ended up in Norwich Hospital, where I stayed for 34 days. I had some trouble with
it...wanting to heal on the ends and not in the middle," he said.
When asked how long the Vimy Ridge battle had taken before he was wounded, Mr. Close said, "Well, the barrage would take, I'd think, probably a half-an-hour of steady shooting and everything was as silent as all get out, after I was hit. In ten minutes the barrage was all over."
"I didn't know until I read Pierre Berton's recent book that machine gun fire was coming from "The Pimple", coming in sideways, not straight at us."
The Pimple was not scheduled to be taken until April 10th. But the Germans had a stronghold of concrete pillboxes, bristling with machine guns, and a maze of tunnels, dug outs, holes, trenches and entanglements, all carefully camouflaged and protected by mines, barbed wire and booby traps.
Mr. Close was asked what the barrage sounded like. "I can remember it vividly. I went over the

top probably six times during 1918. You can remember the first one better, he said. "It's just such a roar, it shook the earth. I think everybody felt a little confusion. Later on, when the other attacks were made, we got to be what you call professionals, it's a business. And the noise, that didn't bother me," said Mr. Close. "You get used to it. You know what you've got to do. But Vimy was the first. It was an adventure, said Mr. Close. "It was a steady wall of fire in front of you, the force of the explosions goes ahead, occasionally a shell will come short so you're always hoping that they don't shoot short because if they come short, it may be going to take you," said the veteran soldier.
It was the first time a creeping barrage had ever been used and it was very successful. The Canadians didn't have another creeping barrage until the Battle of Amiens on August 8, 1918.
Asked if there was a sense of pride when it was all over, Mr. Close said: "Yes, definitely. It's a life and death game. Those that survived had a certain pride."
When asked how he feels about the trip back to France, he said, "It's an honour to represent the fellows from Hagersville. The ones who came back are gone now. But, many like Charlie Harrop, Pete Laidlaw, Percy Giles and the two Hewitt brothers never came back.
Mr. Close will be accompanied to France by his eldest daughter Margaret Clause, who has recorded much of her father's military history. The two depart for Ottawa on Saturday, April 4th. The following day the Vimy Ridge veterans will be greeted by Canada's Governor General, The Right Honourable Ramon Hnatyshyn at his residence, Rideau Hall, for an official reception before departing for France.
Then on Thursday, April 9th, the Canadian delegation will participate in a major ceremony at the Vimy Ridge Memorial Cenotaph.
Of the fourteen Vimy Ridge soldiers returning to the 75th Anniversary of the historical battle, Mr. Close was honoured to be selected by the Department of Veterans Affairs to recite the well-known Remembrance Day verse:
"They shall not grow old, as we are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."
The Haldimand Press takes this opportunity to wish both John and Margaret a safe and fulfilling pilgrimage abroad and looks forward to talking to you on your return.

Shown here is World War I Veteran, Private John H. Close, Royal Canadian Regiment, serial number 739656, in the Spring of 1916 after enlisting in the Canadian Army. About one year later he was involved in one of the bloodiest battles in history... Vimy Ridge, which took 10,000 Canadian lives in only a matter of hours.