Canadian War Museum receives Viscount Byng of Vimy’s medals

Canadian War Museum receives Viscount Byng of Vimy’s medals

“Personal stories help make visitors better understand the military history presented in the Museum” said Joe Geurts, Director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum. “And the story of a former Governor General, and the general who commanded the Canadian Corps at the Battle of Vimy Ridge is one that our visitors will appreciate now, and in future.”

At the official event today, donor Dale Murray conveyed his pleasure by saying, “Generations of Canadians will have the opportunity to discover more about the man who was a central figure in Canada’s emergence as an autonomous country within the British Commonwealth.”

Selected medals and honours will be on public display at the entrance to the Canadian Experience Galleries starting Friday, April 6. The display is one of several programs and activities marking the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge at the War Museum this Easter weekend, from Saturday, April 7 to Monday, April 9.

About the Canadian War Museum
The Canadian War Museum is Canada’s national museum of military history, and the second most visited museum in the Nation’s Capital. It attempts to help all Canadians better understand their country’s military history in its personal, national and international dimensions. The Museum emphasizes the human experience of war to explain the impact of organized human conflict on Canada and Canadians, and how, through war, conflict, and peace support operations, Canadians have affected, and been affected by, the world around them. Special exhibitions and programs also explore non-Canadian and general themes related to the human experience of war and the subject of armed conflict, past and present.

More information on Vimy Ridge Day activities can be found at https://www.historymuseum.ca/media/show_pr_e.asp?ID=1016. .

BACKGROUNDERS

Lord Byng of Vimy
Sir Julian Byng, an experienced, highly respected British general, commanded the Canadian Corps through the battles of Mount Sorrel, the Somme and Vimy Ridge, from May 1916 to June 1917. He forged the Canadian Corps into one of the most efficient formations on the Western Front.

Byng came from an aristocratic family, and was known to the King, who informally called him Bungo. From the start of the war, he held senior command appointments in the British Expeditionary Force, and orchestrated the successful retreat of allied forces from the Gallipoli Peninsula in early 1916 during the Dardanelles campaign.

Byng appeared destined to lead a British army, but, in May 1916, the British Commander-in-Chief, Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, ordered him to take command of the Canadian Corps. Shocked, and initially uncertain about the assignment, he wrote “Why am I sent to the Canadians?… I don’t know a Canadian. Why this stunt?”

The first commander of the Corps, British Lieutenant-General E. A. H. Alderson, had led the Canadians at the Battle of Second Ypres (April 1915), where they fought off overwhelming German forces and stood their ground in the face of the war’s first and second lethal chlorine gas attack