Thiepval Unit

DOZER (Marco)
​President

President's Message

Thiepval unit is located in southern New Brunswick covering the Fundy  coast from the Maine USA border to the city of Saint John. We are a group of Veterans and Veteran Supporters that love to ride and help others as we discover our scenic back yard.
Some of the events we participate in are:
Motorcycle Rallies;
Formation rides;
weekly rides;
weekend trips; and 
fund raise for local charities and check up on our local veterans.

Visit our Facebook page

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CHARLIE (Charleen)
Vice President

gsAPPLE (Susan)
​​Road Captain

HOMER (Gord)
Sgt. At Arms

Thiepval Battle Honour

​Thiepval Ridge26 September 1916The Canadian victory at Courcelette earlier in September pushed the Corps up several hundred metres to new lines just after the village. Several weeks later, as part of Haig’s bite and hold plan, the 1st and 2nd Divisions would be jumping off from the new Canadian lines to take Thiepval Ridge, some 1 000 metres north west of their current position. The divisions would be covering fully half of the 6 000 yards of front planned for the attack, and would be advancing in broad daylight towards the Germans’ elevated position on top of the ridge.
After a three day bombardment, the 1st and 2nd Divisions attacked at 12h35 on 26 September.  Like most of the Somme attacks there was little room to manoeuvre or conceal preparations, so the divisions were caught out almost immediately under the German counter bombardment. The Canadian bombardment was able to keep the frontline trenches from functioning, but could not knock out the guns further back, which rained shells onto the battalions trying to cross the open ground to their objectives. Both divisions successfully moved across No Mans Land, though at high loss of life, and crashed into the trenches opposite, over running most over the course of a 3 hour struggle. As with Courcelette, the problem was less capturing a trench than holding the trench, and the battalions holding parts of Hessian, Kenora and the Zollern Graben struggled to hold them against multiple counter attacks.
By the end of the day, the trench systems at the ridge where still not fully captured and the British commander of the operation, Hubert Gough, called the attack off for the night, planned to begin again in the morning. However, the German regiments pulled out during the night, consolidating in the fortified Regina Trench system at the top of the ridge. Some effort was made to probe Regina trench, and the Canadian Divisions continued to skirmish around Kenora trench, but the large scale battle for Thiepval was over for the time being.  Canadian losses for the day were extremely heavy, total Allied losses for Thiepval were over 12 000.