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On the 70th anniversary of Vimy, John Fraser, then The Globe and Mail's London correspondent and now Master of Toronto's Massey College, attended what the Department of Veterans Affairs described as the last memorial trip to Vimy Ridge by the soldiers who actually fought in the famous battle. His story appeared in The Globe on Thursday, April 9, 1987.

It is said of the Battle of Vimy Ridge that a young country came of age and finally gained its true independence. But James de Lalanne of Montreal thinks this is ridiculous, because he and his fellow soldiers were never in "the slightest doubt" before the battle that they were Canadians.

It is also said of Vimy Ridge, brooding over the grim industrial Douai Plain in the valley of the Somme, that Canadian gallantry and courage made all the difference. But Lewis Robertson of Toronto only smiles and says it all had to do with "professionalism and common sense." And finally, it was promised of Vimy Ridge that a grateful, proud nation would never forget. But Charles Campbell of Melfort, Sask., isn't so sure: "Lots of people forget lots of things. We had to do what we did. Some died. Some didn't. That's it. That's the story."

Mr. de Lalanne and Mr. Campbell both turn 90 this year, while Mr. Robertson — who lost a leg just below his hip here — is 91. They and seven other First World War veterans came here this week for what the Department of Veterans Affairs has described as the last memorial trip to Vimy Ridge by the soldiers who actually fought in the famous battle, still one of the most important in Canadian military history.

Old men, it turns out, do not forget; they simply become more selective in what they choose to remember. Mr. de Lalanne, who was a 20-year-old lieutenant on April 9, 1917, when the four Canadian divisions began an assault along six kilometres of crucial, heavily defended German defences, has been back to Vimy Ridge many times, and there is very little — from strategy to conditions — that he has forgotten.

Mr. Campbell, a private, had never been back until he arrived in France on Tuesday morning. The immaculate park and memorial created by Canada and opened by King Edward VIII in 1936, with its pleasant woods and green pastures, seemed utterly unrecognizable when he first arrived at the battle site yesterday afternoon. It wasn't long, however, before he got his orientation and was shuffling curiously along in the tunnels and trenches of the Canadian front line.

The old men gather at the ridge again today, along with Veterans Affairs Minister George Hees, for a formal memorial service into which the government of Canada has put considerable expense and effort. A special guard of honour of Canadian soldiers based in Lahr, West Germany, had arrived ahead of the veterans, along with a full regimental band, while the officials accompanying Mr. Hees have been conspicuous in their helpfulness and lack of bureaucratic roadblocks.

As they toured the memorial park yesterday, the young soldiers of Lahr and the old veterans of Vimy mingled from time to time, not saying much of anything to one another. Still, in the quiet, they seemed to enjoy each other's company. If one wanted to see the old men's faces 70 years ago, with that strange mixture of cockiness and gravity often noted by non-Canadians at the time, they were there yesterday in the eager, vaguely perplexed looks of today's serving 19- and 20-year-olds.

Mr. Hees's department took much care tracking down the 10 chosen to represent Canada at the 70th anniversary, out of the approximately 4,500 veterans of the First World War still living.

Perhaps, inevitably, there was at least one from each of the nine provinces which then constituted Canada. (Newfoundland was a separate dominion and has its own memorial in the Somme to mark a tragic sacrifice of young islanders proportionately greater than Canada's).

None of the veterans here felt prepared to talk about the overall battle. Instead, they talked of their own small territories of mud and slime. Yet there have been many splendid literary evocations of Vimy Ridge, where the Canadians conquered a strategic position held by the Germans for three years. At least 130,000 French troops had previously died in vain attempts to capture it, and the British had also taken heavy losses.

Thanks to advance planning and rehearsal, the Canadian assault succeeded brilliantly where all previous efforts had failed. Canadian soldiers could hold their heads as high as any in the old world — on that day, maybe even higher. In his history of the First World War, the British historian John Terraine described the victory at Vimy as "one of the most dramatic in the entire conflict. ... The full value of what the Canadians had accomplished was seen the following year when Vimy Ridge became the backbone of the British defensive system against the great German offensive of March, 1918. But the immediate effects were also impressive: in six days the Canadians took over four thousand prisoners and 54 guns." The Canadians suffered 10,602 casualties in the battle, including 3,598 dead.

Mr. Campbell, a farmer all his life except for the war years, remembers most of all the heavy pre-dawn bombardments from 1,000 guns and the "flaming hills" on that first morning of the battle on April 9.

That and the sheer dread. "I tried not to think of death too much. I just hoped no one had my number. And then, just like that, off we went out of the tunnel to the forward trenches and up the hill." Before mid-afternoon, he and his group reached the crest of the ridge and looked down on the Douai Plain. Behind them lay the old Canadian front line with its unending mud, its craters half-filled with water and its reeking trenches. Below and beyond on the German side lay a seemingly green and peaceful countryside.

"It looked like paradise in comparison to where we had come from," he said, as he looked out for the first time in nearly 70 years at the same panorama. Then, as old men no doubt do, he became agitated and fumbled at his pockets. His companion offered to supply a handkerchief.

"I don't want a handkerchief, dammit. I want my cigarettes."

"You're 90 and you're still smoking?" asked an incredulous journalist, reaching quickly for his own pack.

"'Yes sir," Mr. Campbell said. "I started smoking Navy Cut right here when I was 20 and I haven't stopped since. I can't tell you how many people told me it was going to kill me."

And he laughed as he lit up.