As Canadians at home and abroad prepare to mark the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, hundreds gathered at the site of another First World War bloody battle in France on Sunday -- the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial.

Groups of Canadian students were among those who stood before the bronze caribou statue -- the emblem of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment -- in northern France, where an entire battalion was nearly wiped out on July 1, 1916, the opening of the Battle of the Somme.

On that day, the British army believed its artillery fire had destroyed German resistance in the area. On orders to advance across the battlefield at Beaumont-Hamel, about 800 members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment walked into a hail of enemy bullets.

The Newfoundlanders suffered a casualty rate of 86 per cent -- the highest of any other regiment that day, memorial tour guide Josh Thomas said.

"Through their enormous sacrifice, the members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment have made our country and our world more sensitive and caring to the cost of war," said Gov. Gen. David Johnston, who attended Sunday's sombre commemoration.

"A whole generation of our young men, doctors, engineers, fisherman -- just missing," Newfoundland teacher Mike Grunchy told CTV News.

Mitchell Cook, a student from Alberta who travelled to the Beaumont-Hamel memorial, said he got "a really eerie sense of just what (the soldiers) had to go through."

"It's hard to understand," Cook told CTV.

At the time, Newfoundland was an autonomous British dominion, not yet part of the Canadian Confederation. The loss of so many soldiers in one day was particularly devastating for a small island nation.

On Monday, thousands will gather at the site of the Vimy Ridge battle, where the Canadian victory -- and a turning point for the Allies -- came at a deadly cost.

More than 3,500 Canadian soldiers were killed and thousands more were wounded in the battle.

At the crack of dawn on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, all four divisions of the Canadian Corps came together for the first time and stormed the German-held ridge. By April 12, the Canadians captured Vimy and, as many historians say, forged a new sense of national identity.

Various Vimy Ridge ceremonies will be held across Canada on Monday, including an overnight vigil at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

With a report from CTV's London Bureau Chief Tom Kennedy