Book Review Supplement Spring 2007 · including No. 4 British General Hospital in France, No. 3...

Canadian Military History

Volume 16 | Issue 2 Article 8

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Book Review Supplement Spring 2007

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1© Canadian Military History Book Review Supplement, Spring 2007

CANADIAN MILITARY HISTORY

BOOK REVIEWSUPPLEMENT

Spring 2007 Issue 19

Wayne Ralph, Aces, Warriors andWingmen: Firsthand Accounts ofCanada’s Fighter Pilots in theSecond World War (Toronto: JohnWiley & Sons, 2005), $34.99, 272pages, ISBN 0-470-83590-7.

Norm Shannon, From Baddeck tothe Yalu: Stories of Canada’s Air-men at War (Ottawa: Esprit deCorps Books, 2005), $21.99 paper,224 pages, ISBN 1-895896-30-4.

Cynthia J. Faryon, Unsung Heroesof the Royal Canadian Air Force:Incredible Tales of Courage andDaring during World War II(Canmore, AB: Altitude Publishing,2003), $9.95 paper, 126 pages,ISBN 1-55153-977-2.

One of Canada’s best aviation his-torians has done it again with

this fascinating account of Canadi-ans in aerial fighting during theSecond World War. What makesAces, Warriors and Wingmen soeffective is that it’s not a traditionalnarrative that attempts to follow thecourse of the war in chronologicalorder. Instead, Ralph builds thebook around a number of biographi-cal sketches that cover the breadthof the war experience, from Cana-dians in the Royal Air Force in 1939to their readjustment to civilian life

after the war. But even so, Ralphchanges things up by starting withJ.F. “Stocky” Edwards’ exploits inthe Western Desert and Canadiansin the siege of Malta, returning laterto the fall of France and the Battleof Britain.

The effect is to create somethingrather like a scrapbook. The readercan go through it cover to cover, orrandomly flip through the bio-graphical sketches, each of whichcontains a personal profile, wartimeand recent photographs, reminis-cences, and excerpts from otherhistorical accounts. Scatteredthroughout are other items of spe-cial interest, such as portions of theletters of Battle of Britain veteranWillie McKnight.

The clue to Wayne Ralph’s ap-proach can be found in his pro-logue, which will strike a chordwith anyone who has done oral his-tory interviews. Memory is a curi-ous thing, sometimes muddled andconfused, sometimes frighteninglysharp. In interviewing airmen overthe years, Ralph came into contactwith many types of memories, fromthe man who was determined thatonly he could set the historicalrecord straight to the man who said“I think I got the Croix de Guerre.But I don’t remember.” In Aces,Warriors and Wingmen, Ralph has

gathered together dozens of differ-ent memories and woven them intoa powerful and effective book thatis “more about people than cam-paigns, about humanity rather thanfighter aircraft, about sociologyrather than technology” (xiii).

Norm Shannon, a veteran offifty-two B-25 Mitchell operationsduring the Second World War, takesa more traditional approach withhis narrative history of Canadianmilitary aviation. He begins at thevery beginning, with the refusal in1910 of Canada’s Militia Council toconsider the airplane as a possibleweapon of war. From that point, hetakes us through three wars (andtwo periods of peacetime reductionin the strength of the air force) inprose that could perhaps only havebeen written by one who had flownin combat himself. Well illustrated(in colour as well as black andwhite), it covers much familiarground but will provide a good readfor the non-specialist looking for agood survey history.

Younger readers will find equalinterest in Faryon’s Unsung Heroesof the Royal Canadian Air Force,a collection of twelve accounts ofCanadians in the air war. They arewell written and engaging, and theonly complaint one can make aboutthe book is its balance. Despite the

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et al.: Book Review Supplement Spring 2007

Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2007

2 © Canadian Military History Book Review Supplement, Spring 2007

title and the photograph of an ech-elon of Spitfires on the front cover,ten of the twelve chapters deal withmen in Bomber Command, theother two are about fighter pilots,and there is no mention of Trans-port Command, Coastal Command,the British Commonwealth AirTraining Plan, or air operations inthe Far East (all of which producedtheir fair share of unsung heroes,courage, and daring). The book isa good start, but perhaps a secondvolume is in order.

DR

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Katherine Wilson-Simmie, LightsOut!: The Memoir of Nursing Sis-ter Kate Wilson, Canadian ArmyMedical Corps, 1915-1917 (Ot-tawa: CEF Books, 2004 [1981]),$19.95 paper, 199 pages, ISBN 0-896979-27-0.

Individual accounts of women atwar are rare. This book by

Katherine Wilson-Simmie on heractive duty during the First WorldWar as a Canadian Nursing Sisterin England, France, and Greece isa fine addition to military literature.Following her discharge from thearmy, Wilson-Simmie used her di-ary to write a book for her chil-dren as a souvenir. Upon learningthat no books had been written byher fellow Nursing Sisters, in herown way she attempted to “providea clear picture of the life of a Cana-dian Army Nursing Sister duringthe 1914-1918 World War” (7).Lights Out! is the memoir of aneducated, strong-willed, deter-mined, and proud Anglican women.The book, written with an air ofconfidence and formality, describesthe Nursing Sisters’ wartime im-pressions of hospitals, soldiers, theenvironment in which they worked,and their recreational activities.

Bursting with patriotic prideand affected by the fervor of thetime, Wilson enlisted in her home-town of Owen Sound, Ontario.Proudly dressed in her CanadianArmy Medical Corps uniform, shewas ready to serve her nation andleft Halifax on the troop shipHesperian, which carried her toLiverpool.

She served at various hospitals,including No. 4 British GeneralHospital in France, No. 3 CanadianStationary Hospital on Lemnos Is-land in the Mediterranean, and No.44 Casualty Clearing Station inFrance. In the latter hospital, sheillustrated her experiences of at-tending to the wounded men, in-cluding a young German prisoner.At first she detested the very ideaof helping the enemy but, uponlooking at his terrified face, sherealized that “he was no longer ahated Hun, just a small woundedboy without a friend on any side”(129). Eventually, the reality of nurs-ing sick, wounded, and shell-shocked men took its toll onWilson, as her mental health startedto be affected by this environmentof death. Nevertheless, the book isabout Wilson’s life rather than thedeath that surrounded her, and shetends to focus on positive nostalgicmemories rather than the devasta-tion of war.

LI

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Albert P. Clark, 33 Months as aPOW in Stalag Luft III: A WorldWar II Airman Tells His Story(Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing,2005), $17.95 US paper, 207 pages,ISBN 1-55591-536-1.

There has long been a fiction thatHollywood “Americanized” the storyof the Great Escape to make itmore attractive to cinema-goers inthe United States. In fact, as “Bub”Clark’s new autobiography makesclear, American airmen were in-volved in every aspect of the escapeorganization, some in senior posi-tions, and it was only their trans-fer to a separate camp that keptthem from taking part in the escape.

Clark was one of the first mem-bers of the US Army Air Force toreach Stalag Luft 3, downed on 22July 1942 over the coast of France.He recalls being terribly embar-rassed by the situation: “Here I was,the second most senior and expe-rienced pilot in our group, respon-sible for the training of our youngpilots, and I had become the firstbattle casualty” (26). He was a sen-

ior lieutenant-colonel, a graduate ofWest Point, and now he was in thebag after firing only a few shots inanger. But his war was far fromover. When X Organization beganthe operation to construct the threetunnels that would eventually cul-minate in the Great Escape, Clarkwas made head of security, in theinner circle of the escape leader-ship. He continued to play a lead-ership role after the USAAF POWswere moved to a new camp in Sep-tember 1943, and when the prison-ers were marched away from theadvancing Russians in January1945. Liberated in May 1945, Clarkremained in the service, eventuallyretiring as a lieutenant-general in1974.

Clark’s memoirs will be of in-terest to anyone who has followedthe story of the Great Escape, forhe is one of the last survivors of XOrganization’s inner ring of topdecision-makers. He has someunique insights into the personali-ties involved and the plan that even-tually resulted in the escape of sev-enty-six Allied airmen, and relatesthem with the mixture ofcommonsense and cockiness forwhich he was known in the camp.Perhaps more importantly, itshould put to rest the hoary oldmyth that film-makers did violenceto the history by inserting Ameri-cans into the story of the GreatEscape.

JFV

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Russell A. Hart, Clash of Arms:How the Allies Won in Normandy(Norman: University of OklahomaPress, 2004), $24.95 US paper, 488pages, ISBN 0-8061-360-5-7.

An excellent example of the “newmilitary history,” Clash of

Arms: How the Allies Won in Nor-mandy places an operational analy-sis of the campaign within the cul-tural, economic, and political con-text of its combatant nations. Thebook is divided according to coun-try and chronology. By tracing thedevelopment of the German, Ameri-can, British, and Canadian armieswithin context of the interwar years

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Canadian Military History, Vol. 16 [2007], Iss. 2, Art. 8



and early phases of the SecondWorld War, Hart provides thereader with a superb historical un-derstanding of how the armiesfought the way that they did, and,perhaps more importantly, why.

Hart argues that the benchmarkfor success in Normandy was anarmy’s ability to adapt both doctri-nally and operationally to the chal-lenges of the battlefield. The UnitedStates Army, which emphasized“bottom-up” operational research,was the best at adapting, a processthat entailed not only observing andanalyzing combat operations inNormandy, but also ensuring thatthe appropriate lessons were effec-tively disseminated. Although en-joying a wealth of combat experi-ence and capable of exhibiting sub-lime tactical skill and flexibility (es-pecially in the defence), the Germanforces in Normandy were preventedfrom strategically and operationallyadapting to the battle as well as theAmericans by the inculcation of astifling Nazi political doctrine thatdiscouraged experiment and varia-tion. As a result, US forces wereable to outfight gradually the Ger-mans in their sector and force abreakout after the success of Op-eration COBRA.

However, despite their inher-ent weaknesses the Wehrmacht andWaffen SS were still superior tothe Canadian and British forces.Both Commonwealth armies con-sistently utilized obsolete or inap-propriate tactics and could be pain-fully slow to adapt to the realitiesof the Normandy battlefield. Thesefailings, along with the effects ofinterwar neglect, a strong desire toavoid casualties, and an over-em-phasis on tradition, contributed tothe repeated failure of the Anglo-Canadian offensives designed topenetrate the German lines in theeastern half of the battlefield. Al-though Hart notes that the Canadi-ans, less laden with tradition, gen-erally learned more quickly thanthe British, they could not over-come earlier deficiencies in time toprevent fully the German “escape”at Falaise.

Hart’s melding of operationaland non-military factors, the reha-

bilitation of the tactical acumen ofthe United States Army (with theconcomitant dispelling of the mythof the German “super-soldier”), andemphasis on the impact of Nazismon the German forces place hisanalysis at the forefront of the newwave of Second World Warhistoriography. From the perspec-tive of the Canadianist, Hart’s workis further refreshing and reward-ing in that it, unlike almost all gen-eral analyses of the campaign, treatsthe Canadian Army in Normandy asa separate entity from the British.This is likely reflective of the Artof War series in which Clash ofArms was originally published byLynne Rienner Publishers. JohnEnglish, author of The CanadianArmy and the Normandy Cam-paign: A Study in the Failure ofHigh Command, the most compre-hensive and erudite dedicated op-erational study of the Canadian Ar-my’s performance in Normandy, isan editor of The Art of War series.Together, they represent two of thebest studies of the Canadian Army’sperformance in the seminal battleof the campaign for north-west Eu-rope.

BD

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Adrian Hayes, Pegahmagabow:Legendary Warrior, ForgottenHero (Huntsville, ON: Fox MeadowCreations, 2003), $19.95 paper, 96pages, ISBN 0-9681452-8-0.

Supported by a wide variety ofsources, including Pegah-

magabow’s personal papers, photo-graphs, archival documents, maga-zines, and published accounts,Adrian Hayes delivers a short,clear, and interesting analysis ofone of Canada’s forgotten heroes.

Through the life story ofPegahmagabow, Hayes successfullypulls together details that connectlocal, national, and internationalhistory during the First World Warand after. The author describes thedifficult social and physical envi-ronment in which the people of theParry Island band – now theWasauksing First Nation – were liv-ing before the outbreak of the Great

War, and how they saw that conflictas a way to prove their courage andloyalty to Canada in order to gaincivil rights when they returnedfrom the front. If the goal was toprove bravery during the war,Francis Pegahmagabow clearlyqualified as an outstanding warriorby receiving a Military Medal andtwo bars. Canada, the Departmentof Indian Affairs, the press, and theaboriginal community received himwith honour upon his return, butthat did not last.

The second part ofPegahmagabow’s life in Canadawould be as hard as that in thetrenches of the Western Front. Hissacrifices, medals, and courage inthe past would not prove to be goodenough to win the respect of theCanadian government and to erasesome of the selfishness among lo-cal Indians. Pegahmagabow’s returnmarked the beginning of a new setof struggles in a still difficult eco-nomic situation on Parry Island,where he had to work with the In-dian agents at Parry Sound, whoseemed to be obstacles to the na-tives’ material progress.

One of Hayes’ main theses isthat Pegahmagabow became one ofthe most important native leaderswho fought for native self-govern-ment in the postwar years and thatnative political activism in Canadawas not an extension of the Ameri-can civil rights movement of the1960s. On the contrary, in 1943Pegahmagabow was “a member of anational delegation that demon-strated on Parliament Hill in Ottawafor the exemption of natives fromincome tax and conscription,”writes Hayes, and “he later becamea member of the National IndianGovernment after it was formed inOttawa in June 1945 and served twoterms as supreme chief” (10).

The legacy of Pegahmagabow isclear and should be recognized to-day by Canadians. Since the 1960s,aboriginal associations have beenencouraged as partners in the gov-erning process and today, the As-sembly of First Nations receivesabout $6 million a year from IndianAffairs. All this accomplishmentwas in part due to the efforts of a

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great warrior who survived the war,and helped others to survive it, arestless warrior who returnedhome to continue the fight.

HGM

* * * * *

David Mackenzie, ed., Canada andthe First World War: Essays inHonour of Robert Craig Brown(Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 2005), $35.00 paper, 452pages, ISBN 0-8020-8445-1.

Robert Craig Brown was an his-torian at the University of To-

ronto who made significant contri-butions to the study of the Cana-dian experience in the First WorldWar. Canada and the First WorldWar, edited by David Mackenzie,is a collection of essays offered upin recognition of Brown’s contribu-tion and as a tribute to the eminentteacher and historian.

Canada and the First WorldWar offers a unified collection ofessays by friends, colleagues, andformer students of Brown. Thesearticles re-examine how Canadamay, or in some cases may not, havebeen affected by the Great War, andthe authors approach the questionby examining factors as diverse asgender, ethnicity, class, and region.In many of these essays, tradition-ally accepted arguments are revised.For example, Douglas McCalla ar-gues that the war was not the greattransformer of the Canadianeconomy as many previous histori-ans have claimed. Rather, McCallaargues that the war was more of adisruption than a transformation tothe Canadian economy. By the sametoken, Joan Sangster believes thatthe credit attributed to the GreatWar for transforming the lives ofwomen has been largely over-exag-gerated. Sangster provides insightsinto the actual number of womenemployed in the munitions indus-try, noting that familiar photos ofwomen in the factories were takenmostly for purposes of propaganda.Sangster notes that increasing num-bers of women in the workforce wassimply a pre-war trend that contin-ued through the war years and be-yond.

Besides providing new insightsto re-examine old arguments, thiscollection is also significant for itsattempts to provide historical con-text. Especially noteworthy are es-says by Terry Copp and John Eng-lish. Copp examines the events of1914-1918 and states that whileCanadians may have supported thewar for different reasons, they werewell aware of the possible conse-quences. John English looks at theissue of political leadership, ask-ing “What did leadership mean to[Prime Minister Robert] Borden inhis own times?” (78). In a fascinat-ing article that provides both clar-ity and context, English notes thatwhile Borden’s political leadershipand language may be considered“traditional,” it was a political stylethat was well-suited to Canada atthe time.

Overall, this is a collection ofessays that both stand on their own,and provide a unified portrait ofthe Canadian experience in the FirstWorld War. Arranged in sectionsentitled “Fighting the War,” “The Warat Home,” and “The Aftermath,” andincluding essays by some of today’smost prominent Canadian histori-ans including J.L. Granatstein,Margaret MacMillan, and JonathanF. Vance, this is an essential collec-tion for both students and enthusi-asts of Canadian and military his-tory.

TI

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H.P. Willmott, The Battle of LeyteGulf: The Last Fleet Action(Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 2005), $35.00 US, 398 pages,ISBN 0-253-34528-6.

H.P. Willmott’s newest book is adetailed account primarily con-

cerning the October 1944 naval bat-tles fought between American andJapanese forces in and near thePhilippine Archipelago. The text fea-tures factual material interwovenwith substantive analysis. This bookdivides roughly into two conceptualelements: the battle itself, and twolarger discursive sections.

Willmott introduces a chrono-metric approach to the various ac-

tions as a whole, noting that otheraccounts have treated these battleschronologically but in separatedframeworks. The advantage, andcreativity, to this is that Willmottoutlines where events in one actioninfluenced another event, a dimen-sion often missing from previousaccounts. Willmott re-conceptual-izes the Battle of Leyte Gulf as “aseries of actions, not a single bat-tle” (2), gives greater focus to thepreliminaries and follow-up ac-tions, and attempts a relatively con-cise account of the event.

Leyte Gulf is deserving of thishistorical attention for two reasons:its unusual character, and becauseit was the last fleet action. With re-spect to the latter, the oddity is thatthe battle was fought even thoughthe strategic turning point of the warhad long passed. This relates toWillmott’s larger discussions, whathe titles “The Nature of War and ofVictory” and “To Pause and Con-sider: Blame, Responsibility, andthe Verdict of History.” These sec-tions are more thought-provokingthan the discussion of the battle.

The major concern is withWillmott’s vague promotion of theconventional brute-force theory:“the outcome of operations wasnever in question” (3), “Age of Mass”(7), “massive superior Americanpower” (8), “American forces movedto overwhelm Japanese forces” (9),and so on. This theory sits uncom-fortably because it ignores the com-plexities and contributions of landbattles. Indeed, the least desirableconceptualization here is that “thebasis of American success lay pri-marily in sea and air power” (239),an assertion that is not necessarilyincorrect, but far too simplistic.Note, Guadalcanal saw inferiornumbers of emaciated US troops –with inadequate naval support – vic-torious. Peleliu saw the 14th Regi-ment break the tough 1st MarineDivision. And Iwo Jima’s battlecasualty ratio was four Americansdead, missing, and wounded forevery five Japanese killed or takenprisoner. Naval and air can do onlyso much until an individual mustpull a trigger and settle the issuepermanently – brute-force theory

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and its reliance on vague nationaleconomics is not sufficient to ex-plain military victory. Another read-ing would argue that Willmott isstimulating discussion, and admit-ting that brute force has “some aca-demic antiseptic” (9). His work isquite advanced, but drawing con-clusions about the Pacific War as awhole from naval and naval/air bat-tles alone is problematic.

Overall, however, this book issuperb. The anglophile tone in Pa-cific War history is irksome, andWillmott uses “shoulds” too often.But the research included satisfac-tory American archival sources(even allowing for the problematicThe Barrier and the Javelin,1983) and the charge of extensivedetailing that has dogged Willmottfor many previous monographs is,thankfully, not warranted here. Hewrites solidly, with strong flow andcaptivating narration. A must fornaval and Pacific War historians.

DAC

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Aidan MacCarthy, A Doctor’s War(Cork, Ireland: Collins Press,2005), £9.99 paper, 160 pages,ISBN 1-903464-70-6.

When Aidan MacCarthy gradu-ated from medical school in

Ireland in 1938, he faced a situa-tion that is unheard of in twenty-first-century Canada: there were toomany doctors and not enough po-sitions for them. After working atvarious part-time jobs, he took theroute that many of his contempo-raries did – he joined the peace-time Royal Air Force. Like manymen in the same position, he gotmuch more than he bargained for.

MacCarthy served first in thecampaign in France in 1940, then,after a short stint in England, wastransferred to the Far East, only tobe captured at the fall of Java. As amedical officer, he watched thephysical deterioration of the menunder his command due to the lackof food, especially vitamins. He wasastonished at how quickly they de-clined, and also at how rapidly theycould improve with fairly basicfoods and medicines. There are

also some pretty grisly descriptionsof the consequences of a diet ofpoor food – his account of whathappens when the eggs in worm-in-fested rice hatch in a person’s stom-ach is not to be read near meal time.

Later in the war, MacCarthywas moved to Japan, and eventu-ally to a camp in Nagasaki. Theprisoners could tell from the de-meanour of their guards that thewar was drawing to an end. Then,one day in early August, two bomb-ers passed overhead and droppedwhat looked like small parachutes.“There then followed a blue flash,accompanied by a very bright mag-nesium-type flare ... Then came afrighteningly loud but rather flatexplosion which was followed by ablast of hot air” (125). They lookedout of their dugout to a scene ofabsolute devastation in an eerie at-mosphere – “Most frightening of allwas a lack of sunlight – in contrastto the bright August sunshine thatwe had left a few minutes earlier,there was now a kind of twilight” –and MacCarthy’s description oftravelling around Nagasaki over thenext few days is powerful and har-rowing: “We all genuinely thought,for some time, that this was the endof the world” (126).

Originally published in 1979,this reprint is long overdue, forMacCarthy’s is one of the best ac-counts of captivity in the Far East.It is a remarkable testament to aman who never lost his humanityin the most inhuman of situations.

DR

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David Clarke, The Angel of Mons:Phantom Soldiers and GhostlyGuardians (Etobicoke, ON: JohnWiley & Sons, 2004), $35.99, 278pages, ISBN 0-470-86277-7.

In this fascinating piece of histori-cal detective work, David Clarke

deconstructs the legends of ghostlyinterventions on the battlefieldsduring the First World War, ofwhich the Angel of Mons is only thebest known example. There werelegions of archers, figures of St.George, clouds of ethereal mist,lines of medieval cavalrymen,

Christ-like figures in white – all ofwhich were said to have appearedat various places and times on thebattlefield to lift the spirits of Brit-ish soldiers when all seemed lost.

According to Clarke, much ofthis myth can be traced to one man,Arthur Machen, who published ashort story called The Bowmen(reprinted in an appendix to thebook), about a ghostly rank of arch-ers that materialized on the battle-field during the retreat of the Brit-ish Expeditionary Force in 1914 tohelp stem the German offensive.From the very beginning, Macheninsisted that his story was pure fic-tion, but his protestations were ig-nored by virtually everyone. Overtime, his original story was embel-lished, adapted, and transformedby journalists, ministers, and sol-diers, to the point that, if one wereto believe all the various sightingsthat were reported, it would haveto be conceded that there weremore ghostly apparitions on theWestern Front than soldiers.

Clarke does an excellent job oftracing the growth of these myths,all of which were based on hear-say. As Machen wrote, “Someone(unknown) has met a nurse (un-named) who has talked to a soldier(anonymous) who has seen angels.But THAT is not evidence” (162).But the absence of evidence wasirrelevant. People desperatelywanted to believe that supernaturalforces had intervened on Britain’sbehalf, and would accept no argu-ment to the contrary.

The author would have ben-efited from casting his net a littlemore widely. Horne and Kramer’sbook on German atrocities in Bel-gium in 1914 has much valuableinformation on the extreme psycho-logical stresses experienced by sol-diers in battle and the ability ofthose stresses to create delusionalstates in which normally rationalsoldiers might see visions. He men-tions Sir Oliver Lodge’s foray intothe debate, but hasn’t consultedRene Koller’s Searching forRaymond, which examines theChurch of England’s official re-sponse to the popularity of occult-ism after the First World War. And

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regrettably, there is no mention ofKatharine Hale’s very influentialpoem “The White Comrade” orCecil Francis Whitehouse’s poem“The Archers of Mons,” whichbrought these legends to Canada.

Still, this is a fine book.Clarke’s analysis is judicious andfair-minded – he concludes thatthere is not a single piece of first-hand evidence to support the exist-ence of any of these apparitions, andmakes a convincing case for howand why they became so deeply in-grained in the public consciousnessof many nations. Ultimately, he ar-gues, people believed what theywanted to believe, and the factsweren’t allowed to get in the way.

JFV

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Craig B. Cameron, ed., BornLucky: RSM Harry Fox, MBE,One D-Day Dodger’s Story (St.Catharines, ON: Vanwell, 2005),$18.95 paper, 216 pages, ISBN 1-55125-102-7.

Although the cover of this bookshows the cap badge of the

Queen’s Own Rifles, Fox spent mostof the war with the Hastings andPrince Edward Regiment, a situa-tion that wasn’t entirely his ownchoice. He had responded to a callfor volunteers for key soldiers totransfer to front-line units, gaincombat experience, and then returnto their units to take part in the in-vasion of France. When Fox left theQOR on such a posting on 3 Octo-ber 1943, he had no idea he wouldspend the entire war with the HastyPs.

Fox’s memoir is not so much achronological narrative as a seriesof short vignettes that are strungtogether in mostly chronologicalorder. That he always consideredhimself a member of the Queen’sOwn doesn’t mean that he failed tofit in with the Plough Jockeys; onthe contrary, Fox seems to have beenan immensely effective RSM almostfrom the day that he joined the unitin Italy on 14 January 1944. Notquite the typical fire-and-brimstoneRSM, Fox knew he had to treadcarefully to be accepted as a re-

placement for his very popularpredecessor (who went on to be-come the top Warrant Officer in the1st Canadian Army).

Born Lucky (the title refers toFox’s many brushes with death,perhaps more than the average in-fantryman would have encountered)intersperses narratives of battlesand patrols with thematic sectionsdealing with combat stress, thetreatment of POWs, relations withItalian civilians, and the troops’opinion of prime minister Macken-zie King. Hand-drawn maps com-plement the battle narratives, butthe book is more about the men whofought than the battles they fought.And by the end of the war, after hisunit had been moved to north-westEurope, Fox admits that he wasgetting close to the end of his rope.But on 23 April 1945, the regimentfired its last shots of the war andby October Fox and the unit wereback in Ontario. For anyone inter-ested in the Italian campaign or theexperiences of a regimental ser-geant-major in a front-line unit,Born Lucky will be a real treat.

DR

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Milly Walsh and John Callan, eds.,We’re Not Dead Yet: The FirstWorld War Diary of Private BertCooke (St. Catharines, ON:Vanwell, 2006), $18.95 paper, 184pages, ISBN 1-55125-087-X.

It is difficult to appreciate fullyhow the First World War affected

the lives of the soldiers who directlyexperienced its horrors. The dailystruggle to stay dry, get rest, andfind provisions was a large part ofthat experience, but it is rarely con-veyed in secondary sources with thesame amount of detail or insightthat a first-hand account can offer.Private Bert Cooke of the 75th Bat-talion, Canadian ExpeditionaryForce, kept a written record of hisexperiences in the First World War,and it is through his diary and let-ters that the reader can come closerto appreciating the day-to-day lifeof a soldier. Stories of days spentmarching in knee-deep mud, shiv-ering nights sleeping in barns, and

the terror in the trenches are gen-erally well known, but Bert’s ac-count of his years in France andBelgium provide much more thanjust these details. Despite the hard-ships he had to endure, Bert main-tained a curiosity about the peoplehe met in the towns in which he andhis company were billeted, felt pityfor those who had lost their homesand livelihood, questioned the logicof war, and, above all, did notwaver in his sense of duty or theresponsibilities that came with it.

Bert kept a written record ofhis experiences so that his familywould know how he had managedduring the difficult years he servedin the CEF. Fortunately, his diaryhas been published as part of theVanwell Voices of War series, andit provides a valuable account of thewar as seen through the eyes of oneman. The Great War has been thor-oughly studied and analyzed, butthe publication of Private BertCooke’s diary reveals that there isstill much to be gained from first-hand accounts of the war.

SV

* * * * *

John Boileau, Half-Hearted En-emies: Nova Scotia, New Englandand the War of 1812 (Halifax:Formac, 2005), $19.95 paper, 176pages, ISBN 0-88780-657-0.

The War of 1812 lasted for thirtymonths. As John Boileau puts

it in his aptly titled book, “if theUnited States and Great Britain hadonly been the half-hearted enemiesthat Nova Scotia and New Englandwere, it would not have been nec-essary to go to war at all.”

The introduction to the bookoutlines the causes of the War of1812 and five chapters deal withincidents related to it. At first, NovaScotians saw no reason to stoptrading with New Englanders justbecause the United States and Brit-ain were at war. As the conflict ac-celerated, Nova Scotian privateerstook American prizes and Britishtroops invaded Maine. Boileau putsa fine edge on some well told tales,such as the encounter between theRoyal Navy’s Shannon and the

6




American Chesapeake off Bostonharbour in June 1813.

Half-Hearted Enemies re-veals, in detail, how battles werefought and prisoners treated dur-ing the War of 1812. As a formerCanadian military officer, Boileauis particularly good at describinghow commanders disposed theirtroops. He has a neat way of sum-ming up events with short, insight-ful observations. Captain PhilipBroke won sea battles because “hewas ... a rarity among British navalofficers: he believed in continuousgunnery and constant practice.”Boileau notes that the Chesapeakesailed under a banner proclaiming“Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,”and writes of the plight of blackslaves who moved to Nova Scotiaduring the war. Some foughtbravely with the British, but had ahard time making a living in theirnew home; Boileau draws on thework of Robin Winks to explain thereasons, which included racism. Helinks the past to the present, tell-ing how the White House in Wash-ington got its name, how Deadman’sIsland, on Halifax’s Northwest Arm,became a memorial site for Ameri-can prisoners and others who diedin nearby Melville Island militaryprison, and where the money tolaunch Dalhousie University origi-nated.

This lively, readable book vali-dates the claim of the French econo-mist Frédéric Bastiat: “Wheregoods do not cross frontiers, ar-mies will.”

JL

* * * * *

J.L. Granatstein, Hell’s Corner: AnIllustrated History of Canada’sGreat War, 1914-1918 (Vancou-ver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004),$50.00, 198 pages, ISBN 1-55365-047-6.

“It had been a long, bloody roadfor the Canadians from the out-

break of war in August 1914, andthe Canadian Corps’ road past Vimywas destined to be bloodier still.”In this 2004 publication, one ofCanada’s most respected historiansprovides the reader with a chrono-

logical record of the Canadian ex-perience in the First World War. Ina mere 198 pages, Granatsteintraces Canadian involvement in theGreat War from the outbreak of theconflict to its conclusion and theeventual demobilization of Canadiansoldiers. Although Granatstein doesnot provide the student of Canadianhistory with any new information,he successfully and concisely de-scribes the transformation of Ca-nadian troops from untrained andill-disciplined recruits into elitesoldiers who could hold their ownagainst professionals, enhancingthe reading experience with a totalof 135 images illustrating the Ca-nadian experience. Through the first two chapters,Granatstein describes the misman-agement and scandal surroundingSam Hughes’ mobilization strategyand choice of suppliers of equip-ment to the “ill-disciplined” Cana-dian troops. It is in the openingchapters that the reader is re-minded of Hughes’ practice ofawarding lucrative contracts to hiscronies and of the ill-fated Rossrifle. Furthermore, the author dis-cusses the superior equipment andtraining of the German forces, leav-ing the reader to question how thepoorly equipped, rag-tag Canadiancontingent was able to achieve ulti-mate victory. However, despite a“brutal introduction to the WesternFront in 1915,” in the followingchapters, Granatstein recounts theCanadian Corps’ ability to overcomethe various obstacles and realize anumber of stunning victories atVimy, Passchendaele, and Hill 70. Throughout this survey account ofCanada’s involvement in the FirstWorld War, Granatstein providesthe reader with effective descrip-tions of individual battles and theiroutcomes. Although he does notprovide a detailed account of strat-egy that may be lost upon those with-out a strong background or inter-est in military history, he does puta human face on Canada’s defeatsand victories. The use of soldiers’personal accounts and the judicioususe of images supplied by the Ca-nadian War Museum allow thereader to understand the horrors

and suffering experienced by thosewho fought, both through theirwords and through their faces. Itis Granatstein’s masterful use ofsoldiers’ stories and images thatmakes Hell’s Corner a valuableaddition to the national narrative.

JC

* * * * *

Erik Somers and René Kok, eds.,Jewish Displaced Persons inCamp Bergen-Belsen, 1945-1950: The Unique Photo Albumof Zippy Orlin (Seattle: Universityof Washington Press [distributed inCanada by UBC Press], 2004),$44.95 paper, 232 pages, ISBN 0-295-98420-1.

Bergen-Belsen is best known asthe concentration camp in

which the Nazis committed unim-aginable atrocities against its pri-marily Jewish inmates, but thecamp had a double life. After itsliberation in 1945, it was convertedinto a holding facility for JewishDisplaced Persons, most of whomwere waiting for transport to theirnew home, the soon-to-be state ofIsrael. While they waited, aid work-ers from a variety of organizationswere in the camp to provide insti-tutional, administrative, practical,and psychological support. One ofthose people was Cecillia “Zippy”Orlin, a social worker with theAmerican Jewish Joint DistributionCommittee. The daughter of aLithuanian Jewish family that hademigrated to South Africa in 1928,Zippy left Johannesburg in May1946, reaching Bergen-Belsen inJuly.

One of the things she took alongwith her was a camera and whileshe was in the camp, she took overa thousand pictures of anything andeverything she encountered in herwork. The photographs provide aremarkable record of Holocaustsurvivors as they played sports,did their laundry, underwent medi-cal examinations, took vocationaltraining, and raised memorials tothe dead. Her album, which con-tained some 1100 photographs, wasdonated to the Netherlands Insti-tute for War Documentation in Am-

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sterdam in 1986, and then becamepart of a congress on Jewish Dis-placed Persons convened in Wash-ington in 2000. Somers and Kokthen selected a small portion of thecollection for publication, and alsocommissioned a series of essays onJewish Displaced Persons, the aideffort, the movement to Israel, andOrlin herself.

What comes through mostclearly in the photographs is theindomitable spirit on the camp resi-dents. There are few of the haggard,drawn faces that one would expect;instead, the pages are filled withpictures of smiling children, reso-lute and determined men andwomen, and an overall air of opti-mism. Orlin’s photographs remindus that, although the Nazis extin-guished many lives at Bergen-Belsen, they were unable to extin-guish hope.

SL

* * * * *

Ralph M. Rentz and Peter Hrisko,They Can’t Take That Away FromMe: The Odyssey of an AmericanPOW (East Lansing: Michigan StateUniversity Press [distributed inCanada by UBC Press], 2003),$38.95, 236 pages, ISBN 0-87013-672-0.

The title of Rentz’s memoir is alittle misleading, for during his

time as a prisoner of the Japanese,his captors did take much awayfrom him – his future career plans,his physical health, his mental sta-bility, even, at times, his essentialhumanity. But unlike so many of hiscomrades, at least he survived.

Rentz enlisted in the NationalGuard before Pearl Harbor, underthe mistaken belief that, if warcame, he would be able to staysafely in college, where he couldpursue his dream of becoming amusician. But instead of a comfort-able college dorm, he found him-self almost immediately in basictraining. A few weeks of that con-vinced him that, if he had to be inthe service, the army air corps wasa more congenial option. His firstmission after training as a radiooperator was a flight half-way

around the world from Florida toAustralia. Then, rather than return-ing to the United States, he and hiscrew were assigned to an airfieldin Java, where their B17 flew bomb-ing raids against Japanese forcesmassing in Sumatra, Borneo, andthe Celebes. But in February 1942,his aircraft was shot down, killingeveryone but Rentz and onecrewmate. Both were terriblywounded, and only the care ofDutch doctors kept them alive, ifonly to go from the frying pan tothe fire: as he was recovering,Rentz’s hospital was overrun by theJapanese.

For the next three years, Rentzlived the grimmest of existences.Not yet fully recovered from hiswounds, he was put on a series ofbrutal work details, including cut-ting seaweed in shark-infested wa-ters and building a railway for theJapanese army. By the end of thewar, tuberculosis, beri beri, pleu-risy, dysentery, and the injuriesfrom his crash had taken their toll.One lung ruined, he would neverhave the musical career he sodreamed of; a doctor told him af-ter the war that it would be five yearsbefore his body healed to the pointat which he could do simple activi-ties, yet he had to fight hard for a100% disability pension from theUS government. Perhaps it’s a signof Rentz’s inherent optimism thathe chose the title he did for hismemoirs.

JFV

* * * * *

James Robert Johnston, Ridinginto War: The Memoir of a HorseTransport Driver, 1916-1919(Fredericton: Goose Lane Editionsand The New Brunswick MilitaryHeritage Project, 2004), $14.95 pa-per, 103 pages, ISBN 0-86492-412-7.

Originally written in 1964, Rid-ing into War: The Memoir of

a Horse Transport Driver, 1916-1919 tells the exceptional story ofJames Robert Johnston (1897-1976), a Canadian horse-transportdriver during the First World War.The book provides a detailedmemoir of Johnston’s harrowing

experiences behind the front linesin such battles as Vimy Ridge andPasschendaele.

Johnston initially joined the145th Battalion of the Canadian Ex-peditionary Force (CEF) atMoncton, New Brunswick. The bat-talion was absorbed into the 9thReserve Battalion and used to re-plenish the front lines in France.Johnston was assigned to the 26thBattalion (also known as “The Fight-ing 26th”), and soon after volun-teered for machine-gun training; hewas then sent to the 14th CanadianMachine Gun Corps (CMGC) whichlater joined with other companiesto become the 2nd CMG Battalion.Rather than operating the guns,however, he was relegated to theposition of transport driver. Sucha position entailed supplying am-munition and other materials to thefront via mules and horses.

Johnston spends considerabletime explaining his powerful rela-tionship with these animals. Thedepth of his trust and respect forhis horses is touching and at thesame time emphasizes the extent towhich these men relied on theirteams. Indeed, the intuition ofJohnston’s two favouritehorses,“Split Ear” and “Tuppence,”saved lives on many occasions.Johnston goes so far as to arguethat a horse “was of more value tothe army than a man” (13). In a sense,then, this memoir serves as a tes-tament to the role played by thetransport horse during the GreatWar.

It is hard to imagine the diffi-culty of driving a team of horsesthrough a rain of enemy fire, or“silent death” as Johnston calls it,and to do so unscathed. ButJohnston faced these near impos-sible odds continually for most ofhis three years of active duty. Thisunique memoir is largely episodicin nature and recounts not onlyevents that the author experiencedin the First World War but also theinspiration and drive that sustainedhim during his mission.

DH

* * * * *

8




John M. “Jack” Roberts, Es-cape!!!: The True Story of a WorldWar II P.O.W. The GermansCouldn’t Hold (Binghamton, NY:Brundage Publishing, 2003), $29.95paper, 237 pages, ISBN 1-892451-11-5.

This is one of those books whosetitle is a little misleading. It

conjures up images of an intrepidescaper, held for years behindbarbed, and all the while makingbreakout after breakout in a kindon one-man war against his captors.In fact Roberts, who served with afield artillery battalion of the 106thInfantry Division during the Battleof the Bulge, was a prisoner for justa few hours, and escaped only whenthe remnants of an American cav-alry unit scared away the two Ger-man guards that were escorting thecaptives to a rear-area prison camp.These were some tense hours to besure, but perhaps not quite deserv-ing of three exclamation points.

That criticism aside, Robertshas written a fascinating memoir ofa soldier who didn’t get into thefront lines until just before the Ger-man offensive in the Ardennes. Anative of Hamilton, Ohio, he wasdrafted in February 1943, sailedfor the United Kingdom in Novem-ber 1944, and went into positionson the 10th of December 1944. Sixdays later, on the way to a forwardobservation post, Roberts and hisparty were ambushed and captured.After his escape, he found his wayback to his unit, eventually won abattlefield commission, and fin-ished the war with the Americanoccupying forces in Austria.

Roberts writes evocatively ofthe shock of going from the rela-tively comfortable barracks in Eng-land to the back of a truck headedtowards the front lines, wheresleep, food, and warmth were onlya memory. He captures well theconfusion that reigned behindAmerican lines during the Ardennesoffensive – after his escape, he trav-elled around for days, trying to lo-cate his unit, or even someone whoknew where his unit might be. Andhe recalls the joy at waking up onemorning and seeing that the skies

had finally cleared, soon to be filledwith the Allied aircraft that wouldquickly blunt the German attack. Ifa little rough around the edges (forexample, he follows the Americantendency, apparently pioneered byEisenhower, of incorrectly refer-ring to the port of Le Havre as LeHarve), it is still an excellent ac-count of a young soldier’s baptismof fire.

DR

* * * * *

Bruce Cane, ed., It Made YouThink Of Home: The HauntingJournal of Deward Barnes, Cana-dian Expeditionary Force: 1916-1919 (Toronto: Dundurn Group,2004), $35.00, 318 pages, ISBN 1-55002-512-0.

Although published diaries fromthe First World War are not par-

ticularly difficult to come by, thereare some that stand out from theother volumes. Deward Barnes’diary of his war experiences from26 February 1916 to 7 March 1919is remarkable, not simply becauseof the content, but for the amountof secondary research provided byeditor Bruce Cane. After severalentries, which have all had properpunctuation added for clarity, Caneinserts a paragraph that explainssome of the background or termsthat Barnes uses in an entry thatthe reader may not be familiar with.Cane’s information comes from awide range of historical sources, butparticularly the official history ofthe 19th Battalion in which Dewardserved. For example, on 1 April1918, Barnes wrote: “‘April FoolsDay.’ Rain. Up at 6:00 a.m. nearlyall on fatigue. Had roast meat, hoho. Left supports for the front line.Had to stop on account of shelling.Arrived 12:30 a.m. Rain.” In whatcould have otherwise been a ratheruninteresting entry, Cane notes thatDeward is likely showing sarcasmabout his morning meal, and pointsout that Deward’s entire companyprobably had poor rations. Moreo-ver, by mentioning the rain twice inone account, Deward is subtly ex-pressing the horrendous trenchconditions, as they would have been

filling up with water, mud, anddead bodies.

Cane entitles Deward’s war di-ary collection It Made You Thinkof Home because Deward wrotethese words in his journals severaltimes, usually after mentioning aparticularly heavy enemy barrage.Cane explains how nerve-wrackingtrench warfare could be, and so asoldier might long for his homeafter experiencing an intense fire-fight. Though not as haunting as thetitle would suggest, Cane’s bookincludes intriguing background in-formation and photographs not onlyabout Deward Barnes, but also ofthe people, places, and events thatBarnes wrote about in his diaries.It is this in-depth analysis of thenuances and exact wording thatBarnes used that makes this booka fascinating study of the physicaland psychological impact of war.

SF

* * * * *

Dan McCaffery, Dad’s War: TheStory of a Courageous CanadianYouth Who Flew With BomberCommand (Toronto: JamesLorimer & Company, 2004),$34.95, 239 pages, ISBN 1-55028-866-0.

Dan McCaffery is well known forhis many books on aviation his-

tory, including Billy Bishop: Ca-nadian Hero and Battlefields inthe Air, but this one is a little closerto home. It represents his quest tofind out more about the war thathis father rarely talked about.

Jim McCaffrey joined the RCAFon 15 November 1943, the sameday he turned nineteen – althoughhe could easily have passed for afew years younger, as the authorwrites of one photograph of his fa-ther: “Above his top lip was somepeach fuzz that he was trying to passoff as a moustache” (11). He trainedas a tail gunner and was eventuallyposted to 90 Squadron, reaching itsbase at Tuddenham on ChristmasEve 1944. His first operation, on 5January 1945, was a wash-out whenan engine caught fire over England,but the crew got their chance tocomplete their first operation the

9




next day. Twenty more sorties fol-lowed, to Berlin, Cologne, Dres-den, and elsewhere, the last onecoming on 20 April 1945. The fol-lowing month, McCaffery and hiscrew were involved in OperationManna, dropping food to starvingDutch civilians. He was back inCanada before the end of 1945, onlya couple of years older in age butmany years older in experience.

McCaffery writes sensitively ofhis father’s exploits, particularly thepsychological impact they had onhim over the long term. It is en-tirely fitting, too, that the son’spride in his father comes outclearly. The elder McCaffery was,after all, regarded as one of themost keen-eyed, and therefore oneof the best, tail gunners in hissquadron. But, like many other finegunners, he never fired a shot inanger: the key was spotting the en-emy aircraft at a distance and keep-ing away from it, rather than firingin the full knowledge that you mightpossibly hit it but you would cer-tainly draw the attention of the en-emy to the bomber stream. AsMcCaffery well knew, the bomber’sbest defence was not its machineguns, but its ability to avoid beingseen.

JFV

* * * * *

Ulrich Straus, The Anguish ofSurrender: Japanese POWs ofWorld War II (Seattle: Universityof Washington Press [distributed inCanada by UBC Press] 2003),$24.95 US paper, 282 pages, ISBN0-295-98508-9.

The statistics regarding JapanesePOWs during the Second

World War have always had thepower to shock: of the 5000 defend-ers of Tarawa in late 1943, only sev-enteen survived as prisoners; of the21,000 Japanese troops on IwoJima in early 1945, just 216 al-lowed themselves to be captured;the defense of Bougainville resultedin 16,497 Japanese dead and only233 POWs. In each case, many ofthe dead were killed in thegyokusai, or suicide charges, thatwere deemed the only honourable

way for a soldier’s life to end if vic-tory was not possible.

And yet there were enoughJapanese POWs – starting with Pris-oner #1, a naval ensign capturedwhen his midget submarine mal-functioned during its suicide attackon Pearl Harbor in December 1941– for the US forces to devote con-siderable efforts to utilizing themas intelligence sources. RickStraus’ book covers these two di-mensions: the experience of POWswhose training had told them thatto surrender was the ultimate dis-honour; and the operation set intrain to interrogate them.

In both instances, the reader isin for a few surprises. Japaneseservicemen, whose training con-sisted of large dollops of physicaland verbal abuse from superiors,and even subordinates in rank, wereastonished to encounter captorswho treated them humanely, de-cently, and respectfully. The small-est kindness shown by an Ameri-can soldier often went a long wayto convincing them that the “surren-der is not an option” doctrine inwhich they had been trained wasperhaps not quite right. Of course,there remained a good number ofhardcores – the gyokusai mountedin a number of prison camps attestto that – but the majority of Japa-nese captives soon reconciled them-selves to their incarceration, andceased to believe that they had dis-honoured themselves, their fami-lies, and their nation by being takenprisoner.

Furthermore, American inter-rogators (either Nisei or Caucasianswho had received language training)found that some prisoners were sokeen to please their captors that theywould tell them anything they couldof military value. Because most ofthe prisoners were grunts who hadlittle useful information, there werelimits to what could be learned, butthere were enough success stories– valuable intelligence that capturedNCOs or officers were only toohappy to share – to justify the timeand effort that went into traininginterrogators in the Japanese lan-guage and customs.

The Anguish of Surrender,then, is a valuable corrective to whatwe thought we knew about JapanesePOWs, written by a man who livedfor twenty-one years in Japan, bothbefore and during the war, and whois better able than most historiansto understand the mentality of theJapanese POW.

JFV

* * * * *

John McKendrick Hughes, TheUnwanted: Great War Lettersfrom the Field (Edmonton: Univer-sity of Alberta Press, 2005), $32.95paper, 395 pages, ISBN 0-88864-436-1.

If a history student were asked tosubmit a list of typical items that

could have been found on the bat-tlefields of Europe during the FirstWorld War, it is unlikely that pota-toes would top that list. Yet, as earlyas 1915, millions of potatoes andother vegetables were cultivated onarmy farms as food for soldiers. Itis from the perspective of an Agri-cultural Officer tasked with grow-ing foodstuffs for the British 2ndArmy that John McKendrickHughes writes this refreshingmemoir.

A young farmer from the west-ern Canadian prairies, Hughes didnot falter under the weight of theimmense task – he embraced it. Hechronicles his disillusionment as alieutenant in the Canadian Expedi-tionary Force, lost within a bur-geoning officer cadre that found fewopenings in Britain because the of-ficers lacked combat experience.Hughes and his fellow officers were,in effect, unwanted. When opportu-nity knocked in 1917 for a posi-tion to command a farming opera-tion for the British Army, Hughesjumped at the chance.

He recounts his experiences bydrawing heavily on letters that hehad written to his wife while he wasstationed overseas. Hughes’ narra-tive is intermingled with excerptsfrom these letters, which providean interesting and unique perspec-tive on army life as a noncombat-ant soldier. The memoir also com-prises several appendices, which

10




include a biography of Hughes,scanned images of his letters, andfurther information on wartime ag-ricultural work. The appendices,coupled with an extensive notes sec-tion, add more body to this alreadywell-developed story.

Anyone with an avid interest inthe First World War will heartilyembrace The Unwanted. Althougha tad confusing to read because itis written in first-person plural,Hughes’ lively recollections of thechallenges he faced to help growfood for one million soldiers willno doubt satisfy any reader.

DG

* * * * *

Blake Heathcote, A Soldier’s View:The Personal Photographs of Ca-nadians at War, 1939-1945 (To-ronto: Doubleday Canada, 2005),$45.00, 340 pages, ISBN 0-385-66000-6.

I always flip to the pictures firstanyway, so I’m naturally drawn

to photographic histories. BlakeHeathcote’s A Soldier’s View is anexcellent collection of personal pho-tographs of Canadians in the Sec-ond World War. Readers of Cana-dian Military History are probablyfamiliar with the standard collec-tion of Canadian wartime photo-graphs that one sees in most booksand television documentaries aboutthe war: the wrecked Churchilltanks at Dieppe, the bicycle-carry-ing troops wading ashore at Juno,the column of infantry threading itsway through rubble at Caen, and soforth. What distinguishes this col-lection is that Heathcote has se-lected them from their hidingplaces in the scrapbooks of veter-ans (including, it would seem, someveterans from the other side: thereis an extraordinary photographhere of Canadians going down be-fore a German machine gun).Heathcote, director of the Testa-ments of Honor project that hasbeen recording veterans’ storiessince the late 1990s, selected thephotographs “by the simple methodof taking ones that elicited the mostpowerful memories from their own-ers.”

His photos are fascinating,funny, grisly, and wrenching inabout equal proportion. One strik-ing fact that emerges from them isthe extraordinary breadth of Cana-da’s war effort. We see infantrydown in the mud and blood in Nor-mandy, bombers in flames overGermany, corvettes on the NorthAtlantic (you can feel the coldspray), but also Chinese-Canadianswho would fight in Burma, sailorsin New York City, airmen posing forphotos in front of the Sphinx inEgypt, CWACs in Southern Eng-land.

Some readers may findHeathcote’s accompanying textrather parsimonious, but I think hisdecision to keep the commentaryto a minimum was a good one. Pho-tographs, he says, “don’t answerour questions; they show us whyquestions should be asked.” Look-ing at them in 2007, they remindme of how grateful I am that mygeneration has been spared all that.

GB

* * * * *

Wilfred Brenton Kerr, Arms andThe Maple Leaf: The Memoir ofWilfred Kerr, Canadian Field Ar-tillery, Canadian ExpeditionaryForce, 1918 (Ottawa: CEF Books,2005 [1943]), $22.95 paper, 147pages, ISBN 1-896979-52-1.

As the number of living veteransof the Great War dwindles to a

mere handful worldwide, thememoir becomes an increasinglyimportant window into the personalattitudes, experiences, and emo-tions of the conflict. A fine exampleis Wilfred Brenton Kerr’s Armsand the Maple Leaf. Compiledfrom letters and notes at the end of1918, it chronicles Kerr’s experi-ences in the 11th Battery, CanadianField Artillery, in the last year ofthe war. The book served as a se-quel to Kerr’s Shrieks andCrashes, in which he included anaccount of the experience of thebattery in the Battle ofPasschendaele. Arms and the Ma-ple Leaf recounts the experiencesof a battery that had come throughthe darkest days of the war, and

reveals the fears, hopes, and inter-mittent banality of life at the front.The terrible losses atPasschendaele had caused the bat-tery to replace English-, Scottish-,and Irish-born troops with Cana-dian recruits, and Kerr describedthe “heightened Canadianism” feltby the battery in the summer of1918, a sentiment that would bestrengthened during the final en-gagements of the war.

Kerr does not hesitate, how-ever, to express a general distastefor the military caste system, andrevealed the cynical reaction of therank and file to Arthur Currie’srallying call of 10 July. He revealsa Canadianism forged not throughpatriotic rhetoric or individualheroism, but through rank-and-filesolidarity and camaraderie. It wasa sentiment strengthened in the fi-nal weeks of the war, as the batterymoved through towns recently aban-doned by the Germans, to begreeted as liberators by French vil-lagers. He skillfully reveals theunique psychology of the front dur-ing that period: the fear replacedby boredom, the joy by sorrow, anddespair by optimism and hope.

Kerr’s balanced, sober, andhonest recollection of life at thefront in 1918 provides the modernreader with a revealing glimpse intothe final year of the war, and is avaluable contribution to our under-standing of the Canadian experiencein the Great War.

AC

* * * * *

G.B. McKean, Scouting Thrills:The Memoir of a Scout Officer inthe Great War (Ottawa: CEF Books,2003 [1919]), $20.00 paper, 128pages, ISBN 1-896979-37-8.

Scouting Thrills by George B.McKean is an insightful, de-

scriptive, and engaging story of thelife and adventures of a scout dur-ing the First World War. McKean’smemoir is appropriately titled,since he dedicates each chapter toa different adventure that he andhis scouts participated in, such astraveling through No Man’s Land inan attempt to locate German posts,

11




saving wounded scouts, attackingvillages occupied by Germantroops, blowing up “mysterious”tunnels, rescuing prisoners, charg-ing German trenches with bayonets,and, above all else, being lost in NoMan’s Land.

McKean was born in Englandin 1888 and emigrated to Canadain 1902. After Britain declared warin 1914, he enlisted for service inJanuary the following year. Onceoverseas, he quickly moved up inthe ranks until he eventually becamea lieutenant. His story emphasizesthe role of scouts in war on a dailybasis. The reader is quickly madeaware of how critical a scout wasto the Allied war effort. Whetherthey were gathering intelligence onenemy movements, locating posts,or participating in reconnaissancemissions, the information thatscouts gathered was crucial to theAllies’ success in battle.

McKean’s memoir also revealsnumerous themes about scouts andtheir involvement in the war. Com-radeship among scouts is most evi-dent. For example, it was the scouts’honour not to leave an injured ordead scout behind, as McKean dra-matically demonstrates in one ofhis chapters. Moreover, the scouts’enthusiasm for missions is anothertheme that is evident throughout thememoir. McKean does not fail tomention how enthusiastic many ofhis scouts were as the war pro-gressed. Often, they were eager tocharge into battle or volunteer fora reconnaissance mission. Lastly,McKean discusses a youthful andplayful atmosphere among thescouts. This jovial atmospherehelped to keep the morale of thesebrave men high.

McKean’s adventure story is agreat first-hand account of the lifeand duties of a scout during theFirst World War. Its dramatic de-scriptions, attention to detail, andenthusiasm make it a vivid and en-joyable story that does not depictthe gruesome horrors of war thatmany other studies have a tendencyto do.

BR

* * * * *

Desmond Morton, Fight or Pay:Soldiers’ Families in the GreatWar (Vancouver: UBC Press and theCanadian War Museum, 2004), $39.95,326 pages, ISBN 0-7748-1108-0.

Desmond Morton’s Fight or Pay:Soldiers’ Families in the

Great War outlines the popular re-sponse of Canadians to the FirstWorld War. Morton argues that,through the Canadian PatrioticFund (CPF), Canadians who couldnot fight had a responsibility to payin order to contribute to the wareffort. He analyzes the effectivenessof the CPF in its fund-raising ef-forts, administration, and distribu-tion of funds to the families of sol-diers fighting overseas. In doing so,Morton provides a voice to the sol-diers’ families.

Morton offers a detailed ac-count of the CPF and its activitiesacross Canada. For the most part,it was left up to the organization ofthe CPF, and its private donorsacross the country, to support thesoldiers’ families. Because the CPFwas a private charity, it was com-pelled to defend its donors’ inter-ests and, as a result, it was believedthat some form of discriminationand tact was necessary. Generally,those people who were not French,Belgian, or British in origin stoodmuch less chance of receiving aidfrom the CPF. There were certainrestrictions that dictated who re-ceived money, as well as investiga-tions into the personal lives of thesoldiers’ wives, in order to assessand determine need. Morton as-serts that this discrimination wasnot hidden and that the CPF felt noneed to explain it.

The book goes on to discussthe physical and mental disabilitiesthat plagued soldiers, as well astheir families, when they returnedhome unable to function normallyor make a living. As Morton pointsout, “wives and children bore thebrunt of men’s adjustment and forthe most part, they bore it silently”(163). The CPF extended supportto some disabled soldiers but de-bates quickly emerged as towhether pensions were the respon-sibility of the CPF or the federal

government. There were also diffi-culties in defining exactly what con-stituted a “disability” (145). Mortonhighlights the plight of many disa-bled soldiers and their familieswho often lacked the leverage to getresults.

In Fight or Pay, Morton doesan excellent job of assessing the roleof the CPF in the lives of the wives,mothers, and families who re-mained in Canada during the war.Not only is the book a comprehen-sive and revealing account of thesuccesses and failures of the CPF,but it also highlights the impact ofthe Great War on Canadian fami-lies, their day-to-day survival in theface of low income, high rates ofinflation, and the absence of a fa-ther, husband, and breadwinner.

AS

* * * * *

Jeffery Williams, Far From Home:A Memoir of a 20th Century Sol-dier (Calgary: University of CalgaryPress, 2003), $24.95 paper, 373pages, ISBN 1-55238-119-6.

Although he never ceased to re-gret that he had not seen battle

during the Second World War –“Until you’ve had your hair partedby a bullet, you don’t know whetheryou’re a soldier or not,” one vet-eran told him – Jeffery Williamssurely had one of the most variedcareers of anyone to serve in Cana-dian uniform during the war. A pre-1939 member of the Calgary High-landers and a platoon commanderearly in the war, Williams was soontabbed as being potential materialfor staff duties. He must surely havebeen sent on every training courseand duty that the Canadian militaryhad to offer (including running athree-week course for officer ca-dets of the Canadian Women’s ArmyCorps and attending the 9th Cana-dian War Staff course at Kingstonin early 1944). When one consid-ers his temporary postings to vari-ous units (for example, he learnedto drive a Ram tank while on tem-porary secondment to the CanadianGrenadier Guards) and the fact thathe spent many of his leaves on op-erational patrols on Royal Navy ves-

12




sels, it’s hard to imagine that manypeople had as much familiarity withthe inner workings of the Alliedforces than Williams.

As one would expect, he is anengaging and fair-minded memoir-ist, lauding those who deserve itand not hesitating to be honest aboutthe deadwood under which heserved. His anecdote about a cer-tain commander’s insistence thatsecuring a replacement for thebrigadier’s personal caravan wasmore important than re-equippinga fighting unit with armoured carsspeaks volumes about the priori-ties of some officers in the Cana-dian army.

After writing so many finebooks about other aspects of mili-tary history (including his ac-claimed biography of Byng ofVimy), it’s high time that JefferyWilliams told his own story, andhe does it here with refreshingverve, insight, and frankness.

JFV

* * * * *

Joan Snelling, A Land Girl’s War(Ipswich, UK: Old Pond Publishing,2004), £4.95 paper, 94 pages, ISBN1-903366-67-4.

Olive Fisher Campbell, ShatteredDreams (Renfrew, ON: GeneralStore Publishing, 2005), $19.95paper, 129 pages, ISBN 1-897113-12-9.

Cynthia J. Faryon, A War Bride’sStory: Risking it all for Love AfterWorld War II (Canmore, AB:Altitude Publishing, 2004), $9.95paper, 112 pages, ISBN 1-55153-959-4.

During the Second World War,the British government reacti-

vated the Women’s Land Army, firstcreated in 1917, to free up male ag-ricultural labourers for militaryservice and to ensure the contin-ued production of food in a coun-try that had seen its imports offoodstuffs drastically reduced bythe German submarine campaign.The Land Army peaked in size inJuly 1943, when 87,000 youngwomen were employed on Britain’s

farms; they surely made a signifi-cant difference in a nation that, be-fore the war, had relied on importsfor 70% of its food.

Snelling joined up in April1941, and worked on farms inNorfolk, on England’s east coast.It was a difficult transition for her– she was not a country girl, but acity girl whose family had leftLondon to escape the bombing – butthrough hard work and a willing-ness to take on any task, she even-tually gained the respect of the malefarm workers who hadn’t beencalled up.

Her memoir is candid andgenuine, and she willingly admitsthe difficulties involved – it’s noteasy to learn to drive a variety oftractors all at once. But she is alsoclear about the value of their work.To cite just one example, in prewarBritain sugar was manufacturedfrom imported sugar cane but withthat supply cut off by Germansubmarine operations and the needto divert shipping space to warmaterials, another source had to befound. The answer was sugar beets,planted and harvested by thewomen of the Land Army. So, thefact that Britain remained able tofeed itself was due in large part tothe girls of the Land Army.

Olive Fisher, too, joined theLand Army, working as a tractordriver on farms around Stratford-on-Avon from May 1944 until afterthe end of the war. But her memoiris focused much more on thepersonal tragedies of war, inparticular her experiences as a warbride. Her family lived inBirmingham, a target of Germanbombing raids that forced themfrom their home and killed anumber of family friends. Herbrothers both enlisted and,although they survived the war, bothlost childhood friends in action.And Olive herself lost her firstsuitor, killed in action while flyingwith the Royal Air Force. Sheeventually married a Canadiansoldier and emigrated to Canada,hoping that she might find a betterlife there. Sadly, it turned out to bethe war-bride-experience-from-hell.Her new in-laws, a Prince Edward

Island farm couple that could havecome straight from the pages of aFrederick Philip Grove novel,made little attempt to disguise theirloathing of her and regarded heras something of a slave; hermother-in-law, particularly, neverseemed to get over the belief thatOlive had stolen her son from her.Olive’s husband eventually joinedthe air force, and for the next fewdecades they moved from base tobase, not always in the happiest ofcircumstances.

Shattered Dreams is also acandid memoir, perhaps a little toocandid – indeed, one often wonderswhy Olive didn’t chuck the wholething and return to her family inEngland. We’ve always known thatthe war-bride experience wasn’tnecessarily a happy one, but rarelyhas it been described with suchhonesty.

Gwen Haskell’s experienceswere a little more positive thanOlive Fisher’s. Unable to join theWomen’s Land Army because ofchronic asthma, she instead took avolunteer position as a clerk at theAir Ministry in London. InNovember 1943, she met LarryCramer, a Canadian pilot officerwho hailed from Arborfield,Saskatchewan. Eleven weeks laterthey were married and in May 1945their first son was born, a monthafter Larry had been dischargedhome to Canada. It was almostanother year before Gwen was ableto follow him. There followed asimilar experience of unrealizedexpectations. Their first stop uponreaching Arborfield was a trim, wellkept bungalow with all the modernconveniences, and Gwen waspleased that she would be living incivilized circumstances. Soon after,though, she discovered that Larry’sfamily home was a dilapidatedfarmhouse six miles from town withno running water, a wood stove,and an outhouse to boot. It was afar cry from Gwen’s relativelyaffluent home in England.

But she persevered, even afteradmitting that she could neverbecome a farm wife and despite allof the awkwardness of getting usedto the social customs of the rural

13




west, and the family, which eventu-ally grew to include five children)moved to the more civilized sur-roundings of Edmonton. Not all ofthe roughly 48,000 war brides whocame to Canada after 1945 sufferedthe same tribulations as Fisher andHaskell, but their stories reveal theclash of cultures that even wartimelove had trouble conquering.

SL

* * * * *

Robert Rutherdale, HometownHorizons: Local Responses toCanada’s Great War (Vancouver:UBC Press, 2004), $29.95 paper,331 pages, ISBN 0-7748-1014-9.

Traditionally, historians of theFirst World War in Canada have

looked at the struggle mainly froma military or international relationsperspective. However, RobertRutherdale’s Hometown Horizons:Local Responses to Canada’sGreat War is an important workthat contributes to a social and cul-tural understanding of the war.Rutherdale’s book examines howthe war impacted the home frontthrough an analysis of gender, race,religion, and class. These para-digms are intertwined to create apicture of the popular response tothe Great War at the local level. Thisbook stands out in the literature byoffering a microcosmic view of thestruggle.

Rutherdale has chosen threesmaller Canadian cities –Lethbridge, Alberta, Guelph,Ontario, and Trois Rivières, Québec– to illustrate how their specific“hometown horizons” constructedsimilar yet unique responses to theoutbreak of war in 1914. Thegeographical, industrial, political,social, and ethnic composition ofeach of these communities createsa diverse sampling of the localresponse, thereby allowing for abroader and even a nationalexamination of the issues at hand.These issues are covered in eightchapters, including the initialresponse to the call to arms, theenlistment and organization oftroops, the ensuing fluctuation inenlistment numbers, the waning in

patriotism as the war dragged on,the conscription issue, the role ofwomen both at home and abroad,and finally the trials andtribulations of the returningsoldiers. Within each of these facetsof the war at home, Rutherdalepaints a colourful comparative pic-ture of how each community re-sponded and contributed by usingspecific examples of people or or-ganizations.

Overall, Rutherdale’s book isimportant in the uniqueness of itslocalized approach. It offers awealth of information and the depthof the author’s research isimpressive. Individuals from eachcommunity are brought to life andthis work goes a long way inhighlighting the importance of thelocal response to the Great War.Hometown Horizons is useful notonly within the historiography of theFirst World War but also within thestudy of French-English relations,gender history, and rural and urbanhistory in Canada.

BB

* * * * *

Wilfred Brenton Kerr, Shrieksand Crashes: The Memoir ofWilfred B. Kerr, Canadian FieldArtillery, 1917 (Ottawa: CEFBooks, 2005 [1929]), $22.95 paper,157 pages, ISBN 1-896979-50-5.

Shrieks and Crashes is a rivet-ing personal memoir of the

First World War, written in 1929as both a personal testament and ahistorical record for future genera-tions. It vividly documents the lifeof Canadian soldiers in the GreatWar, particularly at the Battle ofVimy Ridge, using as its foundationKerr’s personal letters, diaries, andrecollections of his service.

The title Shrieks and Crashesis evocative of the daily life of anartilleryman stationed on the front.Soldiers had to cope with the tre-mendous noise of continuous bom-bardments and the constant andoverwhelming fear of a shell land-ing on their position. As Kerr him-self attests, it was his personal fearthat the sacrifices and horrors ofthe First World War might be for-

gotten and neglected by successivegenerations. He believed that hispersonal memoir can endure as away of explaining and preservingthe essence of what the First WorldWar was to so many young men likehimself. He also hoped that hismemoir would prompt other sol-diers to make records of their ownpersonal experiences. The book, heclaims, represents “… an attemptto describe the experiences of onesoldier, in so far as they were typi-cal, … against a background of thestory of the Corps, its vicissitudes,its feelings and its thoughts during1917” (foreword).

Kerr enlisted in 1916 in theCanadian Field Artillery, andserved as a signaler during thecourse of his service. His job pri-marily involved observing what wastaking place on the front using atelescope or field glasses; this kepthim in constant telephone contactwith the brigade. He also served ata series of observation posts andas a liaison at the infantry headquar-ters. Kerr was responsible for lay-ing and repairing phone lines,which was absolutely critical tomilitary communications. Despitethese crucial duties, he recognizedthat his job, though important, en-tailed less danger than men in thefront lines experienced; it was theywho bore the brunt of the casual-ties. He vividly recalls the deplor-able existence of a soldier residingin the trenches, overwhelmed bydeath, carnage, disease, and de-struction. He presents a clear por-trayal of trench life from its lullsand times of boredom to its dan-gers and unsanitary conditions.

As the war progressed, manysoldiers like Kerr began to ques-tion the conflict. He sees the Battleof Passchendaele as a turning pointin soldiers’ morale. The gain of amere ridge cost more than 16,000Canadian servicemen their lives,and the deaths of so many men ap-peared unproductive and senseless.

This book represents the di-chotomy between initial feelings ofenthusiasm for the war to later feel-ings of despair and disillusion-ment. Soldiers began to questionwhat it was all about. Men in com-

14




mand seemingly played with theirlives like they were pawns on achess board, and some in the PoorBloody Infantry may have ques-tioned their authority. The bookstands as a testament to the hor-rors of war and what daily life en-tailed as a Canadian soldier fight-ing in the First World War.

AO

* * * * *

Kenneth H. Joyce, Snow Ploughand the Jupiter Deception: TheStory of the 1st Special ServiceForce and the 1st Canadian Spe-cial Service Battalion, 1942-1945 (St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell,2006), $49.95, 320 pages, ISBN 1-55125-094-2.

As suggested by the title, KennethJoyce’s new history of the First

Special Service Force emphasizesa connection between plans for anAllied invasion of Norway – Opera-tion JUPITER – and the formationof this combined US-Canadian com-mando unit. Anxious to relievepressure on the Soviet Union in itsbitter war on the Eastern Front, inlate 1941 Winston Churchill helpedto promote the idea of a landing inNorway by an international force ofparatroopers, specially trained inwinter warfare and equipped witharmoured snow vehicles. Originallydesignated Operation SNOWPLOUGH, a codename that was latershortened to PLOUGH, Churchillalternately envisioned the raid asan elaborate diversionary schemeor as the initial phase of a largerAllied effort to “roll-up the map ofHitler’s Europe,” beginning with aninvasion at the top. Either way,Churchill viewed the creation of aninternational raiding force as essen-tial. He appointed Lord LouisMountbatten to plan the raid andto the design the snow vehicle, aneffort that led ultimately to Ameri-can, Norwegian, and Canadian in-volvement in the scheme. In thesummer of 1942, the raiding ele-ment of Operation PLOUGH devel-oped into the First Special ServiceForce, its formation being the re-sult of a tangled web of interna-tional negotiations. On paper, the

Canadian contingent of the Forcewas designated the 1st CanadianSpecial Service Battalion, but inpractice Canadians soldiers werecompletely integrated with theirAmerican counterparts. When theoriginal PLOUGH scheme was can-celled, the Force was retained bythe United States as an elite lightinfantry formation – one that ulti-mately became renowned for itsfighting spirit in a series of sus-tained combat operations under themost difficult circumstances.

Both Library and ArchivesCanada cataloguing information andpre-publication advertising forJoyce’s book cite its originalsubtitle as “The true story of the1st Special Service Force” [italicsmine]. This leads the reader tocontemplate what was “untrue”about earlier renditions of the unit’shistory. Introductory comments onthe book jacket provide a partialanswer: “Author Ken Joyce revealsthe truth behind the enigmatic 1stSpecial Service Force. Although itis commonly believed that theformation of the 1st SSF was al-most an entirely United States-Canada venture, in fact the Forcecontinued to be monitored, and toa certain extent controlled, by Brit-ain.” Indeed, while most coverageof the Force to date has consideredthe unit within the context of theUnited States or Canadian war ef-fort, Joyce’s work skillfully por-trays the extent of British politicalengineering that led to the creationof the Force. He outlines the rolesplayed by Geoffrey Pike, an eccen-tric British scientist, diminishinginterest in the plan by Lord LouisMountbatten, Winston Churchill’scharacteristic enthusiasm for com-mando forces, and the Britishprime minister’s long fight to re-tain the Force for another task af-ter Operation PLOUGH fell through.While early stages of the planningalso involved the Norwegian gov-ernment-in-exile, the hesitation ofits leaders to support an operationaimed at the destruction of theircountry’s economy and infrastruc-ture led them to withdraw supportfor the plan at roughly the sametime that Canada became involved.

As the book proceeds, Pyke, theNorwegians, Mountbatten, andChurchill gradually disappear fromthe story as the Canadians take upa combat role in the reorganizedFirst Special Service Force, fight-ing in the war-torn hills of Italyalongside their American com-rades.

Joyce’s work goes beyond ear-lier accounts to reveal a new “truth”about the Force. When comparedto the existing literature, most no-tably Robert D. Burhans’s The FirstSpecial Service Force: A War His-tory of the North Americans(1947), Joyce’s new history owes agreat deal to his use of governmentdocuments that have only recentlybecome available to historians. Per-sonal correspondence between theauthor and retired Canadian Lieu-tenant-Colonel Jack Akehurst addsvaluable commentary and furtherdimension to the author’s excellentcoverage of operational detail. Be-yond his account of operations atthe front, the unique esprit de corpsof the unit, the frustration of Cana-dian soldiers over matters of payand decorations, and a slowly de-veloping impression on their partthat they had been abandoned bythe Canadian military authorities,all come through in Joyce’s account.

Another area in which Joycedeparts from the established truthis in his chapter on “Hill 720 andthe Unhappy Fate of ColonelWilliamson.” In reference to thedismissal of the senior Canadianofficer of the Force followingshortly upon the unit’s entry intocombat, Joyce argues that “there isno doubt that Williamson was de-nied due process when he was re-turned to Canada without a propermilitary inquiry into the accusationsmade against him” (180). ReadingJoyce’s account, one could easilybe left with a strong impressionthat Williamson was a victim ofColonel Robert T. Frederick’s “oneman show” (179), particularly if weaccept the author’s claim that affi-davits signed against him were de-cidedly “nasty” in tone, as well asthe author’s hints that jealousy onthe part of Williamson’s subordi-nates played a role in his dismissal.

15




While Joyce is correct in hisassertion that the affair was sweptunder the carpet and that a carefulassessment of the incident is longoverdue, a more balanced treatmentwould also have noted that whenWilliamson’s predecessor left theForce owing to injuries sustainedin training, he expressed seriousmisgivings regarding “Windy”Williamson’s suitability for com-mand, pointing to his lack of “level-headedness” and refusing to recom-mend his promotion as senior Ca-nadian officer of the Force.ˆ Itneeds also to be borne in mind thatthe First Special Service Force wasan elite unit from which officers andmen were dismissed for only theslightest failure to measure up toits exacting standards. Williamsonmay have been denied “due proc-ess” in a unit that was notorious forits lack of concern for the finerpoints of bureaucratic process, butcharges that he behaved erraticallyduring the advance on Monte laDifensa, becoming “spooked” andfiring in the darkness at unseensnipers (and uncomfortably closeto his own men), may indeed haveled subordinates to lose confidencein him. As the American com-mander of the Force, Frederickcould hardly have subjected thematter to a full inquiry without el-evating something that he probablyviewed as a case of severe anxietyand nervousness to the status of aninternational incident. Joycepresents the details of Williamson’sdismissal and is convinced thataccusations made against him were“disingenuous” (180), but the factremains that officers and men ofthe Force could be – and often were– sent home for less than thecharges brought againstWilliamson. No hidden conspiracyis necessary to account for his dis-missal. This is not to say conclu-sively that none existed, only thatproving one will require more evi-dence than is presented here –something that Joyce appears tohave recognized when he omittedreference to the “true” story of theForce from the subtitle of the book.

On a less controversial note,Snow Plough and the Jupiter De-

ception revives celebrated aspectsof the First Special Service Force,including the uniqueness of its bi-national composition and the hard-fought victories it achieved duringthe Winter Line campaign, along theMussolini Canal at Anzio, duringthe breakout to Rome, and in theinvasion of Southern France. Thenarrative is complemented by theauthor’s use of historical artifacts,a product of his studies at theAlgonquin College of Museum Tech-nology from 1992-95, as well as hisuse of previously unpublished pho-tos and interviews with survivingForce members or their families.He employs archival material fromthe United Kingdom, Stanford Uni-versity’s Hoover Institution andArchives, the Library and ArchivesCanada, and the Directorate of His-tory and Heritage in Ottawa, all ofwhich provide a richness of detailon the unit’s formation, training,operations in the field, and the ad-ministrative jumbles which contrib-uted to its disbandment at the endof 1944. Overall, Joyce helps tokeep the “Black Devil legend” aliveand deepens our understanding ofthis unique product of the NorthAtlantic Triangle – a combined ef-fort arising from the wartime co-operation of Canada, the UnitedStates, and Great Britain.

JW

* * * * *

Graeme F. Somerville, An Honour-able Sacrifice (Saint John, NB:privately published [available fromCentenary-Queen Street UnitedChurch, 215 Wentworth St., SaintJohn, NB, E2L 2T4], 2005), $10.00paper, 12 pages, ISBN 0-9681649-6-X.

Geraldine Chase and BillBeswetherick, Gananoque Re-members: A Tribute to the MenWho Gave Their Lives for Free-dom (Gananoque, ON: privatelypublished [available [email protected]], 2005), $28.00paper, 176 pages, ISBN 0-936469-0-X.

Alan Mann, “No Return Ticket”:Wallaceburg’s War Casualties and

Selected War Memories(Wallaceburg, ON: Mann HistoricalFiles, 2002), $22.95, 280 pages,ISBN 0-9694304-4-2.

In 1997, the eminent historian JayWinter called for more local his-

tories as a way to understand bet-ter the impact of war upon socie-ties. Academics have not yet takenup the challenge in any great num-bers, but amateur historians cer-tainly have.

Sometimes their work hastaken the form of a simple honourroll, of the kind that was publishedwidely in the years after the FirstWorld War. An Honourable Sacri-fice consists of short biographicalsketches of the twenty-nine men ofCentenary-Queen Street UnitedChurch in Saint John, New Bruns-wick, who died in the two worldwars, and was published in re-sponse to the desire of parishion-ers to learn more about the menwhose names were read out beforethe congregation every 11th of No-vember. As one would expect, thereare more than twice as many namesfrom the First World War as theSecond. In the list of burial placesfor the latter, we see the breadth ofthe Canadian war effort: NorthernIreland, Halifax, Sierre Leone, Lab-rador, England, Ortona.

The histories of Gananoque andWallaceburg are much wider inscope, and also deal with a largernumber of casualties. Chase andBeswetherick have provided thesame kind of short biographies thatappear in Somerville’s booklet, buthave added photographs, excerptsfrom letters and newspaper arti-cles, and poetry. It makes for a verymoving combination and an excel-lent tribute to the eighty-three menwhose names are listed on theGananoque cenotaph, including Pri-vate W.E. Dailey, killed in action onthe Somme in September 1916 atage fifteen and Flying Officer W.H.Thompson, who was forty-six yearsold when the Lockheed Hudson hewas flying in went down nearDartmouth airport.

Alan Mann has gone a step fur-ther, beginning with the names onthe Wallaceburg cenotaph but add-

16




ing an impressive range of othermaterial: reproduced articles fromthe Wallaceburg News, documents,letters, advertisements, hundredsof photographs, and a month-by-month diary of the war inWallaceburg, again taken from theWallaceburg News. One particu-larly interesting element concernsthe men who enlisted for servicefrom the Walpole Island reserveduring the First World War. Of thenatives who died in uniform, it isworth noting that the majority ofthem died of disease rather than inaction, a sad commentary on thestate of aboriginal health in earlytwentieth-century Canada.

Even if the reader is not fromSaint John, Gananoque, orWallaceburg, these books will stillbe of interest. In some ways, eachof them tells of men and womenwho were entirely typical; at thesame time, their stories are unique.

WT

* * * * *

Michelle Kaiser, Willi: Diary of aYoung Lieutenant (London, ON:Valhalla Publishing, 2006), $40.00paper, 201 pg, ISBN 0-9739574-0-9.

If one can overlook the fact thatthe subtitle is misleading (this

isn’t in fact a diary, but a third-per-son narrative based on a diary),Willi is an interesting account of ayoung man’s journey through theSecond World War. A native ofHamburg, Willi Kaiser was calledup in December 1940 and was even-tually transferred to an assault ar-tillery unit. The narrative picks upin July 1941, with Kaiser’s unitdeep inside Russia, and his serv-ice on the Eastern Front continueduntil September 1942, when he wasseriously wounded in the fightingaround Stalingrad and sent back toGermany to recuperate. This sec-tion of Willi offers some fascinat-ing insights into conditions on theEastern Front, such as the psycho-logical impact of facing apparentlyunlimited numbers of Soviettroops.

The other valuable portion ofthe book deals with the bombing ofHamburg in July 1943, somethingthat Kaiser experienced first-hand.

The sheer destructive power ofBomber Command and the EighthAir Force is evident, and it is in-teresting to see it from ground levelinstead of from the air.

Willi’s main weakness is thatit is not a first-person memoir, andso it lacks the immediacy and au-thority of other Eastern Front ac-counts, such as J.M. Bauer’s As FarAs My Feet Will Carry Me. Still,because of the paucity of personalaccounts (from either side) of thecampaigns in Russian, Willi is avery useful contribution to the lit-erature.

WT

* * * * *

David B. Flemming, Explosion inHalifax Harbour: The IllustratedAccount of a Disaster ThatShook the World (Halifax: Formac,2004), $24.95 paper, 96 pages, ISBN0-88780-632-5.

Explosion in Halifax Harbourprovides a vivid account of life

on the shores of Canada’s east coastport before, during, and in the af-termath of 6 December 1917. Since1989, however, 6 December hasbecome familiar to many Canadi-ans as the anniversary of the Mon-treal Massacre. In this very man-ageable read, Flemming does anoutstanding job by recounting thehuman story behind the explosion,thereby restoring the earlier mean-ing of 6 December not only in Hali-fax, but in the Canadian narrativeas well.

Divided chronologically intosix chapters, Explosion in HalifaxHarbour depicts the devastation,rescue, reconstruction, and legacyof the collision between the Frenchvessel Mont-Blanc and the Norwe-gian ship Imo on that fateful Decem-ber morning. In the opening chap-ter, “Setting the Scene,” Flemmingdescribes the industrial growth andpotential in Halifax’s North Endprior to the outbreak of the FirstWorld War. The next three chaptersrecount the horrors of the explo-sion, in which more than 1500 peo-ple perished, as well as the imme-diate rescue and recovery efforts.Although Flemming briefly de-

scribes larger issues present at thetime, namely the inquiry into theexplosion and the numerous con-spiracy theories, he does not strayfrom the true focus of his story, theexperience of the averageHaligonian. The final chapter re-veals Flemming’s attempt, and per-haps purpose of the book itself, toidentify the legacy of this event. Inhis own words, the author con-cludes that “People helping people,neighbours caring for neighbours,this is probably the lasting legacyof the disaster” (89).

The illustrations are also note-worthy because they complementFlemming’s descriptive account ofthe explosion and its consequences.Using photographs and graphicimages of Halifax’s North End be-fore, during, and after the explo-sion, Flemming is able to embedthe reader into every facet of thistragedy. The final pages of the bookare devoted to a map and descrip-tion of historic sites relevant to theHalifax explosion, the implicationbeing that a visit to these sites isperhaps the only way to understandthe human story Flemming so pow-erfully articulates in this work.

JEW

* * * * *

Sandy Antal and Kevin R.Shackleton, Duty Nobly Done:The Official History of The Essexand Kent Scottish Regiment(Windsor, ON: Walkerville Publish-ing, 2006), $59.00, 828 pages, ISBN0-9731834-8-9.

Canadian military historianshave done themselves proud

recently in the compilation of unithistories, both in terms of the con-tent and the presentation. RobertFraser’s Black Yesterdays (the Ar-gyll & Sutherland Highlanders ofCanada) and Gordon Brown andTerry Copp’s Look To Your Front(the Regina Rifles) are two exam-ples of chronicles that combinesolid scholarship with high-qualityproduction. Duty Nobly Done, thenew history of the Essex Scottish,follows in that tradition.

Sandy Antal, author of theaward-winning A Wampum Denied:Procter’s War of 1812, and Kevin

17




Shackleton, whose most recentwork is the history of the 58th Bat-talion, Canadian ExpeditionaryForce, have joined forces to tell thestory of the regiment from its ear-liest roots as a French militia unitin 1749 to its current incarnationas The Essex and Kent ScottishRegiment, the name it took in 1954.

Antal handles the regiment’searly years, from the French regimethrough the War of 1812 and after.Both of these themes have been wellcovered by other historians, butAntal adds a fascinating chapter onthe Patriot War of 1838, when rebelslaunched four separate attacks onsouth-western Ontario (atAmherstburg, Fighting Island, PeleeIsland, and Windsor). Overshad-owed by the more well known inci-dents at York and in Lower Canada,the Patriot War is a fascinating yetlittle known episode in which theEssex and Kent militia, “despitetheir wretched state of prepared-ness” (137), Antal notes, beat backthe invaders. Just as interesting asthe actual engagements is his ac-count of the aftermath of the Battleof Windsor, when a number of therebels were summarily executed, anaction that caused considerablecontroversy in the area.

Kevin Shackleton takes care ofthe rest of the unit’s history, fromthe Union of the Canadas to thepresent day. In this, he covers allthe ground that one would expecthim to (the 18th Battalion in theFirst World War, the Dieppe raid,the campaign in north-west Eu-rope), but also finds some new an-gles to address. There is an excel-lent chapter on the First World Warreinforcement battalions linked tothe Essex Scottish (the 99th, 186th,and 241st Battalions), and anotherthat deals with the militia unit’swork on the home front during theSecond World War. In all cases,Shackleton has taken the standardunit narrative and enlivened it withcompelling and illuminating ac-counts from the sharp end.

This fine book is also notablefor its quality; heavy paper stock,excellent illustrations, and a full-colour map section make for a sub-stantial, durable, and valuable vol-

ume. Perhaps even more surpris-ing is the very reasonable price forsuch a book. It definitely belongson the shelf of every serious stu-dent of Canadian military history.

SL

* * * * *

Shane B. Schreiber, Shock Armyof the British Empire: The Cana-dian Army in the Last 100 Daysof the Great War (St. Catharines,ON: Vanwell, 2004 [1997]), $29.95paper, 159 pages, ISBN 1-55125-096-9.

Shane Schreiber examines thecorps and divisional levels of

command to understand the deci-sive advances made by the Canadianarmy on the ground over the lasthundred days of the Great War.During this time, the Canadianforces punched through the formi-dable German defensive positionsat Amiens, the Drocourt-QuéantLine, the Canal du Nord, and MountHuoy. Schreiber demonstrates howthe organizational structure of theCanadian Corps, refined through thebattles of 1915-1917, allowed forconsistent and sustained major at-tacks that were a decisive part ofthe Allied advance on Germany.

Using the analogy of a sym-phony, which at times does becometedious, he notes that the CanadianCorps had amassed the instru-ments of war but still required pre-cise coordination to sustain a con-certed attack on the German lines;the enemy could not simply be over-whelmed and worn down by anadvantage in men and material. Pre-cision and coordination, centeredon the command structure andcorps commander Arthur Currie,were required to target effectivelythe entrenched German defenders.Schreiber pays particular tribute to“the various levels of staffs, thoseinvisible minions so often over-looked by military historians be-cause of the dull nature of theirtasks, must be give a good deal ofcredit” (58). Increased coordinationslowly helped bring the early stagesof battle back under the control ofthe Canadian army through a com-plex but flexible chain of command.

While rarely going below battalionlevel descriptions of battle,Schreiber reveals a vivid picture ofcommand structure in battle.

The last hundred days of theFirst World War were perhaps themost intense period of fighting inCanadian military history.Schreiber successfully crafts athorough and well documentedstudy that remains extremely read-able for both the amateur and pro-fessional historian. His analysis ofcommand and military structure inwar should find its way into the li-brary of any serious historian of theGreat War.

JR

* * * * *

Susan Mann, MargaretMacdonald: Imperial Daughter(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univer-sity Press, 2005), $39.95, 304pages, ISBN 0773-5299-93.

Susan Mann, editor of the ac-claimed The War Diary of

Clare Gass, 1915-1918, revisits thetopic of Canada’s military nursingsisters in Margaret Macdonald,Imperial Daughter. Born in Pictou,Nova Scotia, Margaret was ambi-tiously drawn to the profession ofnursing in a combat environment,participating as a field nurse in theSpanish-American and South Afri-can Wars, and becoming the firstto occupy the position of Matron-in-Chief to Canada’s military nursesduring the First World War. Bydrawing on Macdonald’s devotedservice to the British Empire,Mann argues throughout this unof-ficial biography that her life storybroadens our understanding of theevolution of imperialism, the mili-tary, and the role of women in Ca-nadian society, as well as the ten-sions surrounding these issues.

Mann creates a chronologicalnarrative of Margaret’s professionaland private life based on her per-sonal papers, memories of familyand friends, and a variety of mili-tary documents. As the author re-lates, the Macdonald family hasbeen secretive about the details ofMargaret’s personal life. Conse-quently, Mann has to draw conclu-

18




sions regarding certain aspects ofMacdonald’s personality and rela-tionships by piecing together detailsfrom these materials, leaving thereader to decide whether or not toagree with these inferences.

Macdonald is portrayed as anefficient and talented field nursewho travelled the world to pursueopportunities in military medicine,and who later became an exactingbut fair administrator during theFirst World War. Her Catholic Scot-tish upbringing and thorough edu-cation compelled Macdonald tostrive for excellence, and she ex-pected no less from her own Cana-dian nurses both on and off duty.Despite her utmost respect for mili-tary protocol and discipline, shewas also known for her sincereconcern for the safety, well being,and professional status of hernurses.

Margaret Macdonald, Impe-rial Daughter aptly traces the birthand development of the field ofmilitary nursing in Canada, andhow women progressed through theranks when this field was still inits infancy. It also conveys the chal-lenges faced by pioneering nursingadministrators of the Canadianmilitary during the First World Waras they dealt with shortages of re-sources, as well as the tug of warfor power between British and Ca-nadian authorities. As a pioneer inher field who helped pave the wayfor women to participate in the Ca-nadian military, MargaretMacdonald’s story is one worthreading.

CM

* * * * *

David L. Bashow, No ProuderPlace: Canadians and theBomber Command Experience(St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell, 2005),$60.00, 480 pages, ISBN 1-55125-098-5.

David Bashow’s fine new accountof Canadians in Bomber Com-

mand begins with a quotation whoseirony would only become apparentyears after the fact: “Give me fiveyears and you will not recognizeGermany again,” said Adolf Hitler

in 1933. Twelve years later, Ger-many was indeed unrecognizable,but not in the way that the Führerhad imagined it would be. Its greatcities lay in ruins, its population wasdevastated. To paraphrase theAmerican journalist WalterCronkite, the Nazi state had sownthe wind with its air attacks on ci-vilian targets early in the war; by1945, it had well and truly reapedthe whirlwind.

No Prouder Place bears someresemblance to the official historyof the Royal Canadian Air Force:the same high standard of research,breadth of sources, and complete-ness of coverage. But Bashow givesfar more room to the voice of theindividual, whether he (or she)served in the air or on the ground.His historical narrative is filled withlong, often compelling recollectionsof members of Bomber Command,some from well known memoirsbut many more from difficult-to-findveterans’ magazines or unpublishedaccounts: Jack Watts’ thoughtsabout trying to bomb the Tirpitz in1942 (81); Jim Northrup’s fascinat-ing insights into the performanceof the Halifax (280); and CliffordBlack’s recollection of a raid inSeptember 1944 when a waywardB-17 joined his bomber stream andbombed his target, because the pi-lot had become separated from hisown formation and didn’t want towaste his bomb load (375).

One of the book’s most inter-esting segments is the appendix thatprovides a succinct and judicioussummary of the positives and nega-tives of the strategic bombing cam-paign. Bashow notes that only theU-boat arm of the Kriegsmarinesuffered a higher overall casualtyrate on a sustained basis, but thatCanadians in Bomber Command,because they missed many of thehigh-casualty raids early in the war,suffered somewhat lower lossesthan the British. In discussing whatthe campaign achieved, Bashow dis-tinguishes between direct effects (thereduction in production capacity ofcertain key industries) and indirecteffects (for example, the 800,000workers engaged in repairing bombdamage in 1944 alone). In both in-

stance, he judges that the campaignhad a significant impact in hasten-ing the German collapse.

The men who flew with BomberCommand took a hit some years agoin the execrable documentary TheValour and the Horror, whichpainted them in a distinctly unfa-vourable light. On the contrary, asDavid Bashow argues, theirs is astory of which they can be justifi-ably proud.

WT

* * * * *

Donald D. Tansley, Growing Upand Going to War, 1925-1945(Waterloo, ON: Laurier Centre forMilitary Strategic and DisarmamentStudies, 2005), $19.95 paper, 117pages, ISBN 0-9688759-9-2.

Don Tansley was a child of theDepression, born in 1925 in

Regina. As he writes, sociologistswould have considered his familyto be lower middle class, but hismemories of the time are generallypositive; after all, he recalls, “Eve-rybody was in the same boat” (5).

A teenager when the war began,he spent time in the Regina SeaCadets and the Reserve Battalionof the Regina Rifles, had a clash ofpersonalities with a Chief Petty Of-ficer when he enquired about en-listing in the Royal Canadian Navy,and ultimately joined the army onhis eighteenth birthday, in May1943. The personnel selection proc-ess directed him into the RoyalCanadian Artillery, but after arriv-ing in England he was re-musteredas infantry, passing through theRoyal Montreal Regiment beforebeing transferred to his old unit,the Regina Rifles, in December1944. Over the next six months,Tansley was transformed from agreenhorn rifleman into one of theold sweats of the regiment. He wasnot yet twenty-one when he got backto Regina, but the photographs re-veal how much he had maturedduring the war, an experience hecalls “the most defining, the mostintense, the most unforgettable, andperhaps the most satisfying experi-ence of my life” (23).

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Tansley writes in plain and sim-ple language, with a modesty thatis refreshing. He was at the sharpend as Canadian troops drove tothe Rhine, and describes the expe-rience vividly and without exaggera-tion. His memoir makes an excel-lent companion to the two pub-lished histories of his unit, StewartMain’s Up the Johns! (1993) andGordon Brown and Terry Copp’sLook to Your Front (2001).

SL

* * * * *

Bruce Thornley, Index to OverseasDeaths of Ontario Servicemenand Servicewomen, 1939-1947,ed. Clifford Collier, 2 vols. (To-ronto: Ontario Genealogical Soci-ety, 2006), $82.36 paper, 416 pages,ISBN 0-7779-0225-7 (volumes mayalso be purchased individually).

The invaluable reference guidebegan with one man’s search

for his family’s history. Whilesearching the microfilm rolls at theArchives of Ontario that list over-seas deaths, Bruce Thornley dis-covered that it was impossible tosearch them by name, because thedeath certificates were registeredaccording to year of death. So, heset about compiling an alphabeticallisting of the more than 15,000Ontarians who died overseas from1939 to 1947, so that researcherscould easily locate a name, find therelevant microfilm reel, and bor-row it from the Archives of Ontarioto consult the death certificate.Thornley’s labour of love wasn’t fin-ished by the time he died in 2001,so it was taken over by CliffordCollier, who saw the project throughto completion.

Space restrictions preventedthe inclusion of all the informationcontained on the death certificates;Thornley had to confine himself toname, service, hometown, and dateand cause of death. But the refer-ence numbers make it easy for theuser to borrow the microfilmeddeath certificates, which often con-tain more information for the his-torian or the genealogist.

As with any such referencebook, this one provokes as many

questions as it provides answers.Was Richard Motkaluk celebratingVE-Day before the fact when hedied of alcohol poisoning on 2 May1945? What drove Theodore Gerigsto throw himself under a truck inFebruary 1945? Could anything havebeen done to reduce the alarmingnumber of motorcycle accidentsthat claimed the lives of Canadiansin the armed forces? Behind eachname, to be sure, is a story that isworth telling.

SL

* * * * *

David R. Facey-Crowther, ed., Lieu-tenant Owen William Steele ofthe Newfoundland Regiment: Di-ary and Letters (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002),$44.95, 253 pages, ISBN 0-7735-2428-2.

As the title suggests, this is thediary and letters of Lieutenant

Owen William Steele, a proud mem-ber of the Royal NewfoundlandRegiment during the First WorldWar, who fought valiantly at Gallipoliand on the Western Front. Quicklypromoted until he was commis-sioned as a lieutenant in April 1915,he experienced countless nearmisses and lucky coincidences atGallipoli before taking part in thedramatic evacuation of the last sol-diers; he was the last one off thebeach, arriving at the ship just as itwas about to set sail. After a briefperiod of rest, Steele and the New-foundland Regiment were shippedto the Western Front, where all toomany of them met their end.

Steele served in the same com-pany as his younger brother James,as well as many others he knewfrom back home. His attachment tohis home, family, and friends shinethrough in his letters home whichoften mention the activities of otherNewfoundlanders. He also ex-presses great pride at the New-foundland contingent receivingpraise for working better and fasterthan other regiments, and expressesdismay at being confused for Cana-dians while in Europe.

The editor, David Facey-Crowther, does a fine job of filling

in the few gaps in the diary, fullyfleshing out some of the commentsmade by Steele. This is especiallyimportant in what ended up beingSteele’s last days, when he wit-nessed the slaughter of his regimentwhile he was held back as part ofthe reserve at the battle of BeaumontHamel, part of the massive Sommeoffensive. Steele possessed greatinsight before the battle, as he notesthat the Germans appeared as if theywere preparing for their attack. Yethe still expresses great confidencethat the ensuing battle would be thegreatest the world had seen, andwould result in everyone beinghome by Christmas. A few days af-ter the battle while away from thefront line, Steele was hit by a ran-dom shell and died the followingday. This is an excellent collection,well edited, and a thoroughly en-joyable story of the last two yearsof one of Newfoundland’s finest andbrightest young men.

MG

* * * * *

Walter W. Igersheimer, Blatant In-justice: The Story of a JewishRefugee from Nazi Germany Im-prisoned in Britain and Canadaduring World War II (Montreal:McGill-Queen’s University Press,2005), $39.95, 232 pages, ISBN 0-7735-2841-5.

When Winston Churchill utteredthe famous phrase “Collar the

lot!” and ordered his officials tocomplete the internment of thou-sands of German and Italian immi-grants to and refugees in Britain,one of the innocents who was sweptup was Walter Igersheimer, a Jew-ish medical student who had es-caped to Britain from Germany. Hehad enormous motivation and de-sire to serve the Allied cause, butinstead found himself interned firstin Britain and then in Canada. Hismemoir is interesting on two lev-els. First, Igersheimer is a very keenand interested observer and effec-tively describes the roller coasterof emotions experienced by theseyoung men as they alternated be-tween despair at their treatmentand hope that their release might

20




be imminent. On another level, hetries to make sense of the catch-22in which they found themselves. TheCanadian government insisted it wasmerely a custodian, with no author-ity to release the men. The UnitedStates wouldn’t accept them be-cause they had crossed the oceanas internees; their only option inthat regard was to return to Brit-ain, obtain an official release, andtravel to the US on a civiliansteamer. But Britain wasn’t surewhat to do with them; some werereleased unconditionally, while oth-ers were returned to Britain onlyafter they agreed to join the PioneerCorps. Igersheimer’s route to free-dom was even more unusual. De-spite the fact that his parents wereliving in Boston, just a day’s drivefrom where he was interned, theonly way he could gain his freedomwas to secure travel papers to Cuba;it was April 1943 before he couldwangle his way into the US.

Blatant Injustice is part diary,part memoir, and it works well onboth counts. The only fault in IanDarragh’s otherwise excellent intro-duction is his claim that this story“remains largely unknown to thegeneral public to this day” (vii). Infact, the story has been the subjectof dozens of monographs and mem-oirs since the 1970s, and the gen-eral public is no more ignorant ofit that they are of any other histori-cal event. But that minor criticismdoesn’t lessen the impact ofIgersheimer’s very powerfulmemoir.

DR

* * * * *

John Boileau, Valiant Hearts: At-lantic Canada and the VictoriaCross (Halifax: Nimbus, 2005),$24.95, 276 pages, ISBN 1-55109548-3.

At least four other books havebeen written on Canadian VC

winners but this one offers a dif-ferent perspective on Britain’s high-est award for gallantry. It detailsthe lives of twenty-one men whowere born in Atlantic Canada orspent time there. The meticulousresearch on which the book is

based uncovers some interestinginformation on these men.

Most of the book deals withFirst World War. The author tellsof the battles and the backgroundto the award of the VC, showing thewinners as very human beings, notjust as the heroes they were. Pri-vate John Croak, a terrible soldierin the barracks, always being finedfor misdemeanours, came into hisown in battle. Lieutenant-ColonelCyrus Peck led his men from thefront and had earned a DSO andbar before winning his VC at Ar-ras. Lieutenant Milton Gregg, amodest man, gained his medal forshowing leadership over a four-dayperiod.

Boileau, a former CanadianArmy officer, writes of the enor-mous casualties in the First WorldWar. The 27th Battalion “regener-ated itself five times ... Only 147remained from the original onethousand” at the end of the war. TheYpres Salient cost the Allies570,000 casualties, 160,000 ofthem fatal.

Four VC winners from the Sec-ond World War appear in the book,only one of whom was born in theregion. Captain Frederick Peters,born on Prince Edward Island,earned the medal for leading a sui-cidal mission into Oran harbour on8 November 1942. Flight Lieuten-ant Bud Hornell trained on the Is-land and flew out of Yarmouth, NovaScotia, and Lieutenant “Hammy”Gray, the last VC winner of the war,spent time in this province. Thearmed cruiser Jervis Bay, afterrefitting at Saint John, went downdefending convoy HX84 against theGerman battleshipAdmiral Scheeron 5 November 1940. Her captain,Fogarty Fegen, VC, and his gallantcrew are remembered with a monu-ment in a city park.

Valiant Hearts has a passion-ate intensity to it, so it’s a book tobe sipped rather than swallowedwhole. It contains a great deal ofuseful information on the medal andits winners (William Hall, the blackNova Scotia sailor who won his VCat Lucknow, was a powerful ath-lete), including details of where theCanadian VCs can be viewed. And

the author includes a great deal ofinteresting material on matters suchas the difference between Americanand British aircraft carriers, theimpact of Mauser bullets on humanflesh, the award of the VC by bal-lot, the fate of some of the VC win-ners (seventeen committed suicide),and the performance of the Corsairfighter-bomber. The book has manyexcellent in-text photos and a com-prehensive index. It lacks maps;one of Flanders would have addedvalue to this fine book.

JL

* * * * *

Gary Campbell, The Road toCanada: The Grand Communica-tions Route from Saint John toQuebec (Fredericton: Goose LaneEditions / The New Brunswick Mili-tary History Project, 2005), $14.95paper, 115 pages, ISBN 0-86492-426-7.

In 1885, it was the recently com-pleted Canadian Pacific Railway

that allowed central Canadian mili-tia units to reach the site of theNorth-West Rebellion and put downthe uprising. But before that, theGrand Communications Routeserved the same strategic purpose,enabling troops and supplies tomove, with relative ease given thetime, between the Maritimes andQuebec.

Not surprisingly, it was basedon a route that had been used bythe aboriginal peoples of the region,who paddled, portaged, andtrekked along it for centuries be-fore the Europeans arrived. Dur-ing the era of the French regime, itbecame an important means ofmaintaining contact between thescattered settlement of New Franceduring the winter, when ice closedthe St. Lawrence River to shipping.

The centrepiece of Campbell’sfascinating narrative is the march,in early 1813, of the 104th Regi-ment of Foot from Fredericton toKingston to deal with the US threatduring the War of 1812. By anyyardstick, it was a remarkableachievement: fifty-two days and1128 kilometres through the deadof winter, without a single loss of

21




life, even though temperaturesplunged to -32 degrees Celsius (itis worth noting that three ofCampbell’s ancestors took part inthe march). As The Road toCanada rightly points out, it wasonly one of many such troop move-ments along the Grand Communi-cations Route, but it demonstratedbeyond a shadow of a doubt theroute’s necessity to the security ofBritish North America.

SL

* * * * *

J.P. Pollock, ed., Letters from An-gus, 1915-1916 (Victoria:Trafford Publishing, 2005), $22.50paper, 156 pages, ISBN 1-4120-5780-9.

At thirty-four years of age, An-gus Martin was older than most

of his fellow volunteers when hejoined the 74th Battalion in Torontoin October 1915. A well known cityathlete and a man whose views hadtended towards conscientious ob-jection, he had a change of heartwhen two of his brothers-in-lawjoined up and his best friend waskilled in action. Angus left his jobas a compositor for SaturdayNight, and joined the infantry. Hewas eventually transferred to the52nd Battalion, and was killed bythe concussion of a shell-burst inthe summer of 1916.

Martin’s letters reveal him tobe a keen observer with an artisticeye (included are a number of po-ems he wrote at the front and senthome to his wife), but also a fatherwho doted on his three small chil-dren. His letters to Flora, Fergus,and Elinore are deeply moving, andshow him trying his hardest to be afather figure from an ocean away;their letters back to him (includinga number that were sent after hisdeath and were returned to his wifeCora with his personal possessions)are almost painful to read in theirinnocence. Angus lived for lettersfrom home (on 7 June 1916, hewrote “Another big Canadian mailto-day but nary a thing for Martin.So I guess nobody loves him andwe’re going over to Flanders tomor-row to eat worms”), and recipro-

cated with long and detailed ac-counts (as detailed as censorshippermitted) of his experiences forCora.

Pollock, Martin’s grand-daugh-ter, has added photos, postcards,newspaper clippings, and Angus’little sketches to the book, and hassupplementing the details in the let-ters with entries from the 52nd Bat-talion’s war diary. Taken together,it makes for a collection that is sopowerful because it is at once verypersonal, but also universal.

JFV

* * * * *

Eric Hammel, Iwo Jima: Portraitof a Battle (St. Paul, MN: ZenithPress, 2006), $52.00 US, 256 pages,ISBN 0-7603-2520-0.

There are few historians as quali-fied to write about the United

States Marine Corps (USMC) asHammel, and probably none whocan spin as compelling a story.Here, he tackles a well documentedsubject, the battle for Iwo Jima in1945, but brings a fresh and newperspective. One of the bloodiestengagements of the Second WorldWar, the landing was preceded by aseventy-four day air and naval bom-bardment that should have pulver-ized the defenders; instead, theMarines faced a thirty-four day bat-tle that turned the tiny island into acharnel-house.

Hammel’s narrative is fact-paced, succinct, and gripping – onewould expect nothing less from theauthor of classics such asGuadalcanal: Starvation Islandand 76 Hours: The Invasion ofTarawa. But what really sets thebook apart is Hammel’s choice ofillustrations. This is a story that isreally told through the photographs,and there are some astonishing oneshere. Most are from officialsources, but few have ever beenpublished before. They cover everyelement of the battle, from run-upto clean-up. In one striking se-quence, two Marines search for theJapanese gunner who has set alighta nearby Sherman, find their tar-get, and then open fire. Anotherphotograph captures the aftermath

when a Japanese shell made a di-rect hit on a crater where a handfulof Marine had taken cover. In athird, the moment is frozen as fiveUSMC rocket trucks let loose asalvo of rockets against enemy po-sitions. And in the final photograph,a haggard-looking Marine lights uphis pipe while cradling his flame-thrower. With this many fine illus-trations, Hammel’s compelling nar-rative is a bonus; Iwo Jima can beread, or looked at, or both. Eitherway, this coffee-table book is oneof the best around on the battle.

TG

* * * * *

Irishmen in War From the Cru-sades to 1798: Essays from TheIrish Sword, vol. I, introduction byHarman Murtagh and foreword byTom Bartlett (Portland, OR: IrishAcademic Press / The Military His-tory Society of Ireland [distributedin North America by InternationalSpecialized Book Services], 2006),$67.50 US, 274 pages, ISBN 07165-28169.

The main aim of this volume,and of its companion, Irishmen

in War 1800-2000: Essays fromThe Irish Sword, volume 2, is aworthy one: to put before a widerpublic a representative sample ofarticles published by The MilitaryHistory Society of Ireland in its bi-annual journal, The Irish Sword.As Harman Murtagh points out inhis Introduction (ix) the Society,from its foundation in 1949 at atime when the tensions of the 1922-23 civil had far from dissipatedand anti-British feelings ran high,has always “sought to attract sol-diers, scholars and those with ageneral interest in the subject,”whatever their political or militaryloyalties; Murtagh cites the journal’sfounding editor, G.A. Hayes-McCoy,to the effect that “no country assmall as Ireland has achieved sucha reputation as a home of soldiers”(a judgement that the Scots mightquery).

The nineteen articles are ar-ranged chronologically. Several fo-cus on particular military engage-ments, such as the Battle of

22




Dungan’s Hill in 1647 (PadraigLenihan), Cromwell’s famous – orinfamous – siege of Drogheda (J.G.Simms), and the Battle of Castlebarin 1798 (Richard Hayes). Two otherpieces, by Paul M. Kerrigan andHayes-McCoy, also focus on the1798 rebellion; all were originally,presumably, part of a special issuecelebrating the 200th anniversary ofthe event. Other papers are con-cerned with the composition, tac-tics, and equipment of various ar-mies: see, for example, Hayes-McCoy’s study of the Ulster armyin the late sixteenth century,Kenneth Ferguson on KingWilliam’s army in Ireland after theGlorious Revolution, and Diarmuidand Harman Murtagh on the IrishJacobite army it faced. Two furtherpieces on this period (doubtless,again, the subject of a commemo-rative issue) focus, respectively, onthe topography of the Battle of theBoyne (Donal O’Connell, in an es-say lacking, alas, any clarificatorymaps) and on the rôle of the Frenchnavy in the Jacobite war in Ireland(Sheila Mulloy). The importance ofFrench and Spanish connectionswith Ireland is also emphasized inCaoimhin O Danachair’s analysis ofArmada losses on the Spanish coast,Sir Charles Petrie’s study of thestrategy of these two powers in re-lation to Ireland, and MichelineKenney Walsh’s wide-ranging dis-cussion of the service of Irish sol-diers abroad (this last includingreferences to areas beyond Franceand Spain and covering, as doesPetrie’s article, a period of severalcenturies). For the mediaeval pe-riod we have Con Costello on Ire-land and the Crusades, RandallRogers on the late twelfth-centuryinvasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans and the adaptation oftheir relatively meagre resources tomeet the challenges they faced, andKatharine Simms on warfare in themediaeval Gaelic lordships, domi-nated as it was by harrying, plun-dering, particularly of cattle, andexacting hostages and submission.As the paper neatly concludes, theHigh King of Ireland was thereforebaffled by the appearance of HenryII and his knights: “Strongbow ar-

rived without cows” (55). Three fur-ther papers round out the collec-tion: a study of the first guns in Ire-land by Siobhan de h-Äir, a beguil-ing personality sketch of the famoussixteenth-century rebel Hugh O’Neillthe Great by Cyril Falls, and PeterSmyth’s valuable analysis, in whatis arguably the best paper in thebook, of the late eighteenth-centuryIrish Volunteers, a national armedforce outside government control.

The introduction (xii) suggeststhat the main focus of the MilitaryHistory Society of Ireland is closerto the traditional than the revision-ist view of Irish History. Certainlywe have here much old-school mili-tary history, with several of the pa-pers of mainly antiquarian interest.Of course it can be argued that aselection from a span of some fiftyyears is bound to reflect the pre-vailing preoccupations of the pe-riod. Why, then, is the reader notprovided with the apparatus thatwould enable solid judgements tobe made on that basis? Nowhere isthere the slightest indication of thevolume number, pagination, anddate of publication of the issue ofThe Irish Sword from which a par-ticular article is taken. This is anelementary error of omission. Care-ful noting of dates and footnotes cangive the reader some sense of pe-riod of composition, but that as-sumes some references are madeto secondary literature – not alwaysthe case – and that there are somefootnotes (there are none in Falls’sessay). Nor is there anywhere a two-or three-line sketch of the contribu-tors, an indispensable part of a col-lection of this sort. Brief allusionto the death dates of various Soci-ety luminaries, who turn out alsoto be contributors, is not enough.Moreover, some of the papers as-sume a thorough familiarity withthe frequently very specialized orlimited chronological periods andgeographical areas being discussed;perhaps this was possible at thetime of original publication but itis not so now, and certainly not fora general audience. This volumecries out for some heavy editorialwork, not just the three-and-a-halfpage introduction and three-quar-

ters of a page foreword that it has.No doubt it was cheaper to presentsimple facsimiles of the originalarticles (with unfortunate conse-quences, however, for the quality ofany illustrations) but this makes itdifficult to justify the high price ofthe book. An editor, or individualauthors, if extant, could have pro-vided a paragraph or two contain-ing an abstract of the argument anda context for what follows.

We are told (xii) that the “mod-ern theme” of war and society andareas such as military art andwomen in Irish warfare are not ne-glected in the pages of The IrishSword but that “space limitations”preclude inclusion here. It is, how-ever, people who make decisions.The title of the book, also, Irish-men in War, is hardly inclusive. Thewider public which the Irish Mili-tary History Society wishes to reachis not well-served by this book.

BCM

* * * * *

Clifton J. Cate and Charles J. Cate,Notes: A Soldier’s Memoir of WorldWar I (Victoria: Trafford, 2005),$22.00 paper, 177 pages, ISBN 1-41205355-2.

Gordon S. Glen, A Memoriam tothe Life of James Alpheus Glen,D.S.C. and Bar, Croix de Guerreavec Palme, Royal Naval Air Serv-ice, Royal Air Force, Canadian AirForce (Saskatoon: privately pub-lished [available from the author [email protected]], 2004),$26.50 paper, 46 pages, no ISBN.

Gordon S. Glen, A Memoriam tothe Life of David Kenneth Glen,2nd Regiment, CanadianMounted Rifles, (B.C. Horse),Canadian Over-Seas Expedition-ary Force, Royal Naval Air Serv-ice and RAF (Saskatoon: privatelypublished [available from the au-thor at [email protected]],2004), 46 pages, no ISBN.

The boom in desktop publishing(either commercial or per-

sonal) has been a boon for histori-ans, for it has often been the meansfor rescuing from obscurity stories

23




that might otherwise have remaineduntold. The biographies of CliftonCate and the Glen brothers repre-sent a case in point.

In the late summer of 1917,when voluntary enlistments hadbeen reduced to a trickle, a youngMassachusetts man names CliftonCate was just what the CEF waslooking for: someone with a pulse.Cate, who had joined up in the USbut had been discharged becauseof his bad teeth, promptly headedto New Brunswick, where he wasimmediately taken into the 8thField Ambulance at Saint John. ButCate was destined for a combatantrole, and within a few months wastransferred to the artillery (the re-cruiting officer, when shown hisAmerican discharge papers, re-sponded, “Do they think you’re go-ing over there to EAT the Ger-mans?”). He eventually ended upwith the 12th Siege Battery, arriv-ing in France in early 1918 andfighting through the Hundred Days.

His memoir, written in 1927and intended to be read only by hisfamily, covers his experiences inbattle and in occupation (indeed,one of the most interesting parts ofthe book recounts Cate’s time inBelgium and Germany, a subjectthat has received all too little atten-tion from historians). Cate had awry wit, a gift for spinning a goodyarn, and a fondness for the absurd.He was also a fine draughtsman, andfilled his memoir with smallsketches of places and things he sawin his travels. It is a gem of a book,from a soldier who, were it not forthe work of his son Charles Cate,would have remained in obscurity.

Gordon Glen’s biography of hisuncle Jim Glen is rather different.Glen, who had a distinguished avia-tion career during the First WorldWar and in the short-lived CanadianAir Force afterwards, is the sort ofperson who should have left a richpaper trail for historians to follow.Instead, his nephew has had to piecetogether his life from a scatteringof sources, and even then there aremany holes to fill. Jim Glen wasone of eight children born inBoissevain, Manitoba; his parentsand younger brothers moved to

Enderby, British Columbia, whenJim was eighteen, and it was therethat he finished school. He joinedthe Canadian Engineers in 1915,but later enrolled at the CurtissFlying School in Toronto as prepa-ration for entering the Royal NavalAir Service. He started on bomb-ers, but his DSC was awarded forthe twenty-odd aerial victories hescored while on fighter operations.After the war and his short stint inthe CAF, Glen returned to the RAF,from which he retired in 1928.

Gordon Glen has pulled thisstory (and the separately publishedbiography of Jim’s brother Ken,who served in the 2nd CanadianMounted Rifles and the RNAS) to-gether from a variety of sources inCanada, Britain, and the UnitedStates. He admits that both biogra-phies represent starting points, tobe added to as further informationbecomes available, but they showhow much can be learned even ifone starts with almost nothing. Par-ticularly interesting is the collec-tions of family and service photo-graphs that Gordon Glen has as-sembled. All in all, one can only begrateful that technology has allowedthe stories of these men to reach awider audience.

TG

* * * * *

Laura M. MacDonald, Curse of theNarrows: The Halifax Explosion1917 (Toronto: HarperCollins,2006), $21.95 paper, 368 pages,ISBN 0-0063-948-92.

Relative to most other NorthAmerican cities, Halifax has a

long past. In recent years, however,some might argue that the city hasfaced more than its fair share ofproblems. Recently, the RollingStones descended upon the city,and before that it was the two Juans– Hurricane and White – in 2003and 2004. In 1917, however, twoships – the Imo, a Belgian reliefvessel, and the Mont Blanc, aFrench vessel loaded to the gillswith munitions – collided in theharbour narrows. The result wasthe biggest disaster faced by the city

over the last century: the HalifaxExplosion.

In Curse of the Narrows,Laura MacDonald weaves a detailednarrative account of the explosionthat nearly encompasses the entirecommunity affected by “the mostpowerful bomb the war and theworld had ever produced.” Theresult of the explosion – 9,000homeless, 6,000 injured, and 2,000dead out of a total population be-tween Halifax and Dartmouth of60,000 – is testament to the impor-tance of the event to Halifax, andCanadian, history. Curse of theNarrows provides insight into theimmediate effects on those in andaround the city, the relief effortsfrom the local and internationalcommunities, the rehabilitationwork that followed, and a shortsummary of the court proceedingsinvestigating the incident.

MacDonald vividly recon-structs the awesome power of theblast. Her ability to describe invivid, sometimes gruesome detailthe minutiae of a phenomenon thatfew people have ever seen – andfewer still have lived to tell about –is a tremendous feat. On recount-ing the story of an ophthalmologistinspecting injured eyes, she tells usthat upon pressing the eye socket,“It was as if the ball had been laidopened and then stuffed with piecesof glass or sometimes crockery,brick splinters, and, on palpitation,they would clink.” This passage,along with numerous others withinthe book, almost made me physi-cally ill, a tribute, I think, toMacDonald’s skill as a writer andstoryteller.

There is very little about whichto complain in this fascinatingbook, with one notable exception.As an historian, I was disappointedto find that there were no in-textnumerical citations to correspondwith her endnotes. MacDonald hasdone her homework, but it seemsan error somewhere in the publish-ing process makes that work nowdifficult to trace.

More a social than military his-tory, Curse of the Narrows tells thestory of how civilians, outside vol-unteers, civil servants, and the

24




armed forces all came together ina unified effort to bring relief to theinjured and homeless. It is an in-teresting and important story, andperhaps the book’s most compel-ling feature is that MacDonald tellsit so well. If anything, historianswill benefit most from the book bypaying attention to the nuances inMacDonald’s writing that demon-strate how history need not confineitself to the formulaic writing sooften found in academia.

BA

* * * * *

Frederick Libby, Horses Don’t Fly:A Memoir of World War I (NewYork: Arcade Publishing, 2006),$38.95, 274 pages, ISBN 1-55970-526-4.

In 1961, more than four decadesafter the Treaty of Versailles was

signed by the Great War belligerentsin Paris, Frederick Libby finallyadded his experiences to the annalsof First World War historiography.Based solely on his memories ofthe war, Libby provides a captivat-ing, highly detailed, and oftenamusing outlook on the first twenty-six years of his life. After becom-ing a pre-eminent horse trainer andworking as a cow puncher in smalltown Colorado, Libby sought outother worldly experiences. Intend-ing to head to South America in1914, Libby ultimately sailed northand made his way to Alberta,Canada. It was at this juncture thata recruiter attempted to enlist Libbyinto the CEF. Like so many youngCanadians he was promised a freetrip to Europe with good pay as wellas the prospect of being home byChristmas. Libby unhesitatinglyjoined.

After briefly serving in thetrenches of France, Libby joined theRoyal Flying Corps because it was“a nice way out of [the] damn rain.”It was here that he flourished. Injust over one year of service, Libbysuccessfully shot down severalGerman planes (fourteen confirmedkills) to become America’s firstfighter ace of the war. He also in-vented the butt-stock for a Lewisgun on his F.E.2b to give an ob-

server better aim, which eventuallybecame standard military issue.However, Libby does not dwell onthese achievements as he consist-ently underrated his own successes.Instead, he praises others for theiraccomplishments and teachings,including Albert Ball, a great Brit-ish ace of the First World War withforty-three confirmed kills, andCaptain Price, Libby’s instructorand pilot in 11 Squadron.

Nevertheless, Libby passes anunfair judgement upon one man inparticular. Normally introducingpeople by their full name (or rank),Libby refused to give the same cour-tesy to William Avery “Billy”Bishop. He then endeavoured tosully Bishop’s claim of an earlymorning raid on a German airfield.It is alleged that Bishop single-handedly shot down four enemyaircraft (Libby incorrectly recallseight aircraft) before limping backhome to be decorated with the Vic-toria Cross for his daring and brav-ery. In Libby’s own words, “GodAlmighty! Excuse me while I vomit.”This was a major point of conten-tion for a pilot who still consideredair warfare a gentlemanly affairwhere a kill was recorded only af-ter it was confirmed by another pi-lot.

Finally, unlike the war litera-ture of Siegfried Sassoon, ErichMaria Remarque, or Charles YaleHarrison, Libby does not dwell onthe ghastly or horrific events of thewar. Rather, he recounts his timein the RFC with an air of sentimen-tality as an almost golden age ofhistory (which speaks to Libby’selderly age of sixty-nine). Life wasgood in the RFC. Disillusionmentonly came when he transferred tothe US air service: not only did theUnited States lack a credible airforce, but the government and poli-ticians were to be faulted for de-laying American involvement in thewar, the damning implication being,of course, that the United States didnot win the First World War.

Horses Don’t Fly was an hon-est attempt by Frederick Libby toretell a vital moment in world his-tory through his own eyes. He wascertainly a very able and well re-

spected pilot with the Royal FlyingCorps, but he does not attempt topersuade or delude anyone, includ-ing himself, of his importance: in amost unassuming and unashamedmanner, Libby leaves it to hisreader to pass judgement upon hislegacy.

RC

* * * * *

Kenneth Radley, We Lead, OthersFollow: First Canadian Division,1914-1918 (St. Catharines:Vanwell, 2006), $34.95, 415 pages,ISBN 1-5512-510-00.

We Lead, Others Follow isKenneth Radley’s (Lieutenant-

Colonel, retired) self-proclaimed at-tempt to pierce the shroud of “Ca-nadian Amnesia” that he feels cloaksthe exploits of the Canadian Expe-ditionary Force [CEF] in the FirstWorld War. He opens the volumeby bemoaning the relative dearth ofCanadian divisional histories incomparison to other nations suchas Australia or Britain and goes onto state his intention to pay the FirstCanadian Division the historicalattention that it merits. Indeed,Radley closes his preface with avirtual disclaimer for his approach,declaring that “some of what I sayin this start on the history of theGreat War Canadian Divisions maywell be contentious, but then I havesought to speak directly as befits asoldier.” However, despite this dis-claimer, We Lead, Others Followpresents a balanced and exhaus-tively researched examination ofthe early evolution of the divisionthat became known as “Old RedPatch,” from its disorganized birthon a field outside Valcartier to itsposition of honour in the vanguardof the British Expeditionary Forceduring the early months of 1918.In particular, Radley is seeking todraw attention to the general offic-ers, not just the divisional com-manders such as Macdonell andCurrie, who are already the subjectof scholarly research in their ownright. This top-down approach toexamining the evolution of FirstDivision is reflected in the centralpremise of Radley’s book, which

25




Book ReviewSupplement Editor

Jonathan F. Vance

Contributing ReviewersBryan AndrachukBecky BeausaertGraham BroadAdrian Ciani

Rob ClevelandJeremy Cummings

Dylan A. CyrBrendan Dominick

Sarah FoxMatthew Gilbert

Ted GraingerDorotea Gucciardo

Nathan HallDaniel HamblyTeresa IacobelliLeah Iszakovits

Susan LeeJim Lotz

Christine MathersHugo Gonzales Murillo

Barbara C. MurisonAllan O’Hagan

Stephanie PotterJoel Ralph

Bryan RosatiDavid RozanskiAllison Smith

Will ToewsJonathan F. Vance

Shannon VanderWeerdJane E. Whalen

James Wood

attributes the Division’s rapid pro-gression to three primary factors:command and control, staff work,and sound training.

Indeed, the body of this volumeis broken down topically into achronological examination of thethree factors outlined above. Begin-ning with command and control,Radley offers an analysis of the evo-lution of the First Division’s capa-bilities, followed by an examinationof the ways in which this progres-sion manifested itself. He takes thesame dual approach to his discus-sion of staff work and training.There are a number of recurringthemes that run through all threeof these topics. In fact, the topical-chronological structure of Radley’sargument serves to highlight thedegree to which success in all threeof these areas was an ongoing proc-ess of trial and error. According toRadley, the First Division’s successon the battlefield was due to thevirtually incessant efforts of its of-ficers to adapt and refine both tac-tics and training, and the increas-ingly effective efforts of staff offic-ers to communicate and coordinatethese refinements effectively. Simi-larly, he repeatedly emphasizes theextent to which this process of “trialand error” benefited not only fu-ture members of “Old Red Patch,”but also the other Canadian divi-sions in the CEF, and to a certaindegree the BEF as a whole.

It should also be noted thatdespite the author’s inherent bias(Radley was after all, an officer inthe Canadian Armed Forces), hedoes not fall prey to any of the morepernicious vagaries of patriotic na-tionalism. Indeed, if anything, hegoes out of his way to ensure thatthe reader is firmly aware of thefact that the exploits of the FirstDivision were carried out under theaegis of the British ExpeditionaryForce. Furthermore, We Lead, Oth-ers Follow does much to accord theless glorious positions in the Divi-sion their due. In particular, theexamination of the increasing effi-ciency of staff duties poignantlyemphasizes the integral role playedby staff officers. Ultimately, Radleynot only traces the successful evo-

lution of the First Division from ahaphazardly organized and poorlytrained force into a highly efficientand potent unit whose strength wasforged on the battlefields of theWestern Front, he also examinesthe ways in which this progressionbenefited those who came after, andhighlights the dear price that waspaid for the efficiency and renownenjoyed by “Old Red Patch” in thelatter years of the war. Finally, whenRadley states that the inadequatehistoriography of the First Divisionis primarily due to the fact “onethird of the people of this country…were either indifferent or hostile tothe war effort,” one can’t help butwonder the degree to which currentevents have inspired Radley’s de-sire to “pierce the Canadian Amnesia.”

NH

* * * * *

E.P.S. Allen, The 116th Battalionin France, 1914-18 (Ottawa: CEFBooks, 2005 [1921]), $22.95 paper,111 pages, ISBN 1-896979-41-6.

Originally published shortly af-ter the Armistice, this reprint

of E.P.S. Allen’s work details thehistory of the 116th Battalion dur-ing the Great War. The author re-counted his own experience in theOntario battalion, from his enlist-ment in October 1915 until his re-turn to Toronto in 1919, and ex-plained that he wrote this shortvolume for his comrades whoserved in the 116th, and for theirfamilies. As a result, his book re-sembled a small scrapbook of thebattalion’s experiences. By retellingthe history of his battalion, Allenproduced a fascinating account ofa Canadian experience on the West-ern Front.

Allen reveals the initial enthu-siasm with which Canadian troopsmarched to war, their quest forglory, and then the crushing realityof their experience. Initially, the116th Battalion demonstrated akeen desire to prove itself on thebattlefield to earn acceptance withinthe Canadian Corps, to which it hadbeen a late addition. However, theBattalion was often placed in sup-port or reserve positions until the

summer of 1917. Allen pointed outthat troops confined to reserve po-sitions still incurred heavy casual-ties but gained none of the glory thatthey so desired. He made an effortto explain the risks that were takenby those who did not participate inbattle, but were instead chargedwith supplying rations and ammu-nition to men at the front. Allen alsoeffectively conveyed the confusionthat troops experienced throughoutthe war. The 116th Battalion wastypically unaware of which battle-field they were being sent to, anddid not know what their assignmentwould be until they arrived. Allenalso described the conditions theBattalion faced while participatingin battles and raids, often in heavy

26




Gerald F. Holm and Anthony P.Buchner, eds., A Place of Honour:Manitoba’s War Dead Commemo-rated in its Geography (Winnipeg:Manitoba Conservation, n.d.),$19.95 paper, 485 pages, ISBN 0-7711-1523-7.

After the end of the SecondWorld War, the Geographical

Names Board of Canada estab-lished a policy of honouring deco-rated war casualties by naming geo-graphical features after them. In1955, when the Board began run-ning out of names, it began to hon-our all war dead – by 1992, abouthalf of Manitoba’s casualties hadbeen honoured, and the programcontinues. It involves contacting therelatives of the individuals con-cerned, and to date provincial offi-cials have located 2,889 of the 4,246families, to present them with com-memorative name certificates.

During that process, officialshave collected photographs andanecdotes from the families, andthese have been assembled into thiscommemorative volume. It is fas-cinating just to browse through, toread the excerpts from small-townnewspapers, letters of condolencefrom commanding officers, remi-niscences from siblings, widows,and children. Nothing is more ef-fective as a reminder of the humancost of war.

* * * * *

Francis Patey, Veterans of theNorth (St. John’s: Creative Publish-ers, 2003), $22.95 paper, 326 pages,ISBN 1-894294-56-4.

In Veterans of the North, FrancisPatey has compiled a tribute to

the men and women of Newfound-land’s Great Northern Peninsulaand coastal Labrador who served

in the two world wars, Korea, andthe Gulf War. It is not a traditionalnarrative, but rather a collection ofphotographs, poems, and brief ex-planatory notes, weighted heavily,not surprisingly, on the Newfound-land Regiment and the Royal NavalReserve, in which the majority ofthese individuals served. Perhapsmost striking about the book is howfew surnames are represented –there were clearly a relatively smallnumber of large, extended familiesin these communities who gavefreely to the armed forces over the20th century. Indeed, the author’sown surname can be found on manyoccasions, in both world wars.

The photographs, especiallyfrom the First World War, are alsohaunting. Many of them have beenculled from private collections, andmay have been hanging on diningroom or parlour walls for decades.There are not very many familiarnames (one of the few is VictoriaCross winner Tommy Ricketts, alegendary figure in Newfoundlandhistory), but the faces have a tragicsimilarity about them: two broth-ers killed on the same day atBeaumont Hamel in 1916; a groupof pals photographed before leav-ing the island – half of them camehome, half didn’t. Taken together,they all symbolize the magnitude ofthe sacrifice made by these tiny vil-lages and outports over the century.

* * * * *

John A. Neal, Bless You, BrotherIrvin: The Caterpillar Club Story(Renfrew, ON: General Store Pub-lishing, 2005), $19.95 paper, 124pages, ISBN 1-894263-94-4.

There is an elite group knownas the Caterpillar Club, whose

membership is open only to menand women who have saved their

Briefly Notedlives by using a parachute to escapefrom a disabled aircraft. John Nealhimself is a member, having beenforced out of his wrecked aircraftin April 1944, and he has assem-bled the stories of more than 24 ofhis fellow members from aroundthe world. Each short chapter tellsof a narrow escape, although somedo not, strictly speaking, qualify forthe book. There is, for example, thetale of Sergeant NicholasAlkemade, who tumbled out of hisLancaster at 18,000 feet without aparachute; he survived by fallingthrough a thick fir tree to land indeep snow. Nevertheless, it is a fas-cinating collection and one that al-lows for an almost limitless numberof sequels.

* * * * *

Desmond Morton, Billet pour lefront: Histoire sociale desvolontaires canadiens (1914-1919) (Outrement: AthénaÉditions, 2005), $27.95 paper, 384pages, ISBN 2-922865-40-1.

In addition to publishing its ownmonographs, Athéna Éditions has

begun to issue French-languagetranslation of English-language clas-sics in Canadian military history.A translation of Bill Rawling’s Sur-viving Trench Warfare appeared in2004, an edition that is now fol-lowed by a French version of Mor-ton’s When Your Number’s Up. Witha new introduction and an updatedbibliography, Billet pour le frontis a useful edition to the library ofanyone who already owns WhenYour Number’s Up. Now that AthénaÉditions has taken this excellentinitiative, is there an English pub-lisher out there that would take upthe challenge and issue Englishtranslations of Athéna’s French-lan-guage monographs?

mud while under gas attack andartillery fire. He also detailed hisbattalion’s contribution to severalCanadian victories, including VimyRidge, Passchendaele, andCambrai. Photographs and maps areincluded in the book to illustrate

the events being described; theseinclude pictures of various compa-nies, successive commanders, andthe landscapes in which the unitfought.

The re-publication of Allen’sout-of-print account provides his-

torians and Great War enthusiastswith a valuable record of the 116thBattalion’s service on the WesternFront, and helps to bring a greaterunderstanding of the soldier’s ex-perience in a Canadian context.

SP

27




General

Duty Nobly Done: The Official History ofThe Essex and Kent ScottishRegiment by Sandy Antal andKevin R. Shackleton ...................... 17

Far From Home: A Memoir of a 20thCentury Soldierby Jeffery Williams ........................ 12

From Baddeck to the Yalu: Stories ofCanada’s Airmen at War by NormShannon ........................................... 1

Gananoque Remembers: A Tribute to theMen Who Gave Their Lives forFreedom by Geraldine Chaseand Bill Beswetherick ................... 16

An Honourable Sacrifice by Graeme F.Somerville ......................................... 16

“No Return Ticket”: Wallaceburg’s WarCasualties and Selected War Memo-ries by Alan Mann ............................ 16

* A Place of Honour: Manitoba’s War DeadCommemorated in its Geography byGerald F. Holm and Anthony P.Buchner ........................................... 27

Valiant Hearts: Atlantic Canada and theVictoria Cross by John Boileau ........ 21

* Veterans of the Northby Francis Patey ............................ 27

Pre-1914

Half-Hearted Enemies: Nova Scotia, NewEngland and the War of 1812by John Boileau .............................. 6

Irishmen in War From the Crusades to1798: Essays from TheIrish Sword ................................... 22

The Road to Canada: The Grand Commu-nications Route from Saint John toQuebec by Gary Campbell ................ 21

1914-1939

The Angel of Mons: Phantom Soldiers andGhostly Guardiansby David Clarke ............................... 5

Arms and The Maple Leaf: The Memoir ofWilfred Kerr, Canadian Field Artillery,Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1918by Wilfred Brenton Kerr .................... 11

* Billet pour le front: Histoire sociale desvolontaires canadiens (1914-1919) byDesmond Morton ............................. 27

Canada and the First World War: Essays inHonour of Robert Craig Brown byDavid Mackenzie ................................ 4

Curse of the Narrows: The HalifaxExplosion 1917 by Laura M.MacDonald ....................................... 24

Explosion in Halifax Harbour: TheIllustrated Account of a DisasterThat Shook the Worldby David B. Flemming ................... 17

Fight or Pay: Soldiers’ Families in theGreat War by Desmond Morton ........ 12

Hell’s Corner: An Illustrated History ofCanada’s Great War, 1914-1918 byJ.L. Granatstein ................................ 7

Hometown Horizons: Local Responses toCanada’s Great War by RobertRutherdale ........................................ 14

Horses Don’t Fly: A Memoir of World War Iby Frederick Libby ............................ 25

It Made You Think Of Home: TheHaunting Journal of Deward Barnes,Canadian Expeditionary Force: 1916-1919 by Bruce Cane .......................... 9

Letters from Angus, 1915-1916 by J.P.Pollock ............................................. 22

Lieutenant Owen William Steele of theNewfoundland Regiment: Diary andLetters by David R. Facey-Crowther .. 20

Lights Out!: The Memoir of Nursing SisterKate Wilson, Canadian Army MedicalCorps, 1915-1917 by KatherineWilson-Simmie .................................. 2

Margaret MacDonald: Imperial Daughterby Susan Mann ................................ 18

A Memoriam to the Life of David KennethGlen, 2nd Regiment, CanadianMounted Rifles, (B.C. Horse),Canadian Over-Seas ExpeditionaryForce, Royal Naval Air Service andRAF by Gordon S. Glen .................... 23

A Memoriam to the Life of James AlpheusGlen, D.S.C. and Bar, Croix de Guerreavec Palme, Royal Naval Air Service,Royal Air Force, Canadian Air Forceby Gordon S. Glen ............................ 23

Notes: A Soldier’s Memoir of World War Iby Clifton J. and Charles J. Cate ...... 23

The 116th Battalion in France, 1914-1918 by E.P.S. Allen ......................... 26

Pegahmagabow: Legendary Warrior,Forgotten Hero by Adrian Hayes ....... 3

Riding into War: The Memoir of a HorseTransport Driver, 1916-1919 byJames Robert Johnston ..................... 8

Scouting Thrills: The Memoir of a ScoutOfficer in the Great War by G.B.McKean11

Shock Army of the British Empire: TheCanadian Army in the Last 100 Daysof the Great Warby Shane B. Schreiber ................... 18

Shrieks and Crashes: The Memoir ofWilfred B. Kerr, Canadian FieldArtillery, 1917by Wilfred Brenton Kerr ................ 14

The Unwanted: Great War Letters fromthe Fieldby John McKendrick Hughes ........ 10

We Lead, Others Follow: First CanadianDivision, 1914-1918 by KennethRadley .............................................. 25

We’re Not Dead Yet: The First World WarDiary of Private Bert Cooke by MillyWalsh and John Callan ..................... 6

1939-1945

Aces, Warriors and Wingmen: FirsthandAccounts of Canada’s Fighter Pilots inthe Second World Warby Wayne Ralph ................................ 1

The Anguish of Surrender: JapanesePOWs of World War IIby Ulrich Straus ............................ 10

The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Last FleetAction by H.P. Willmott ..................... 4

Blatant Injustice: The Story of a JewishRefugee from Nazi Germany Impris-oned in Britain and Canada duringWorld War IIby Walter W. Igersheimer ............... 20

* Bless You, Brother Irvin: The CaterpillarClub Story by John A. Neal ............. 27

Born Lucky: RSM Harry Fox, MBE, One D-Day Dodger’s Story by Craig B.Cameron ............................................ 6

Clash of Arms: How the Allies Won inNormandy by Russell A. Hart ............ 2

Dad’s War: The Story of a CourageousCanadian Youth Who Flew WithBomber Commandby Dan McCaffery ............................. 9

A Doctor’s War by Aidan MacCarthyEscape!!!: The True Story of a World War

II P.O.W. The Germans Couldn’t Holdby John M. “Jack” Roberts ................. 5

Growing Up and Going to War, 1925-1945by Donald D. Tansley ........................ 19

Index to Overseas Deaths of OntarioServicemen and Servicewomen,1939-1947 by Bruce Thornley .......... 20

Iwo Jima: Portrait of a Battleby Eric Hammel .............................. 22

A Land Girl’s War by Joan Snelling ........ 13No Prouder Place: Canadians and the

Bomber Command Experience byDavid L. Bashow .............................. 19

Shattered Dreams by Olive FisherCampbell .......................................... 13

Snow Plough and the Jupiter Deception:The Story of the 1st Special ServiceForce and the 1st Canadian SpecialService Battalion, 1942-1945 byKenneth H. Joyce .............................. 15

A Soldier’s View: The Personal Photo-graphs of Canadians at War 1939-1945 by Blake Heathcote .................. 11

They Can’t Take That Away From Me: TheOdyssey of an American POW byRalph M. Rentz and Peter Hrisko ...... 8

33 Months as a POW in Stalag Luft III: AWorld War II Airman Tells His Storyby Albert P. Clark ............................... 2

Unsung Heroes of the Royal Canadian AirForce: Incredible Tales of Courage andDaring during World War IIby Cynthia J. Faryon ....................... 1

A War Bride’s Story: Risking it all forLove After World War IIby Cynthia J. Faryon ..................... 13

Willi: Diary of a Young Lieutenant byMichelle Kaiser ................................. 17

Post-1945

Jewish Displaced Persons in CampBergen-Belsen, 1945-1950: TheUnique Photo Album of Zippy Orlinby Erik Somers and René Kok ........... 7

Index of Books Reviewed

* Briefly Noted

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Book Review Supplement Spring 2007 · including No. 4 British General Hospital in France, No. 3...

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