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1© Canadian Military History Book Review Supplement, Spring 2000

CANADIAN MILITARY HISTORY

BOOK REVIEWSUPPLEMENT

Spring 2000 Issue 11

1. The Great War

“The history of the Great Waris a subject of perennial

fascination.” So reads the firstsentence of Jay Winter’sremarkable book, Sites of Memory,Sites of Mourning: The Great Warin European Cultural History.This essay explores the “perennialfascination” with the Great War. Itbegins by discussing a number ofbooks dealing with the war whichhave appeared since 1975 andmoves on to look at recent and not-so-recent Canadian writing aboutthe war.

My interest in the First WorldWar was kindled by readingBarbara Tuchman’s The Guns ofAugust in 1962. From this well-written work of popular history itwas almost inevitable to move toother popular First World Warbooks of the 1960s – Alan Clark’sThe Donkeys, Alistair Horne’s ThePrice of Glory, and Leon Wolff ’s InFlanders Fields. The next logicalsteps were the memoirs ofBlunden, Graves, and Sassoon, thepoetry of Owen and Sassoon, andthe novels of Aldington, Barbusse,and Remarque. Once the fascinationwith the First World War has taken

root, it is slow to fade; the warcontinues to exert an irresistiblepull.

Over the last twenty-five yearsthe outpouring of books hascontinued unabated. Someextraordinarily creative andcarefully constructed works haveappeared. Pride of place amongstthese books must be given to PaulFussell’s The Great War andModern Memory (Oxford: OUP,1975). Like much of the recentlypublished work, Fussell’s bookdoes not deal with the First WorldWar as such. This is not a narrativeof the events of the war, but a recordand analysis of its cultural effects.Fussell is not an historian, but aProfessor of English Literaturewhose knowledge of the literaryworks which emerged from theFirst World War is vast andprofound. He describes the war as

We are pleased to begin this issue of the Book Review Supplement with something a little different, in theform of an extended review essay by Professor Robert Martin of the Faculty of Law at the University ofWestern Ontario. Professor Martin, who was a gunner officer in the regular army and spent eighteenmonths with the Army Historical Section, will be familiar to readers of Canadian Military History for hiseloquent essay, first published in the Globe & Mail, on the disappearance of military history from Canada’sschools. We hope to publish longer review essays on an occasional basis in the future, and will also beadding a “Briefly Noted” section in the Fall 2000 issue, to provide readers with information on an evenbroader range of new publications in military history and strategic studies. As always, we welcome yourcomments and suggestions.

Jonathan F. Vance, Book Review Supplement, Editor

The Great War and Canadian Memory1

Professor Robert MartinUniversity of Western Ontario

1

et al.: Book Review Supplement Spring 2000

Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2000

2 © Canadian Military History Book Review Supplement, Spring 2000

a very literary war. Fussell writeselegantly and movingly, with a deepsympathy for what the soldiers onthe Western Front endured. Fussellhimself was an infantryman in theUnited States Army during theSecond World War, so he has a realsense of what he is writing about.

There are, it seems, two broadperspectives from which one canview any historical event. The eventcan be seen as part of a process ofchange, or part of a process ofcontinuity. Fussell sees the FirstWorld War as a cultural watershed,as the event which wrenchedEurope out of traditional literaryforms and into modernity. Thecultural and intellectual worlds of1920 and 1913 were utterlydifferent. The war, in Fussell’s view,shattered the social and emotionalbases for traditional modes ofthought and expression. Its mainresult was a cultural and intellectualtransformation. Fussell is at painsto document the extent to which theGreat War remains with us, stillshaping our discourse and ourrhetoric eighty years later. He callsthe war “all-encompassing, all-pervading ... the essential conditionof consciousness in the TwentiethCentury” (3). The Great War is verylikely the source of the endemicand empty cynicism which definesthe response of contemporaryjournalism to most events. Fussellalso notes the ways in which therhetoric of war has become part ofour everyday speech. ContemporaryNorth American feminists wouldprobably not wish to see themselvesas cultural and intellectual heirs ofthe Great War, but their languageoften suggests a perception ofthemselves as being permanently atwar.

Having for a time immersedmyself in the literary war, I wasfascinated to discover that Graves,Owen, and Sassoon had all knowneach other. Owen and Sassoon hadspent some time in the care of aDr. William Rivers at a hospital forshell-shocked officers. Shell-shockwas described in the next war asbattle fatigue, and denoted thatpoint at which the stresses of battlepushed the human mind beyond the

limits of its endurance. In the FirstWorld War, shell-shocked soldierswere often shot, while shell-shocked officers, or lucky officers,might find themselves in the careof someone like Dr. Rivers. Itoccurred to me that it would befascinating to explore whathappened at Dr. Rivers’ clinic andthe friendship amongst these threeextraordinary writers. This isprecisely what Pat Barker set outto do in her three memorablenovels, Regeneration (1992), TheEye in The Door (1993), and TheGhost Road (1995). She has hadremarkable success at the taskwhich she set herself.

An exceedingly original workby a Canadian which furtherelaborates the notion of the GreatWar as the cultural watershed of thecentury just past is ModrisEksteins’ Rites of Spring: TheGreat War and the Birth of theModern Age (Toronto: Lester &Orpen Dennys, 1989). The titlesuggests the direction of Eksteins’analysis. Much writing about theWar, in Eksteins’ view, prefigurespost-modern historiography:“history becomes nothing but a toolof the present, with no integritywhatsoever of its own” (313). Oneof Eksteins’ more originalobservations is the suggestion thatone can find in the earlyexpressions of cultural modernismthe intellectual and artistic roots offascism. He observes of the Nazisin Germany that “terror, likeeverything else, was turned into anart form” (316). Eksteinsanticipated certain elements of latetwentieth-century post-modernistpolitics when he described the“pursuit of authenticity” andobserves, “what was important wasconstant confrontation, anunflinching adversarial posture andnot the details of that posture” (317).The link between Nazism and post-modernism is made clear: “Nazismtook as its point of departure thesubjective self, feeling, experience,Erlebnis, and not reason and theobjective world” (311).2 I cannotleave Eksteins without noting thetelling question a friend raisedabout Rites of Spring: “Isn’t that the

book which suggests thatStravinsky caused the First WorldWar?”

Another species of recent FirstWorld War books has been moreanthropological in nature. DenisWinter’s Death’s Men: Soldiers ofthe Great War (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1979) is an engrossing andcompellingly written exploration ofthe anthropology of British soldierson the Western Front. This focuson ordinary soldiers is interesting;most of the literary worksdiscussed by Fussell were writtenby and about officers. Death’s Menis an outstanding piece of work butunfortunately the same cannot besaid of Denis Winter’s other FirstWorld War effort, Haig’sCommand: A Reassessment(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992).I am no admirer of Haig, who was,next to Redvers Buller, surely theleast able general ever to havecommanded British troops, butHaig’s Command is bizarre andscurrilous and, in the end,unconvincing.

A sub-genre of Great Warbooks has sought to investigate bothits memorials and the ways in whichit has been remembered. GeoffDyer’s The Missing of the Somme(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995) isa moving essay in architectural andcultural history. The book’s title istaken from Lutyens’ memorial atThiepval upon which are recordedthe names of the 73,077 British,Empire, and French soldiers killedduring the Battle of the Somme in1916 who have no known graves.Lutyens was the great architecturalfigure of the British Empire (Indiais littered with his grand creations),and Dyer describes the style of theThiepval memorial as “HighEmpire,” noting further that it is“unphotographable” (126). Dyer hashigh praise for Walter Allward’sCanadian memorial at Vimy Ridge,calling it “less a memorial to thedead, to the abstract ideal ofSacrifice, than to the reality of grief:a memorial not to the UnknownSoldier but to Unknown Mothers”(114).

Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory,Sites of Mourning: The Great War

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Canadian Military History, Vol. 9 [2000], Iss. 2, Art. 10



in European Cultural History(Cambridge: CUP, 1995) is anextraordinary work, probably suigeneris amongst First World Warbooks. His subject is the differentways in which the bereaved inBritain, France, and Germany dealtwith the “wrenching experience ofloss” (224). If the work can becategorized, it may be bestdescribed as comparative culturalanthropology. Winter chooses toemphasize continuity rather thanchange, expressly rejecting thenotion of the Great War as thecultural watershed. As he puts it,“the rupture of 1914-18 was muchless complete than previousscholars have suggested” (3). In acriticism of Fussell, Winter assertsthat “it is unacceptable to see theGreat War as the moment when‘modern memory’ replacedsomething else.” The central thesisof the work might be this:“Traditional modes of seeing thewar, while at times less challengingintellectually or philosophically,provided a way of rememberingwhich enabled the bereaved to livewith their losses, and perhaps toleave them behind” (5).

Winter recounts in detail themanifold ways in which the peopleof the different combatant nationsboth buried and remembered theirdead. As a result, the book rangesover architecture, movies, novelsand poetry, painting and sculpture.He also, pace Dyer, includes aphotograph of the Lutyens’monument at Thiepval. Dyer was, Ithink, correct in asserting that thisstructure was unphotographable,since the small photograph whichWinter provides makes themonument look both ugly andmenacing. The richness of Winter’sbook helps to explain the “perennialfascination” of the Great War. Thewar is evidently not, or even at all,the exclusive preserve of militaryhistorians. The war can beapproached from a variety ofperspectives, each of which, as Ihope this essay may havedemonstrated, can yield richresults.

The most original recent workon the First World War is Niall

Ferguson’s The Pity of War(Toronto: HarperCollins, 1999), abook which is more recognizableas history than many recent efforts.He writes about the war as a war,not as a cultural milestone. Theauthor begins with a discussion ofthe war experiences of his paternalgrandfather, John GilmourFerguson, an infantry soldier in theSeaforth Highlanders who managedto survive being shot and beinggassed. It is to the author’s paternaland maternal grandfathers that thebook is dedicated. Ferguson alsodescribes the effects which theGreat War had on him as a boy andas a young man: “Despite the factthat I was born some fifty years afterit broke out, the First World Warhas ... had a profound influence onme” (xxiii). Ferguson senses adegree of urgency, since, with thepassage of time, we may shortly lose“first-hand” contact with the FirstWorld War (xxii). His work isrevisionist historiography at itsbest. Ferguson sets out, dissects,and then rejects every receivednotion about the First World War.A plausible sub-title for the bookwould be: So you thought youunderstood something about theFirst World War?

Ferguson first takes issue withreceived ideas about the origins ofthe war, such as the notion of thewar’s inevitability. A commonexplanation of the outbreak of thewar is that the assassination inSarajevo set in motion aninexorable process which draggedall of Europe into war. Ferguson isnot impressed with this idea ofimplacable, superhuman forces. Hebelieves that there were still choicesto be made by governments,especially the British government.He derides the notion that Britainwent to war to protect “brave littleBelgium” and adds that, hadGermany not violated Belgianneutrality, Britain probably wouldhave. He does not believe there wasany overriding state interest whichimpelled Britain to send a largearmy across the Channel andsuggests Britain might have servedits own interests better by stayingout of the land war. One of

Ferguson’s villains is Sir EdwardGrey; he argues that Grey’smanipulations and machinationsbrought Britain into the war.Ferguson does not believe that aGerman victory would have beendisastrous. He believes that theresult on the continent might havebeen a kind of European Union inwhich Germany would have beendominant. Nor does he think that avictorious Germany could havedone serious injury to the Empire,the preservation of which wasBritain’s primary foreign policygoal.

Ferguson attacks the notionthat it was an “evil” war, and seeksto dispel the image of a “bad, futilewar” (xxxii). This image of the waris largely derived from the warpoets and other writers, most ofwhom, according to Ferguson, werenot particularly anti-war. Fergusonsuggests that Sassoon, who wasknown as “Mad Jack” for hisferocity in battle, may have enjoyedfighting and killing (363). BothSassoon and Owen were awardedthe Military Cross for bravery inaction, while Sassoon’s major anti-war act was the melodramatic oneof ripping the mauve and whiteribbon of the MC from his tunic andthrowing it into a river. Fergusondoes not believe that there wasmassive popular enthusiasm for thewar in all of Europe in August 1914.He faults the mass media of all thebelligerent nations (“the PressGangs”) rather than laying theblame at the door of statepropagandists; the media, more orless of their own volition, fannedthe flames of hostility and hatred.He suggests a clear lesson forinformation ministries, expresslyrejecting Hitler’s Big Lie theory:“the most effective propaganda wasthat which was based on truth”(247).

Ferguson believes that,throughout most of the war, theGermans consistently defeated theallies in battle. For this purposeFerguson employs a measure whichhe calls “net body count” (294-97).Body count refers to the numberof soldiers permanentlyincapacitated (killed, seriously

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wounded or taken prisoner) in anybattle. The net is determined bycomparing the body counts for theopposing sides in a particularengagement. On this basis,Germany came out better for mostof the course of the war. Fergusonnotes that the only period of thecampaign on the Western Front inwhich the net body count turned infavour of the Allies was August toOctober 1918, the period known asthe Hundred Days, when theCanadian Corps was almost alwayson the offensive and madeenormous gains (300). This stronglysuggests that, at the end of the day,it was the Canadian Corps whichdefeated the German army. Anotherwidely-held myth that Ferguson laysto rest is the notion that the UnitedStates won the war. He describesPershing’s substantial incom-petence, an incompetence which ledto vast American casualties as theAEF learned in 1918 the hard waythe lessons which had earlierimpressed themselves on the otherbelligerents. Ferguson alsoconvincingly rebuts the “stab in theback” theory about the defeat of theGermany army, pointing out thatLudendorff submitted hisresignation to the Kaiser on 10August 1918 (two days after themajor Canadian victory at Amiens)and urged the necessity of peace on13 August. In Ferguson’s view, “itwas Ludendorff who administeredthe fatal stab, and it was in theGerman front, not the back” (314).

Part of the charm of Ferguson’sbook is its quirkiness. This islargely the result of a fascinationwith what he calls“counterfactuals,”or historical“what-ifs.” One of these is at thecentre of his analysis. What if Britainhad stayed on the sidelines andGermany had won the war? Hisbroad answer, that very little wouldhave been different, has recently ledto controversy in Canada.3

One opinion about theaftermath of the Great War hasacquired the status of immutablehistorical truth, primarily becauseit originated with no less a figurethan Keynes: the notion that thepost-war German economy was

doomed by the burden ofreparations imposed at Versaillesand that these reparations causedeconomic collapse and, therefore,Nazism. In Ferguson’s view, “theWeimar economy was not wreckedby reparations; it wrecked itself”(439). He remains steadfastlyrevisionist to the end, releasing thisparting shot: “The First World War... was something worse than atragedy, which is something we aretaught by the theatre to regard asultimately unavoidable. It wasnothing less than the greatest errorof modern history” (462).

So, Ferguson is original,revisionist, and even provocative.But, at the end of the day, is heconvincing? Ferguson is clearly aserious historian. He has a realunderstanding of the First WorldWar. His bibliography is vast. But,if he is right, he also contradictshimself. Ferguson, as I have noted,argued that the war was not futile.But, if his overall analysis iscorrect, then for all those Britishsoldiers who died, the war was,undeniably, futile. If it was all anerror, what was the point of thesuffering and the dying? Fergusonends up by affirming one of themany preconceptions which heattacks.

2. Canadian Memory

Adiscussion of the wayCanadians have remembered

the Great War should begin with theofficial history. The majorcombatants produced vast officialhistories, and Canada’s officialhistory, or the absence thereof,came close to being a nationalscandal. Colonel Archer FortescueDuguid, DSO, Director of theHistorical Section, announced plansafter the war for an eight-volumeofficial history. One volume, whichtook the story up to 1915, appearedin 1938, and a volume on themedical services, by AndrewMacphail, was published in 1924.At the close of the Second WorldWar, Duguid’s project wasabandoned, to be replaced by asubstantial one-volume officialhistory, G.W.L. Nicholson’s

Canadian Expeditionary Force,1914-1919 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer,1962). This very traditionalnarrative military history containslittle in the way of critical commentor analysis, but is a superb sourceof factual information and containsmany outstanding maps. By far themost interesting official documentis the Report of the Ministry ofOverseas Military Forces ofCanada, published in 1918. Thisministry was established to exertCanadian political control over theCEF and, as a result, much of theReport is devoted to a discussionof politics. Sam Hughes is not myfavourite figure in Canadian history.He does not come off well in thisvolume.

Much of the non-officialCanadian writing about the GreatWar has consisted largely oftraditional narrative militaryhistory, but an interesting exceptionto the pattern is Desmond Morton’sWhen Your Number’s Up: TheCanadian Soldier in the FirstWorld War (Toronto: RandomHouse, 1993). This engaginglywritten work does for the Canadiansoldier what Denis Winter did forthe British soldier in Death’s Men.

Another recent and interesting,although rather more traditional,work by a Canadian is BillRawling’s Surviving TrenchWarfare: Technology and theCanadian Corps (Toronto:UTP,1992). In a very original piece ofmilitary history, Rawling adopts anunusual perspective. His focus is ontactics and, more particularly, onthe continuing dialectic betweenmilitary technology and tactics. Thisdialectic has two aspects: first,armies must learn to accommodatetheir tactics to the enemy’s weapons,in order to devise effective meansof defeating them; and second,armies must learn to accommodatetheir tactics to their own weapons,in order to make the most effectiveuse of these weapons. NiallFerguson expressed the view thatmany of the failures of the BritishArmy on the Western Front couldbe explained by its failure todevelop “any real doctrine ofwarfare” and the obstacles which its

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organizational culture placed in thepath of its developing effectiveapproaches to the battlefield of theWestern Front (303). The mostplausible explanation for the tacticalfailures of the British and Frencharmies is that their main experienceof fighting in the forty yearspreceding the Great War had beencolonial wars in Asia and Africa. Inthese wars the British and Frenchhad little difficulty defeating armiesto which they were technologicallyvastly superior. The clearestexample of this phenomenon wasthe battle of Omdurman in 1898,where a British force equipped withMaxim guns and quick-firingartillery slaughtered its Sudaneseopponents by the tens of thousands.An exception to the general rulewas the battle of Isandhlwana in1879, in which a Zulu force notarmed with firearms defeated aBritish force armed with Martini-Henry rifles.4 My reading ofaccounts of the disasters of 1915and 1916 has left me with theimpression that British attackdoctrine consisted of little morethan ordering infantry divisions to“Go that way”

Rawling describes theCanadian Corps’ first encounterswith the dialectic of technology andtactics as “The Learning ProcessBegins.” The Canadians paid aheavy price for deficiencies inBritish tactical thinking but, overthe years, lessons were learned andthe Canadians evolved tacticalapproaches which allowed themboth to more effectively use theirown weapons and to defeat theGerman weapons. By the time ofthe Hundred Days (August toNovember 1918) the Canadians hadmade enormous tactical strides.The first step lay in accepting andimplementing the tactical precept —fire and movement.5 Rawling’sbook, in its later chapters,reinforces the notion, suggested byFerguson, that it was the Canadianswho eventually defeated the GermanArmy on the Western front. Hestates that “from 26 August to 11October, the Canadian Corpsadvanced twenty-three miles againstthe elements of thirty-one German

divisions” (220). Rawling describesin detail the way the CanadianCorps developed techniques forutilizing artillery fire, tanks, closeair support, and loosely organized“half-platoons” specially armed withrifle grenades and light machineguns. Indeed, the way the CanadianCorps fought in 1918 seems toanticipate blitzkrieg. The mostsignificant Canadian innovationshad to do with the utilization andorganization of artillery in theattack; gunners A.G.L. McNaughtonand E. W. B. Morrison emerge fromRawling’s account as highly-skilledand creative generals.

Canada’s contribution to theFirst World War was extraordinary,particularly when we rememberthat in 1914 the country had apopulation under eight million.Close to 620,000 served in theCanadian Expeditionary Force, ofwhom more than 60,000 lost theirlives. If Ferguson is correct thatthere was no overriding stateinterest which impelled Britain toinvolve itself in the land war, then,a fortiori, it is difficult to see whatnational interest brought Canadainto the war.

It is astonishing to see the FirstWorld War memorials in smalltowns in southern Ontario. When Itry to come to terms with thenumber of names on one of thesememorials, I inevitably ask myself,“How many males between the agesof 18 and 45 could there possiblyhave been here in 1914?” Fergusonnotes that of the Canadianpopulation of males aged 15 to 49,2.6% was killed, while 0.8% of theentire population was killed.6 Theways in which Canada sought todeal with this staggering loss arethe subject of a remarkable bookby Jonathan Vance, Death SoNoble: Memory, Meaning and theFirst World War (Vancouver: UBCPress, 1997).

Vance describes the “particularconception” of the Great War whichCanadians developed as a “myth.”The myth saw the war as a GreatCrusade, “pure, unambiguous, andsimple” (8). In this myth the warwas a just one against a wicked andcruel enemy, and all Canadian

soldiers were brave, noble, andpure. This myth sprang from “thegrief, the hope, and the search formeaning of a thousand Canadiancommunities” (267). The socialfunction of the myth was that it“offered real consolation toCanadians” (264). The bulk ofVance’s book is devoted to adescription of the ways the mythwas elaborated, given form inmemorials, and defended againstall criticism, whether express orimplied. Vance notes a widespreadCanadian hostility to the flood ofanti-war books which began toappear in 1929 (contrary toFerguson, he describes bothGraves’s and Sassoon’s memoirs asanti-war). Vance also explains thenegative response to Charles YaleHarrison’s Generals Die in Bed(first published in London in 1930),a book that appeared to contradictthe myth because it describedCanadian soldiers engaging indrunkenness and debauchery andshooting prisoners.7 Such deviationfrom the strict terms of the mythwas unacceptable because itappeared to tarnish the reputationof the 60,000 dead Canadians.Vance is partial to John McCrae’spoem “In Flanders Fields”, seeingin it another affirmation of the GreatCrusade. As he put it, “in the nameof keeping faith with the dead, noeffort was too great” (199). Fussell,the literary critic, did not like thepoem. He thought it was shotthrough with “vulgarities” and“recruiting-poster rhetoric,” andasserted that the two concludingstanzas of the poem were “apropaganda argument – words likevicious and stupid would not seemto go too far – against a negotiatedpeace” (249-50). Perhaps the mostextraordinary act in defence of themyth was the 1928 Currie libel trialin Port Hope, Ontario. The PortHope Evening Guide published aneditorial in 1927 which alleged thatSir Arthur Currie had ordered theCanadian Corps to capture Mons on11 November 1918 primarily toboost his own reputation. The stingof the alleged libel was that Curriehad sacrificed Canadian soldiers onthe very last day of the war for

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squalid and selfish reasons. Thetrial became a huge national event.While Currie was eventuallysuccessful, the ordeal likelycontributed to his death in 1933.8

Vance’s conclusions attributesubstantial nation-building power tothe myth, arguing that it wouldcreate a new nation, “pure in itsessence and secure from internaldivisions” (266). Vance furtherbelieves that “a shared memory isone of the cornerstones of a societyas we understand it”(9). Thisobservation could be of great valuein helping Canadians understandmany of our current discontents.As we have both forgotten andabolished our own history, we haveconsciously destroyed acornerstone of our society. It isdifficult to see a positive future fora country with little or noknowledge of its past. Historians,or people who call themselveshistorians, have played animportant role in getting us to ourcurrent position of historicalignorance. The most egregiousexample of this pseudo-history isMargaret Conrad and Alvin Finkelwith Veronica Strong-Boag, Historyof the Canadian Peoples(Mississauga: Copp Clark Pitman,1993). The authors purport todiscuss the origins of theConscription Crisis of 1917. Thegenerally accepted explanation forthe crisis, one which seemsintuitively correct and by no meanscounterfactual, is that thecombination of a large force in thefield and heavy casualties made itimpossible for Canada to maintainthis force solely on the basis, as ithad been up to 1917, of voluntaryenlistment. Our historians offerthis extraordinary explanation: “Theshortage of soldiers for the wareffort was compounded by theexclusionary policies practised bythe Canadian military. Despite theeagerness of some women to serveoverseas, they were unwelcome onthe front lines” (II - 299). I can onlyassume that the three writers madethat up, since no reference isprovided to support their assertion.It is the authors’ total disregard for

the methodological imperatives ofhistory-writing which leads me tocharacterise their work as pseudo-history.9 This abuse of our past ledJ.L. Granatstein to publish acounterattack entitled Who KilledCanadian History? (Toronto:HarperCollins, 1998). He describedthe efforts of Conrad, Finkel, andStrong-Boag as “grosslymisinterpreting history” (121).

Why do Canadians find it sodifficult to deal with our militaryhistory? The most laughableexample of this difficulty is theseries The Valour and the Horrorproduced by the brothers McKennafor the CBC. This series is a grosscalumny of every Canadian whoserved in the Second World War.Canadians are characterised aseither incompetent or warcriminals. Why?

We live today in a society whichpromotes tolerance and sensitivityas the highest human virtues.Killing one’s enemy in wartime isan act which is neither sensitive nortolerant. We seem to have greatdifficulty accepting that there weretimes in the past when Canadiansengaged in such intolerant andinsensitive behaviour or, even moredifficult to accept, that they actuallygot to be quite good at it.

Notes

1. The title for this essay is, of course,borrowed from Paul Fussell’smasterpiece, The Great War andModern Memory. There is a furtherborrowing from Declan Kiberdwhose Inventing Ireland: TheLiterature of the Modern Nation(London: Jonathan Cape, 1995)contains a chapter called “TheGreat War and Irish Memory.”

2. The fascist well-springs of certainpost-modern intellectual fashionsare elucidated in David Lehman,Signs of the Times: Deconstructionand the Fall of Paul de Man (NewYork: Poseidon Press, 1991).

3. See the exchange between RobertFulford, David Bercuson, andJonathan F. Vance in National Post,11, 12 and 14 February 2000.

4. A lucid account can be found inJohn Laband and Ian Knight, TheAnglo-Zulu War (Stroud: SuttonPublishing, 1996).

5. I can personally attest that thisremained Canadian Army doctrineuntil the 1960s

6. Ferguson, op. cit., p.299.7. This, in my view, is the most

interesting Canadian literary workto emerge from the war. It isnoteworthy that Harrison wasAmerican.

8. Robert J. Sharpe’s The Last Day,The Last Hour: The Currie LibelTrial (Toronto: Carswell, 1988) isan engrossing, well-informed andrivetting account of the trial. Thisis a serious work of history whichmanages to maintain the pace andfascination of a newspaperaccount. It could form the basisfor a wonderful screenplay.

9. See Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt,and Margaret Jacob, Telling theTruth About History (New York:Norton, 1994) and GertrudeHimmelfarb, “Where Have All theFootnotes Gone?”, On Looking intothe Abyss: Untimely Thoughts onCulture and Society (New York:Knopf, 1995), p.122.

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Book Reviews

John F. Williams, Anzacs, theMedia and the Great War (Sydney:University of New South WalesPress [distributed in North Americaby International Specialized BookServices], 1999), $35.00 Aus paper,302 pages, ISBN 0-86840569-8.

In our wired world, we havebecome accustomed to seeing

wars fought on our televisionscreens. The NATO intervention inKosovo is only the most recentexample; we have also witnessed theGulf War, brought to you by CNN,and the Vietnam War, the first warof the television age. But war andthe news media have a much longerrelationship, dating back to theCrimean War (and the invention ofthe war correspondent) and theSpanish-American War (arguablythe first media-created war). TheFirst World War lies firmly in thistradition. The operation of theBritish propaganda machine islegendary, and many scholars havewritten of the control over

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information that was exerted bygovernments in various countries.

Williams’ book is, in manyways, an examination of the mixedsuccess enjoyed by the press inwartime. The Australian media,represented most notably by C.E.W.Bean, the legendary Anzac myth-maker, and Keith Murdoch, fatherof media mogul Rupert Murdoch,laboured long and hard to trumpetthe achievements of soldiers of theAustralian and New Zealand ArmyCorps. Their efforts produced twooutcomes. In the first place, theysucceeded in fixing in the publicmind a vision of the Anzac soldieras a gallant nation-builder, a figureon whom postwar Australiannationalism would be based.Secondly, he argues, theysucceeded in lowering the esteemof the press in the public mind, forjournalists wrote and published analmost unbroken stream of“bumph,” to use a contemporaryterm for lies and misinformation.

But the book’s real interest liesin the contrast with Canada. TheAustralians were fully aware of thewealth and power of the Canadianpropaganda machine, headed byLord Beaverbrook, but they almostnever succeeded in stealingCanada’s thunder. They foundthemselves constantly playing catchup, and watched miserably asBeaverbrook grabbed headline afterheadline for Canada. So whileCanadian and Australian troopswere widely regarded as being, inequal measure, the finest fightingforces on the Western Front,Williams’ book makes it clear thatCanada won the press war.

DR

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Robert P. Davis, Where a Man CanGo: Major General William Phillips,British Royal Artillery, 1731-1781(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1999), $59.95 US, 240 pages, ISBN 0-313-31020-3.

Biographies of gunners arerelatively rare amongst the

studies dealing with eighteenth-century British officers, so thiswork devoted to William Phillips

is most welcome. Not only can onefollow the life of Phillips but, to acertain extent, one follows the pathtaken by many an officer in Britain’sRoyal Regiment of Artillery. Up to1740, artillery sciences wereacquired individually but from thatdate, future artillery officers wereexpected to attend the Royal MilitaryAcademy at Woolwich. In August1746, young William Phillipsarrived at the academy where heseems to have been a better-than-average cadet. After only sixmonths, he was commissioned asa lieutenant-fireworker in January1747. Promotion was strictly byseniority in the Royal Artillery, sothe next promotion came only in1755. However, he had obvioustalents as he was also appointed tothe daunting task of quartermasterof the Royal Artillery which heperformed to complete satisfaction;by 1756, he had been appreciatedby no less than the Master Generalof Ordnance, Lord Ligonier, whonamed Phillips his Aide de Camp.His good fortune in high places heldand, in 1758, he was appointed tocommand the Royal Artillerybrigade sent with the Britishexpeditionary corps to Germany.His first battle found himcommanding the British artillery atMinden, one of the most gloriousactions in British military annals.This was followed by distinguishedparticipation at the battle ofWarburg. Further promotionsfollowed, and the Seven Years’ Warended with Phillips’ career lookingbright. He had also made somevaluable friends in Germany, suchas Clinton, Von Reidesel, andCornwallis. The following years sawPhillips organizing the first band ofthe Royal Artillery and gettinginvolved in some complicatedamorous affairs; it is obvious fromthis biography that he certainlyloved women.

By the middle of the 1770s,Phillips’ good fortune continuedand he was made brevet brigadiergeneral to serve with Sir JohnBurgoyne’s powerful army thatwould invade the rebelliousAmerican colonies from Canada.But in 1777, everybody’s luck ran

out with Burgoyne’s as his army,almost incredibly, surrendered atSaratoga. Even in captivity, Phillipsseems to have been more fortunatethan most as he was quartered atMonticello, Thomas Jefferson’sestate in Virginia, where both mencame to know each other well andoften played cards together. Onceexchanged, Phillips continued toserve in America as a verycompetent field commander. In1781, he beat the Americans atPetersburg, Virginia, a battle whichis fully examined in this work. Withhis friend General Corwallis, healso wished to change Britishstrategy in the South but all this wasended by Phillips’ unexpected deathfrom sickness on 13 May. WhetherCornwallis would not have lethimself be trapped in Yorktown bythe Franco-American armies, as theauthor of this biography affirms,seems debatable. However there isno doubt that the loss of such atalented officer could only have hada negative effect on British arms.Hence the importance of this finebiography of a talented gunner inthe history of the American War ofIndependence.

The inventory of Phillips’belongings in 1781 is reproducedand will prove most interesting forstudents of material culture andlifestyles, as it is believed to be theonly extensive and detaileddocument of this type known for asenior British officer of the period.The illustrations are uneven: themost interesting being Phillips’ fine1761 portrait which is unfortunatelynot reproduced in colour (almostinexplicably for a book of thisprice); the most quaint being theauthors’ rendition of the Americanretreat from Petersburg; and themost intriguing being a purportedportrait of Phillips later in life. Thisillustration, again in black andwhite, is said to show Phillips inthe uniform of the Royal Artilleryin “the style of a much later period”and, confusingly, appearing to havebeen “over-painted some yearslater.” What it appears to be, in fact,is a miniature of an officer of theRoyal Navy wearing the uniform(introduced on 1 June 1795 and

7




replaced in 1812) for a captain ofthree years’ post. But these areminor comments to a finebiography that gives a welcome anduseful insight into British militaryinstitutions of the eighteenthcentury via the talented but,ultimately, unlucky GeneralWilliam Phillips.

RC

* * * * *

William L. Shea and Earl J. Hess,Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaignin the West (Chapel Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press[distributed in Canada by ScholarlyBook Services], 1992), $16.95 USpaper, 417 pages, ISBN 0-8078-4669-4.

Shea and Hess have crafted asuperb contribution to the

burgeoning historiography of theAmerican Civil War’s westerncampaigns. The battle of Pea Ridge,fought 6-8 March 1862 in the remotewilds of Northwest Arkansas, wasthe largest battle fought west of theMississippi River. The engagement,notable for the first and only large-scale employment of nativeAmerican troops by the South,pitted the Confederate Army of theWest under General Earl Van Dornagainst Samuel R. Curtis’ UnionArmy of the Southwest: at stake wasnothing less than the fate of theTrans-Mississippi theatre. The twoarmies clashed for three bloody andbrutal days in weather conditionsthat were by turns freezing, rainy,and foggy. In the end, Curtis’ Unionforces stood victorious. The threatof a large-scale Confederateinvasion of Missouri wasneutralized, and the contestedlands beyond the Mississippieffectively fell under Union controlfor the remainder of the war.

However, despite itssignificance Civil War historianshave largely overlooked Pea Ridge.With this impressive work, Sheaand Hess have done much to givethe battle its proper due. Theanalysis is highly detailed, oftendescribing events at the companyand battery level, but does notignore the strategic context of the

battle. The book is meticulouslyresearched, utilizing sourcesranging from personal accounts tonewspaper accounts to officialreports, and is supported with acomprehensive set of secondaryworks. Of particular interest is theauthors’ use of modernphotographs of the battlefield. PeaRidge is perhaps the best-preservedCivil War battle site in the UnitedStates, with the surroundingcommunities and terrain littlechanged since the 1860s, andeffective visual use has been madeof this remarkable qualitythroughout the book.

This fascinating volume has seta new standard for thecomprehensive study of Civil Warbattles and further establishes thefoundation upon which Civil Warcampaigning in America’s west canbe understood.

BJD

* * * * *

David O’Brien, HX72: The FirstConvoy to Die (Halifax: NimbusPublishing, 1999), $17.95, 170pages, ISBN 1-55109-273-5.

One Second World War sayingsums up the tensions involved

in crossing the North Atlantic:“Happy is the convoy with nohistory.” HX72 had a tragic history,and David O’Brien has done amasterful job of recalling it. Hisfather served as fifth engineer onthe tanker Frederick S. Fales,which left Halifax on 9 September1940, in the company of forty-oneother cargo ships and with a smallescort, including the merchantcruiser HMS Jervis Bay. On thenight of 20-21 September, five U-boats, one of the first wolf packs,attacked the convoy, sinking elevenvessels. The author recaptures theterror and triumph of that night,provides a comprehensivebackground on the convoy, andoutlines the coming of the wolfpacks, an idea fostered by AdmiralDönitz, the submarine fleetcommander: “With the destructionof HX72, Karl Dönitz at last had aclear-cut victory over convoy.”

O’Brien presents the men ofthe convoys and the U-boat crewsand commanders as human beings.He does not demonize the enemyor make heroes out of alliedseamen. HX72 conveys the feel ofwar at sea. The description of astorm will make your stomachlurch. In the sections of life in a U-boat, you can almost smell thediesel oil. And, since his fathersuffered this fate, the author tellswhat it is like to be on a torpedoedship.

Until HX72 lost a quarter of itsships, the British admirals hadbeen fixated on a “big ship” war,ignoring the submarine threat andthe need to develop ways ofcountering it. The first convoy todie changed their minds. The bookhas a few typos – “there” for “their,”“heroes” instead of “hero’s,” andSchwerpunkt is misspelled. But thewell-illustrated book offers anengrossing read about a forgottenincident that changed the face ofwarfare in the Atlantic. DavidO’Brien has done his father, andthose who sailed with him, proud.

JL

* * * * *

Brian Leigh Dunnigan, TheNecessity of Regularity inQuartering Soldiers: TheOrganization, Material Cultureand Quartering of the BritishSoldier at Michilimackinac(Mackinac Island, MI: MackinacState Historic Park, 1999), $15.95US paper, 80 pages, no ISBN.

This study humbly purports tobe about the British army

barracks at Fort Michilimackinacduring 1774-75, just as theAmerican Revolution was breakingout on the eastern seaboard. Whileusing Fort Michilimackinac, whichwas then the most westerly Britishoutpost to have a garrison in NorthAmerica, as its focus subject, thisbook in fact reveals how soldierswere housed, and to a certainextent, fed and clothed in the lastthird of the eighteenth century. Thework is divided into several parts,starting with a really finedescription of the organization of

8




the British army with emphasis onNorth America in general and theGreat Lakes area andMichilimackinac in particular. Thesupply system for food, clothing,and equipment follows, then thequartering details with anexplanation of barracksadministration, the duties ofbarrack masters, the capacity ofbarracks, and notice of the womenand children living in thesequarters. The most extensivechapter is devoted to the barracksbuilt at Michilimackinac in 1769(and reconstructed in the 1960s).With considerable comparative datafrom other forts built in NorthAmerica, the appearance of themen’s barracks with its furnishingsis presented in great detail. Thisstudy is superbly documented andthe author’s expertise is manifestin his discussion. It thus is a pitythat the publisher did not give itmore generous visual support. Sucha subject would warrant manyillustrations but, while well chosen,they are relatively few and thosepresented are reproduced in arather small format. However,while this small flaw could haveenhanced this otherwise excellentstudy, it takes nothing away from abook which will be a valuablereference regarding British armyadministration and quartering atthe time of the American Revolution.

RC

* * * * *

Mark Zuehlke, Ortona: Canada’sEpic World War II Battle (Toronto:Stoddart, 1999), $32.95, 320 pages,ISBN 0-7737-31989.

Public furor over the Canadiangovernment’s 1998 refusal to

assist veterans wishing to attend aChristmas reunion in the Italianport of Ortona generated significantinterest in the battle fought therefifty-five years earlier. MarkZuehlke, a free-lance author andnon-fiction writing instructor fromVancouver, indulges that interest inhis new book. To do so he wentwhere no professional militaryhistorian dared, into the homes of

those left behind after this country’sbloody victory in the streets ofOrtona. Zuehlke combines dozensof interviews with Canadian andGerman survivors together withofficial records and publishedaccounts to produce a richlydetailed, accurate, and highlyreadable story of an importantchapter in Canadian history.

Until now, Canadian historicalwriting on Ortona eitherconcentrated on individual units(such as Shaun Brown’s work onthe Loyal Edmonton Regiment) orintegrated the battle into a broadercampaign history (as in BillMcAndrew’s Canadians and theItalian Campaign). Zuehlke tellsthe story of 1st Canadian InfantryDivision and 1st CanadianArmoured Brigade from thecrossing of the Moro River, throughrepeated bloody assaults on “TheGully,” to desperate flankingactions at Casa Berardi and CiderCrossroads, as well as the close-quarter fighting in Ortona itself.Zuehlke’s book is thus the firstcomprehensive narrative devotedentirely to Canada’s role in theAllied drive on Rome in December1943.

Zuehlke’s work is not exactlyacademic history, although it doesdraw extensively on the large bodyof scholarship available, includingofficial histories and more recentworks by McAndrew, Brown,Reginald Roy, and BreretonGreenhous. Zuehlke’s work, muchlike Daniel Dancocks’ The D-DayDodgers, occupies a literary no-man’s-land lying between ofteninaccessible scholarly writing, andthe mass of popular “coffee table”military history.

Zuehlke’s greatest contributioncomes from his vivid descriptionsof the horrific conditions enduredby Canadian soldiers in and aroundOrtona. Arguably, one cannotappreciate the significance ofCanada’s costly victory there unlessthey understand the difficultiesfaced by undermanned units whoseremaining troops were constantlycold, wet, exhausted, hungry, andcaked with mud and gore. Around

his theme of individual hardship,Zuehlke walks the reader througheach phase of battle, reconstructingkey decisions taken by seniorCanadian officers and subsequenteffects on the action.

The author adds his opinion toa lively historical debate over theperformance of 1st CanadianDivision’s commander, Major-General Chris Vokes. Zuehlkecomes to Vokes’ defence regardinghis decision to carry the fightingthrough the streets of Ortona. Heargues that prevailing doctrinedictated that enemy units wouldabandon the town once theoutskirts were penetrated.However, German paratroopers didnot abide by their own doctrine andchose to stay. “Once the battle hadbeen joined, for the Canadians tobreak off was impracticable.” Whenthe international media entered thescene, describing unfolding eventsas a little Stalingrad, breaking offbecame impossible.

Echoing the views of a majorityof soldiers and historians, theauthor is not so forgiving whenassessing Vokes’ handling of hisdivision earlier in December.“Standing on the southern edge ofThe Gully, it is unthinkable to methat Vokes failed to see the folly offrontal assaults.” It is difficult todispute this widely acceptedassessment of Vokes’ failure tooutflank the Gully or to properlycoordinate a divisional attack untilmuch blood was already spilled inpoorly supported battalion-sizedefforts. Unfortunately the critiqueearned the engineer general a labelthat has yet to be overcome in thepages of history, despite muchbetter showings in the Liri Valleyand the Gothic Line.

In closing, readers should becareful not to judge this bookbeyond what it is: a narrative ofbattle. Those searching for answersto questions about Allied militaryeffectiveness in late 1943, Canadianinnovation in urban battle doctrine,or the peculiarities of armouredengagements in Italy may find usefultidbits in this story, but they willlikely have to keep searching for

9




Ortona’s place in military history.Nevertheless, Ortona stands out asan important contribution to theCanadian public’s knowledge ofwhat this nation endured during thegreat trial of the Second World War.

LW

* * * * *

David J. Eicher, Mystic Chords ofMemory: Civil War Battlefieldsand Historic Sites Recaptured(Baton Rouge: Louisiana StateUniversity Press [distributed inCanada by Scholarly BookServices], 1998), $39.95 US, 167pages, ISBN 0-8071-2309-9.

The battlefields of the AmericanCivil War are some of the most

popular military sites in the UnitedStates. Eicher’s book is not somuch a tour guide as a tribute; itwill not help you find your wayaround the battlefields, but it willbe a wonderful souvenir of a tour,or a great substitute for people whoare unable to make the trip. It is alarge-format, coffee-table-stylebook that combines a concise,straightforward text with beautifulcolour photographs of thebattlefields (and a number ofcontemporary black-and-whiteshots). Eicher, who produces thevery popular Civil War Journeyscalendars, has amassed some10,000 photographs of sites relatingto this terrible conflict, and haschosen the very best for this book.With arresting and evocative photosand very high production values,Mystic Chords of Memory isdefinitely one of the best of thegenre.

CA

* * * * *

Bonnie Thornhill and W. JamesMacDonald, eds., In the Morning:Veterans of Victoria County, CapeBreton (Sydney: UCCB Press,1999), $29.95, 567 pages, ISBN 0-920336-79-5.

At first glance, this volume ofshort biographies of veterans

from Cape Breton looks about asinteresting as a phone book. Yet, asyou read your way through it, the

short pieces begin to work on you,intrigue you, and make you want toknow more about the 1,600 menand women whose lives aresketched here. About 600 servedin the First World War and 1000 inthe Second, and most came fromrural areas.

The idea for the book beganwhen Bonnie Thornhill, who grewup in Victoria County, noticed thatthe war memorial in Baddeck, itscapital, carried no names.Gathering together a corps ofvolunteers (including four veterans)and securing funding from thirty-eight different sources – neither thefederal nor provincial governmentprovided money – Thornhill andJim MacDonald put together aremarkable record of thecontributions made by VictoriaCounty veterans.

Alexander MacLeod, agedfourteen, served overseas with the185th Battalion, Cape BretonHighlanders, survived the war, andbecame an Ontario MPP. His photo– one of a thousand in the book –shows a child in uniform. WilliamHardy left the merchant navy aftera sinus operation, enlisted in theWest Novas, and died in action inItaly on 13 December 1944. Thecover photo shows the twoAnderson brothers and their sisterBlanche, who served as a nursingsister in the First World War. Shesits, and her bothers gaze directlyat the camera. Major Percy won theMilitary Cross, and diedcommanding D Company of the 85th

Nova Scotia Highlanders atPasschendaele. James, his brotherand also a major who won the MC,survived the war, dying in 1964. Hisbiography notes: “He married, buthad no issue.”

The numerous MacLeans,MacLeods, MacNeils, andMacDonalds in the book indicatethe Scottish origin of the people ofthe area, as do the place names.Some of the biographies consist ofa single line, others are quitedetailed. The tragedies of war leapout from some of them. Every farmalong the northern shore of the Brasd’Or between New Campbelltownand New Harris sent at least one

young man to serve in the FirstWorld War; only one returned. Thevery ordinariness of these lives isstriking. After war service, theyreturned to take up jobs as farmers,teachers, fishermen, bakers,accountants, civil servants. Quite afew became lighthouse keepers, anda startling number died unmarried.Behind each of these entries lies alife story, and one wonders howwar service affected the lives ofthese people? Most of those whosurvived the Second World Wardied in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the Morning has quite a fewtypos, and some of the entries areincomplete, providing no sourcesfor newspaper accounts. But thisbook offers a remarkable tributeto Canada’s veterans. It is anexcellent beginning for a moredetailed volume as now theunnamed veterans of VictoriaCounty have names. The book alsoshould inspire others, for it showshow local commitment and initiativecan record the stories of Canada’sever-diminishing band of veterans.

JL

* * * * *

George B. Clark, Devil Dogs:Fighting Marines in World War I(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1999),$39.95 US, 463 pages, ISBN 0-89141-653-6.

At the time of the Armistice inNovember 1918, the US Marine

Corps comprised some 73,000 allranks. The majority of them servedaway from the Western Front, andtheir story remains to be told. Theexperiences of the 25,000 whichserved with the AmericanExpeditionary Forces in France arerelated in Devil Dogs. It is anidiosyncratic account. It is writtenin a very informal style, at times somuch so that one wonders if Clarkwas well served by his editor. It iscertainly exhaustive. The Marines’action at Belleau Wood in June1918, perhaps its most famousengagement of the Great War,occupies a full 160 pages of thebook – it is a real blow-by-blowaccount. And Clark makes littleeffort at scholarly restraint. Before

10




April 1917, he writes, “the U.S.military and industrial complexwasn’t worth the powder to blow itto hell” (xix). In fact, it is refreshingto read a historian who refuses toequivocate. In his conclusion, Clarkoffers devastating indictments ofparts of the Marine Corpsleadership, particularly BrigadierGeneral James G. Harbord, wholed the 4th Marine Brigade atBelleau Wood. This is done withperfect hindsight to be sure, but ongrounds which seem eminentlyreasonable.

The maps in the book, thoughplentiful, are not especially good,so readers would be advised toequip themselves with detailedtrench maps of the various sectorsin which the Marines fought. Withthese in hand, Devil Dogs can be arewarding and fascinating read.

JFV

* * * * *

Kai Bird, The Color of Truth:McGeorge Bundy and WilliamBundy, Brothers in Arms (NewYork: Simon & Schuster, 1998),$39.95, 496 pages, ISBN 0-684-80970-2.

Kai Bird first encountered theBundys as a student, when

McGeorge Bundy visited CarletonCollege to defend the Johnsonadministration policy in Vietnam.A quarter century later he learnedto respect the Bundys for theintegrity of their vision ofstatesmanship while disparaging theconsequences of that statesmanshipin Cuba and Vietnam.

Although Boston Brahmins, theBundy patriarch, was born inGrand Rapids, Michigan – whichthe author wrongfully disparages as“a glorified sawmill on the GrandRiver” – he moved back east tostudy law at Harvard. Bill andMcGeorge Bundy were born duringthe First World War and came ofage during the age of appeasement.They attended Social Registerschools, where they met young JohnKennedy, then went off to Yale,which they found to be “a terriblewaste of time.” When their fathermoved to Washington to work for

Secretary of War Stimson, the boyswere exposed to the man whoshaped the AmericanEstablishment’s world view for therest of the century. The Manchuriancrisis of 1931 focused an entiregeneration of policymakers aroundStimson’s view that the US shouldassume Britain’s former role asglobocop and intervene wherevernecessary to make the rest of theworld behave like Americans.

The tragedy of Cold WarAmerica is that the decision of oneDemocratic administration to playthe anti-communist card to winsupport for its liberalinterventionist policy in Europe(the Marshall Plan) without takinganti-communism seriouslybackfired when the “fall” of Chinawas blamed on the Democrats, whospent eight gray years in thepolitical wilderness. The Chinasyndrome scarred an entiregeneration of Cold War liberals, anddictated much of the response ofthe Kennedy team to the world theyinherited.

The Color of Truth is based onexhaustive reading of the relevantscholarship of the Cold War era, oninterviews with key participantsincluding the Bundys, and on accessto newly declassified documents onthe pivotal events of the Cold War.It tells us much about the Bundysand the Cold War. What makes thebook especially important is that theBundys typified the Establishmentmindset throughout the Cold War,where technocratic realpolitikreplaced statesmanship and vision.

They worked with Truman andStimson to use the A-bomb to scareRussia away, not to defeat Japan,which had offered to surrender inMay. Their estimate of one millioncasualties for an invasion wasplucked out of thin air because itwas a nice round number. Theyworked with JFK and the CIA forthe Bay of Pigs invasion, whichincluded plans for exiles to attackGuantanamo and provoke USretaliation. Throughout 1962 JFKworked towards a full-scaleinvasion, and ordered a navalblockade two weeks before he hadany hint of Russian missiles in Cuba.

They backed the CIA-inspiredassassination of Diem to keepAmerica in Vietnam, and preparedthe Gulf of Tonkin Resolutionmonths before the CIA raids on theNorth which led to the attack onthe Maddox that gave Johnson hiswar. The whole array of escalation,bombing, and search-and-destroywas a series of tactics for politicalprestige; the administration neverexpected to “win” in Vietnam. WhenJohnson bowed out in 1968 (aftermost of his team had alreadydeserted the sinking ship theyhelped create), Nixon sabotaged thepeace talks so he could have his wartoo.

In the author’s view, the raisond’etre of US policy throughout theCold War was to show the flag, toshow that America was the globalpower that would not desert itsallies – and would not know whento reason, compromise, or bowout. Everyone thought this way andacted this way. As the author shows,the whole Cold War in Europe couldhave been settled in 1961 but forKennedy’s fear of not looking toughagainst the enemy. The samemindset gave us Desert Storm, andperpetuates America’s self-styledrole as globocop.

JW

* * * * *

Flavel C. Barber, Holding theLine: The Third TennesseeInfantry, 1861-1864, edited byRobert H. Ferrell (Kent, OH: KentState University Press, 1994),$28.00, 281 pages, ISBN 0-87338-504-7.

Flavel C. Barber served as anofficer in the Third Tennessee

Infantry Regiment from the unit’sformation in 1861 until his deathin 1864. Throughout these years,Barber, a highly literate school-teacher from Bryson, Tennessee,compiled a journal of hisexperiences. Those interested in thebattles of the Civil War will findBarber’s eyewitness accounts ofgreatest interest, for the ThirdTennessee participated in some ofthe most intense fighting in the west.Most notably, Barber recounts in

11




vivid detail the regiment’ssurrender at Fort Donelson and itssubsequent parole; its role in thedefence of Vicksburg and PortHudson along the MississippiRiver; and the unit’s climacticrepulse of William T. Sherman’sassault on Chickasaw Bayou inDecember 1862. The unit was finallymoved in 1864 to Georgia where,near Resaca, Barber died ofwounds inflicted in battle, on 15May 1864. To provide the historicalcontext in which Barber and hisregiment operated, the work is fullyindexed and appended by RobertH. Ferrell, Distinguished ProfessorEmeritus of History at IndianaUniversity, and contains an entireroster list for the 3rd TennesseeVolunteers from 1861 to 1864.

The sheer breadth of Barber’srecorded experiences opens awindow into Civil War life farbeyond that of the battlefield. Thereader shares in Barber’sfrustration in a prisoner of warcamp in Ohio, his concern for a wifeleft behind in Union-controlledTennessee, and the pure and simplejoy of spending time with the menof his command. In sum, the workstands as an eloquent testimony tothe homespun humour,backbreaking hardship, mind-numbing boredom, and sheerterror that were so much a part ofthe Civil War. Holding the Line, atonce comic, poignant and heart-wrenching, is an unforgettablevolume that will appeal to thosereaders not only interested in theAmerican Civil War, but to all thoseseeking to gain greater insight intothe manifold experiences of men atwar.

BJD

* * * * *

William B. Breuer, Top SecretTales of World War II (Toronto:John Wiley & Sons, 2000), $34.95,256 pages, ISBN 0-471-53582-5.

Following on his earlier booksUnexplained Mysteries of

World War II and UndercoverTales of World War II, Breuerpresents another collection of oddand unusual incidents from recent

military history. They range fromthe inspirational (the two boys, ageten and thirteen, who used asailboat to escape from occupiedFrance to England in the hopes thatthey would be permitted to join theFree French forces) to the desperate(the Luftwaffe’s last-ditch plan tobomb New York City using giantflying boats that would be refuelledfrom U-Boats across the Atlantic)to the bizarre (a plan to set Tokyoablaze by bombing it with batsloaded with tiny napalm charges).The title is a bit of a misnomer.Though these stories were topsecret during the war, they have notbeen secret for years; indeed,almost all of these incidents havealready been documented inpreviously published accounts andso will be familiar to the seriousstudent of military history.Nevertheless, the short, snappychapters make excellent lightreading, and the book is a fine wayto pass some idle moments.

SL

* * * * *

Cecil French, A History of theCanadian Army Veterinary Corpsin the Great World War, 1914-1919, ed. C.A.V. Barker and IanK. Barker (Guelph, ON: CrestBooks, 1999), $32.00 paper, 302pages, ISBN 0-88955-472-2.

Seeing the title of this book, onemight be tempted to pass it by

as a trivial account of a tangentialsubject. After all, it calls to mindD.S. Tamblyn’s The Horse in War(1932), an odd mixture ofhagiography and a Boy’s Ownadventure. French’s book, however,is a remarkable history of a subjectthat has been neglected for far toolong. It is not that horses wereinsignificant, either in numerical orpractical terms, during the FirstWorld War; quite the contrary. Atthe outbreak of war, the BritishArmy had 19,000 horses; aftermobilization, it purchased over 1.1million more, in Britain, Canada,the United States, and elsewhere.Like most armies of the time, theCanadian Expeditionary Forcerelied heavily on horses, and it was

up to the CAVC to ensure that thoseanimals were well cared for.Battlefield wounds from shrapnelor bullets were not their onlyconcern; perhaps more significant,in terms of the total number of casestreated, were infectious diseases,gas poisoning, lice, overwork andexhaustion, skin ulcers, accidentalinjuries (including kicks from otherhorses), and countless other lessserious ailments which affectedanimals. The personnel of the CAVCwere fully aware of the magnitudeof their task. Indeed, without theirefforts, the work of the cavalry, theartillery, and the service corpswould have been all but impossible.

The manuscript was originallywritten shortly after the war but wasnever published; the interestingstory of its ‘suppression’ is told inthe preface. It is to the Barkers’great credit that they have taken theinitiative to get it into print now,and that they have gone to suchtrouble to produce a high-qualityvolume, complete with manyillustrations, diagrams, nominalrolls, and a full-colour cover.

JFV

* * * * *

Doris V. Carter, Never Leave YourHead Uncovered: A CanadianNursing Sister in World War II(Waterdown, ON: PotlachPublications, 1999), $19.95 paper,155 pages, ISBN 0-919676-5-9.

Doris Carter was one of thelongest-serving Canadian

nursing sisters during the SecondWorld War, serving from October1940 to August 1945. She dividedher time between hospitals inEngland and Italy, and her servicein Sicily, Rome, and elsewhere inItaly provides the most interestingsections of this short memoir. Sheprovides quite a shocking pictureof Rome after the liberation. Formuch of her time there, it wasunwise to leave the hospital withoutan escort; on one of the fewoccasions that she did, she wasthrust into the centre of a mob thatmurdered a civilian in the middleof a downtown piazza. Alliedsoldiers were frequently brought

12




into her hospital after beingattacked or murdered by civilians,and bodies of various ages andsexes were often seen floating in theTiber River. In these passages,Carter gives us a fascinatingglimpse of what it was like to livein a city with deep social schismsand little apparent goodwill athaving been liberated from fascism.Faced with an indefinite period ofrelative inactivity back in Canadain 1945, she pulled some stringsto get herself demobilized; she hadtaken the government at its wordregarding the “first in, first out”demobilization policy, and decidedto take the initiative herself ratherthan wait for something to happen.

There are a few minor glitchesin the book that an astute militaryeditor would have caught – NAFFIinstead of NAAFI; repatriot insteadof repatriate; the name of the stageshow “Chu Chin Chow” isincorrectly rendered two differentways – but these do not reallyimpair the reader’s enjoyment ofthe book. There were over 3500Canadian nursing sisters in serviceduring the Second World War. Veryfew of them have left their memoirs,so this is a most welcome additionto the historiography.

SL

* * * * *

Andrew B. Cox, Our SpiritUnbroken: Memoirs of a Prisonerof War (Port Elgin, ON: BrucedalePress, 1999), $16.95 paper, 125pages, ISBN 1-896922-11-2.

Les Morrison, Of Luck and War:From Squeegee Kid to BomberPilot in World War II (Burnstown,ON: General Store PublishingHouse, 1999), $19.95 paper, 151pages, ISBN 1-89463-16-2.

In many ways, Andrew Cox andLes Morrison are a study in

contrasts. When Cox was shot downon 8 September 1940 on a raidagainst Hamburg, he had alreadyflown 44 operations. At this time,Morrison was still more than twoyears away from joining the RCAF.When Morrison did begin flying opsin the spring of 1945, Cox had

already spent nearly five years inGerman captivity.

Cox’s memoir describes onlya few of his bombing operations,focusing instead on his experiencesbehind barbed wire. It is wellorganized and well written, andnicely captures the challenges facedby POWs in German hands.Readers who are familiar withescape literature will recognizemany of the names andpersonalities discussed, includingpeople like the legendary “Dixie”Deans and persistent escaperGeorge Grimson. Morrison’s book,in contrast, is a little more jauntyand jovial; it is clear from thenarrative that he was a little youngerthan Cox when the events occurred.He certainly does seem to have hadmore than his fair share of goodluck, and came through a numberof very close shaves.

One significant differencebetween the books is the editing.Cox’s book has been edited byWilliam S. Carter (presumably thehistorian of 6 Group RCAF), andhe has done an excellent job. Thetext is virtually error-free, whichallows the reader to fully enjoy thefascinating narrative. Morrison’sbook, unfortunately, is lesssatisfactory. Clearly, the manuscriptwas not carefully proof-read, forthere are far too many spellingerrors, particularly in place names.Was there no gazetteer on hand, andis it so difficult to spell Adolf Hitlercorrectly? These may seem likepicayune objections, but suchelementary mistakes do underminethe reader’s enjoyment of what isotherwise a very entertaining tale.

DG

* * * * *

Neil G. Carey, ed., Fighting theBolsheviks: The Russian WarMemoir of Private First ClassDonald E. Carey, U.S. Army,1918-1919 (Novato, CA: PresidioPress, 1998), $24.95 US, 240 pages,ISBN 0-89141-631-5.

The Siberian campaign in theclosing days of the First World

War remains one of the least studiedcampaigns of the twentieth century.

Canada’s involvement was notinconsiderable, and yet there is nosolid account of the operation; a fewunit histories were publishedimmediately after the war and theodd diary or memoir has made itinto print, but this has not elicitedany sustained interest on the partof historians. Carey’s book gives usanother reason why that interestshould grow. It has a number ofCanadian angles. Donald Carey’sson, the book’s editor, lives inBritish Columbia, and Carey hadsome contact with Canadianartillery batteries when he was inthe lines in Siberia in 1918 and1919. On a more general level, thebook offers fascinating insight intothe lives of the men who were calledupon to serve in a grimenvironment, in a campaign thatwas ultimately pointless. In westernEurope, soldiers in the lines at leasthad passing contact with civilianswho appreciated their presence; innorthern Russia, the populaceseemed generally indifferent to theAllied soldiers, and in some casescivilians were downright hostile.This fact, understandably, madeCarey occasionally wonder what themen of the North RussianExpeditionary Force were givingtheir lives for. Carey’s commentson the organization of the force arealso interesting. The Americanunits were under British command,used Russian and British weapons,and were fed British rations. Thisunhappy situation can only havedecreased their effectiveness, butnevertheless they got the best oftheir Bolshevik enemies in anumber of engagements. Onewonders how the Siberianintervention might have beendifferent had the expeditionaryforce been adequately supplied andsupported.

Carey was a school teacher inMichigan before he was drafted, andhe writes with clarity, humour, andpungency. Fighting the Bolsheviksis a fascinating memoir that isamong the best of the handful ofbooks dealing with the campaign.

DR

* * * * *

13




R. Thomas Campbell, The CSSH.L. Hunley: ConfederateSubmarine (Shippensburg, PA:Burd Street Press, 2000), $14.95US paper, 173 pages, ISBN 1-57249-175-2.

Robert Gannon, Hellions of theDeep: The Development ofAmerican Torpedoes in World WarII (University Park, PA: Penn StatePress, 1996), $28.50 US, 241 pages,ISBN 0-271-01508-X.

The Hunley was the firstsubmarine in the world to sink

a warship, but it didn’t do it withan early version of one of thetorpedoes which were perfectedduring the Second World War.Instead, it used a latter-day versionof a battering ram to destroy theUSS Housatonic, a Union frigate,in 1864. The Hunley wasoccasionally known as thePeripatetic Coffin because it sankon three separate occasions, killingmost of its crew members. After thefirst two disasters, Confederatedivers located the wreck and raisedit from the bottom; new crewmembers were easily found, andthe submarine was ready to cruiseagain. On the third occasion,however, the Hunley slammed itstwelve-foot-long bow ram into theHousatonic, burying an explosivecharge deep in the frigate’s hull. Thesubmarine then backed away,paying out a lanyard attached to thecharge as it went. But the lanyardsnagged on something anddetonated the charge before theHunley had reached a safedistance; the Housatonic sankshortly after the explosion, but thesubmarine was also mortallywounded, and carried her crew tothe bottom of Charleston Harbour.

The limitations of the Hunley’smain armament were obvious, justas obvious as the limitations ofAmerican torpedoes in the earlyyears of the Second World War.Submarine commanders reportedthat many missed their targets, andmany of those which hit their targetsfailed to explode. This situation wasbad enough, but was compoundedby the fact that Germany and Japan

both had torpedoes which were farsuperior in performance andreliability. The US Navy’s solutionwas to gather together the bestscientists and graduate students inthe field and put them into atorpedo research centre, in arequisitioned gymnasium atHarvard University. They didindeed develop torpedoes whichwere reliable and effective, andwhich were eventually put intoservice in the Pacific theatre (thenew torpedoes were rarely used inthe Atlantic war). Ironically,however, they were never used aswidely as they might have been. Thereason, according to Gannon, issimple. By the time the USdeveloped high-quality torpedoes,there was a shortage of targets inthe Pacific theatre, so Americanfactories were producing far moretorpedoes than the submarine fleetwas firing; they manufactured morethan 57,000 over the course of thewar, but only 15,000 were used.Japanese shipping losses wereimmense, but the US Navy had atits disposal enough torpedoes tosink two or three times as manyships. As unlikely as it may seem,the crews of the Hunley probablyplayed some small part in thatsuccess.

LF

* * * * *

Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V.Berlin, eds., Sherman’s Civil War:Selected Correspondence ofWilliam T. Sherman, 1860-1865(Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press [distributed inCanada by Scholarly BookServices], 1999), $74.25, 948pages, ISBN 0-8078-2440-2.

William T. Sherman isresponsible for some of the

greatest quotations in the annals ofmilitary history; any number ofsubjects can be enlivened withreference to a witty riposte fromSherman. His correspondence hasbeen published before, but not formany years and never in such anappealing format. Previous editorswere notorious for tidying up hisprose, removing objectionable

comments, and generallybowdlerizing the letters, butSimpson and Berlin have remainedtrue to the original texts, only doingediting where it was absolutelynecessary for the sake of clarity.The result is a collection of lettersthat shows Sherman in his manymoods. Chapter introductions putthe letters into context and footnotesidentify individuals mentioned inpassing, but for the most part theletters are allowed to speak forthemselves. So it is possible toread the history of the Civil War asSherman experienced it, and as heevaluated the situation on anongoing basis. He was certainly notalways right, but he always had anopinion, and the strength of thatopinion makes for fascinatingreading.

The volume closes withSherman’s Special Field Order No.76 of 30 May 1865 which stooddown the armies of Tennessee andGeorgia and which could serve asan epitaph for many an army inmany a time: “The Genl. now bidsyou all farewell, with the full beliefthat as in war, you have been goodsoldiers so in Peace you will makegood citizens and if unfortunatelynew war should arise in ourcountry, “Shermans army” will bethe first to buckle on its old armsand come forth to defend &maintain the Government of ourinheritance & choice.”

CA

* * * * *

Allen Andrews, Brave Soldiers,Proud Regiments: Canada’s MilitaryHeritage (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press,1997), $19.95 paper, 512 pages, ISBN0-921870-50-7.

As with other publications byRonsdale Press, the Vancouver-

based publisher makes available tothe general reader in BraveSoldiers, Proud Regiments thework of a college instructor, in thisinstance, Allen Andrews ofVancouver Community College.Such a work is a valuable extensionof the classroom into thecommunity, to those interested inCanadian history.

14




Brave Soldiers, ProudRegiments is a collection of essaysbased on secondary sources. In thismanner, the reader is introducedto the biographies of militaryfigures and groups throughout theentire history of Canada, as well asto many additional and easilyavailable sources for furtherreading. It became the author’s taskto decide whose biographiesshould be included, and tosynthesize the material into essays.The result is an introduction to suchnames as Sir Isaac Brock, SirArthur Currie, and Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, and suchgroups as Canada’s Indian warriorsand Canadian Chinese soldiers ofthe Second World War.Contemporary in scope, BraveSoldiers, Proud Regimentsincludes a section on peacekeepers,and “the world’s best-knownpeacekeeper,” Major-General LewisMackenzie. Mackenzie has alsowritten an introduction to the book,and checked the manuscript on theUnited Nations Protection Force inYugoslavia.

Canadians are generallylaypeople about military subjects.The value of Brave Soldiers, ProudRegiments is that it introduces thecivilian to the men and women ofour military history. Andrews doesnot assess the relationship ofCanadian citizens to its military inthe way other historians have,especially the concept of citizen-soldier. He does, however, presentCanadian military history from theperspective of individuals whobecame the soldiers, generals, andnursing sisters. His concern for theindividuals and the roles they cameto play in the larger history of thewars they fought is encouraged bythe sources to which the authorturns for photographs andinformation. Andrews has receiveda great deal of help from thearchives of Esprit de Corps,including its series, “CanadianMilitary Then and Now.” One sourcecuriously absent is the workpublished by such historians asTerry Copp, Canadian MilitaryHistory, and the Laurier Centre for

Military Strategic and DisarmamentStudies.

While Esprit de Corps hasmade a reputation for criticizing thepresent military commandstructure, Andrews does not adoptthe same approach in hisassessment of Canadian militaryhistory. For example, the captionaccompanying a photo in BraveSoldiers, Proud Regiments of aCanadian peacekeeper reads,“Captain Jim DeCoste 2PPCLIepitomized the four virtues of asoldier: loyalty, integrity, truth, andcourage. He died on UN duty inCroatia in 1993.” The same photoin Scott Taylor’s Tarnished Brass:Crime and Corruption in theCanadian Military is used for adifferent purpose. That captionreads, “Captain Jim DeCoste waskilled in a jeep accident onSeptember 18, 1993, in the formerYugoslavia. His body was robbed bythe Serbian soldiers in the truckthat collided with his vehicle. TheCanadian military concludedDeCoste’s driver was at fault andcompensated the Serbs, who hadalso looted guns and ammunitionfrom the jeep. DeCoste was knownas ‘the soldier’s soldier.’”

Apart from little changes, thebook is very strong. For example,while the essay on Canada’s NursingSisters includes a photograph of anurse from the Second World War,the chapter only considers thehistory of the nursing sisters up tothe end of the First World War. Thecaption under a photograph fromthe First World War should read“August 1918” rather than “1914,”since there were no Canadians inAmiens in 1914 nor were theretanks until later in the war. Giventhat the book was written inVancouver, it would have been niceto see a section on Bert Hoffmeisterof the Seaforth Highlanders ofCanada or on George Kitching,although this might not have beenpossible given the space available.

If I am a typical example of aperson who becomes interested inCanadian military history, the chainof events would look somethinglike this: a civilian begins to read

Canadian military history becausehis or her father, uncle, orgrandfather served in the SecondWorld War, or perhaps First WorldWar. This personal search for one’sroots becomes the starting point.Books on regiments and the historyof those wars become the firstsources of interest. Then it becomesevident, as is the premise of BraveSoldiers, Proud Regiments, thatCanada has a military history whichextends much further back in timethan the First World War, and muchbeyond the end of the Second WorldWar. The book’s value lay in itsbiographical essays and introducingCanadians to the many topics ofmilitary value.

JS

* * * * *

Tim Cook, No Place to Run: TheCanadian Corps and Gas Warfarein the First World War (Vancouver:UBC Press, 1999), $85.00(softcover, $24.95), 296 pages,ISBN 0-7748-0739-3.

One of the most compellingpieces of art to emerge from

the First World War is John SingerSargent’s Gassed, a hauntingcanvas showing a line of gas victims,their eyes bandaged and each witha hand on the shoulder of the manin front. In this, the first full-lengthstudy of Canadian gas warfare, TimCook contextualizes thesecasualties, and dispels much of themythology and misinformationconcerning the use of gas. Not longafter the Second Battle of Ypres, heargues, the development ofrespirators meant that gascasualties were largely preventable(at least until the advent of mustardgas). Provided that the troops weresufficiently trained (in the use ofrespirators and in the recognitionof the presence of gas) anddisciplined (so that they kept theirrespirators close and serviceable atall times), casualties could bereduced to levels significantlybelow those caused by otherweapons. At the same time, theCanadian Corps developed aworkable gas doctrine involving amixture of high-explosive and gas

15




shells used in counter-battery fire;its aim was less to kill enemygunners than to keep them offbalance by constantly changing thetype of shells they were facing. Itshould come as no surprise that inboth of these areas, training anddiscipline, and tactics, the CanadianCorps did better than most otherAllied armies.

Equally interesting is Cook’sdescription of the gas environment.Gas was most useful when it forcedthe troops to keep their respiratorson. Hot, uncomfortable, and notalways completely effective,respirators severely reduced thesoldiers’ ability to fight. Trenchwarfare was confusing enoughunder the best of circumstances;when viewed through the cloudedeyepieces of a primitive respirator,it took on a whole new aura ofterror and other-worldliness. Bythe same token, as Cook nicelyexplains, gas altered the appearanceof war by substituting the sinisterand futuristic respirator for thehuman face. Gas may have causedfewer casualties than many otherweapons, but it had a psychologicaland cultural impact out of allproportion to its battlefield utility.

JFV

* * * * *

Frances Martin Day, Phyllis Spence,and Barbara Ladouceur, eds.,Women Overseas: Memoirs of theCanadian Red Cross Corps(Overseas Detachment)(Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 1998),$18.95 paper, 300 pages, ISBN 0-921870-61-2.

Women Overseas is a collectionof memoirs of 31 women who

volunteered to work with theCanadian Red Cross Corps overseasduring the Second World War.Included here are also stories ofCanadian Red Cross Corpspersonnel who served in the KoreanWar.

The individual stories arebased on recollections many yearsafter the war, notes from diariesand letters, and archives of the RedCross Overseas clubs of Victoria

and Vancouver. As some of thecontributors have since passedaway, the book becomes a legacy ofthe sort that many relatives ofveterans might wish they had. Forexample, we have the contributionof Audrey C. Kitching, who becamethe wife of Major-General GeorgeKitching after returning home. Thereader is presented with the livesof these volunteers in their variouswartime phases, including civilianlife prior to joining the Red Cross,training in Canada, awaitingtransport overseas, and experiencesin France, Italy, or Korea.

If a reader’s first interest is themilitary history of the SecondWorld War, this book offers muchinformation about such topics asthe build-up to D-Day in June 1944,and the extent of civilian casualtiesin post-invasion Normandy, wherean estimated 40,000 civilians werekilled. There are narratives ofmeetings between the Red Crossstaff and wounded soldiers beingevacuated, with the mud of thebattlefield, as one author describes,still permeating their clothing andboots. In such encounters, thewomen in the field hospitalsexpressed surprise at how much thesoldiers felt a need to talk abouttheir battle experiences and thecircumstances in which they werewounded.

While other books providemore structured accounts of howthe hospitals and evacuation routeswere established, the reader doeslearn much from Women Overseasabout the workings of GeneralHospitals, field hospitals, andCasualty Clearing Stations. Andmuch is presented about the workof the Canadian Red Cross overseasmembers as ambulance drivers,escort officers, foodadministrators, and handicraftsofficers working with such groupsas blind veterans. The organizationwas clearly successful in its workin Great Britain and on thecontinent with soldiers andcivilians, as well as in its liaisonduties with its counterparts amongthe other allies.

The dangers of the work arealso described in the memoirs. Forexample, in her account “Sunny Italywasn’t warm or sunny,” DorothyFalkner Burgoyne Doolittle, fromSt. Catharines, Ontario, recallslearning of the fate that had befallenNo. 14 General Hospital that hadbeen sent to Italy before her group:they were on a convoy that wasbombed in the Mediterranean inearly November 1943. “No lives hadbeen lost, but they had lost all theirpossessions, and word had gotback to London that the Red Crossgirls at No. 14 needed anything andeverything.”

Women Overseas accom-plishes much more than wasperhaps intended as a collection ofpersonal accounts of the CanadianRed Cross Corps (OverseasDetachment). The reader ispresented with a work that educatesthrough narratives by women whowere part of the support structurefor soldiers and civilians in GreatBritain, France, Belgium, Italy, andKorea. Such a book offers greatideas for further research. On apersonal note, Helen M. Egan’schapter, “We found the drivers veryprotective of us,” contains areference to Jean Lamb, who “hadalready worked in Italy with theCanadian offensive which hadpushed up from Sicily, but she hadreturned when the order camethrough that all married girls hadto return to London.” My father wasa batman to a Captain Lamb in Italy,until his death. It is these littleaspects of the vast and complicatedstory of Canadians in war thatmotivate a person to learn more andmore.

JS

* * * * *

Christabel Bielenberg, When I Wasa German: An Englishwoman inNazi Germany (Lincoln: Universityof Nebraska Press, 1998), $15.00US paper, 285 pages, ISBN 0-8032-6151-9.

Christabel Bielenberg’s memoirswere first published in 1968

under the title The Past is Myself;

16




they appeared in the US under thetitle Ride Out the Dark, and werealso made into a television movierecently. It remains one of the mostremarkable accounts of everydaylife in Nazi Germany, although theBielenbergs were hardly ordinary.Christabel (an Englishwoman andrelative of press barons Northcliffeand Rothermere) and Peter (aGerman law student) Bielenbergmarried in September 1934 andsoon moved to Germany. Theycontemplated emigrating to Irelandbefore the war, but were dissuadedby friends who realized thatreasonable voices would be in shortsupply in Nazi Germany. The friendwas right, but neither theBielenberg’s nor any of their anti-Nazi resister friends were able toexert any discernable influence onthe course of events. Peter himselfended up in Ravensbrückconcentration camp when he wassuspected of involvement in theJuly 1944 plot on Hitler’s life. Hesurvived his imprisonment, and theBielenbergs emigrated to Irelandafter the war.

Bielenberg is a lucid andtrenchant observer, and is able toshed interesting light on many ofthe key events of the history of theThird Reich, from Kristallnacht tothe July Plot. For these reasons, herautobiography has justifiablybecome a classic.

LF

* * * * *

Donald M. McKale, War byRevolution: Germany and GreatBritain in the Middle East in theEra of World War I (Kent, OH: KentState University Press, 1998),$39.00 US, 332 page, ISBN 0-87338-60-7.

The attempts to break free of thedeadlock of the Western Front

remain some of the most intriguingepisodes of the First World War,and nowhere moreso than in theMiddle East. The operation in theDardanelles, Allenby’s campaign inPalestine, the rising led byLawrence of Arabia, the disasterthat befell the British at Kut-al-

Amara in 1916 – all of these werefascinating products of the desireto find a way to win the war withouthaving to slog through the mud ofFlanders. Indeed, as McKale writesin this most interesting book, boththe British and Germangovernments believed they coulduse the Middle East as a way to gainthe upper hand in the war. TheGermans, for their part, believedthey could capitalize on Islamicmilitance to foment rebellionsagainst British imperialism fromEgypt to India. The British, on theother hand, saw Turkey as the weaklink in the Central Powers, andhoped to use the Arab Revolt of1916 to bring about the collapse ofthe Turkish empire. McKale callsthis novel strategy war by revolution– destabilize the enemy byencouraging native peoples torebellion. It is a story of short-termvictory for the British (Turkey wasindeed knocked out of the war andthe Ottoman Empire carved up asspoils) but long-term victory for theGermans (the British Empire was,in global terms, much weakened bythe war in the Middle East).

Just as importantly, it is a storythat continued past 1918. As McKaleargues persuasively in the epilogue,anyone seeking to understand thetortured road towards peace in theMiddle East and the place of Islamicfundamentalism in worldgeopolitics today could do worsethan to begin with the west’s firstsignificant experience with pan-Islamism in this century.

CT

* * * * *

Sandra Oancia, Remember:Helen’s Story (Calgary: DetseligEnterprises, 1997), $14.95 paper,115 pages, ISBN 1-55059-145-2.

When Poland was partitioned inSeptember 1939, civilians in

the German-occupied westernsector and the Russian-occupiedeastern sector were equally at risk.In the Russian one, militarypersonnel were especially targeted,but countless other people werepicked up on lesser grounds.

Sixteen-year-old Helena Kordas wasone such victim, arrested byRussian soldiers in February 1940,presumably because her father hadfought against the Russians duringthe First World War. With this, shebegan a long odyssey that took herfirst to a Siberian labour camp.Freed with her family after herfather agreed to join the Sovietarmy in the wake of OperationBarbarossa (he was reported killedin action shortly after), she wentfirst to Kuibyshev, and then on toan orphanage in Quetta, Pakistan.While there, she learned that herfather was still alive; he had beentransferred to the British forces,and was fighting in Italy. Thesurvivors of the family werereunited in England after the war;Helen eventually ended up inCanada.

Though it is much lesspolished, the book shares certainsimilarities with Modris Eksteins’Walking Since Daybreak in that itputs a very personal face on the warin eastern Europe.

CT

* * * * *

Henri A. van der Zee, The HungerWinter: Occupied Holland,1944-1945 (Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1998 [1982]),$16.95 US paper, 331 pages, ISBN0-803-9618-5.

It is difficult to appreciate fully thejoy felt by the Dutch when they

were liberated by Canadian troopsin 1945 without first understandingwhat they went through in the ninemonths before their deliverance.Henri van der Zee was ten years oldthat winter, and writes of theexperience with both the sense ofattachment of a participant, and theobjectivity of an historian. Thatwinter shows the stark contrasts ofthe Dutch war experience in highrelief. Some of the fiercest resisterscame from the Netherlands, but vander Zee also reminds us that 25,000Dutchmen served in the Germanarmies, and that more Dutchsoldiers were killed fighting forAdolf Hitler than were killed

17




fighting for the Allied cause.Furthermore, the Netherlands hadhistorically been a wealthy andprosperous nation, but it wasdriven to the depths of despair bythe Nazi occupation. The Germanpolicy of flooding the land, coupledwith the insistence that foodstuffsbe made available to the occupiers,meant a subsistence crisis for thepeople. As many as 18,000 Dutchdied of starvation that winter, andmany others succumbed toepidemics of typhoid anddiphtheria that swept through theweakened population. The sceneshe describes are nightmarish in theextreme, and it is no wonder thatthe Dutch have felt such deep andenduring gratitude to the Canadiantroops who were their deliverersin the spring of 1945.

DR

* * * * *

David R. Woodward, Field MarshalSir William Robertson, Chief ofthe Imperial General Staff in theGreat War (Westport, CT: PraegerPublishers, 1998), $59.95 US, 248pages, ISBN 0-275-95422-6.

Robertson is well known as themost upwardly mobile of

British soldiers, the first person torise from the lowest ranks of theBritish Army to the highest. He didit by dint of a number ofcharacteristics, not the least ofwhich was a remarkable work ethic(in India, he worked to acquire afacility in six native languages,because there were cash awardsavailable for soldiers who learnedlocal dialects) and an exceptionallystubborn nature. Thatstubbornness, however, was alsopartly responsible for his ultimatefall from grace.

This is not a full biography, butrather a detailed examination ofRobertson’s time as CIGS. He wasan inveterate Westerner, steadfastlyrefusing to release troops for othertheatres because he was convincedthat the war could only be won onthe Western Front. Although heworked hard to shield Sir Douglas

Haig from the politicians in Englandwho disagreed with his style ofgeneralship, Robertson came todisagree with Haig in onefundamental area: where Haig wasconstantly looking for the one bigbreakthrough that would knockGermany out of the war, Robertsonbelieved that the best strategy wasto fight battles of attrition, limitedoffensives designed to wear downthe enemy. This was scarcely lesspalatable to his political masters,particularly the prime minister,David Lloyd George, who was anEasterner and a strategic gadfly,constantly hopping from scheme toscheme in the hopes of finding onethat would lead Britain out of themorass of the Western Front. It wasinevitable that Robertson and LloydGeorge would clash, and when thefinal battle came, Robertson’sstubbornness had driven most ofhis allies away from him; not evenHaig, whose job he had probablysaved on more than on occasion,was willing to come to his defence.

Woodward crafts a fascinatingtale of intrigue within the highestechelons of the Allied command,and cannot resist implying thatRobertson may have had the lastlaugh. Shortly after he was replacedas CIGS by Sir Henry Wilson, theGerman Spring Offensive of 1918opened, inflicting greater losses onthe British than any other periodof the war. Wilson had predictedthe offensive would be no more thana large trench raid, and that the WarCabinet should turn its attention tothe possibility of German advancesin Asia. The crusty andcurmudgeonly Robertson (whoselast words were reputedly “Where’sthe damn tea?”) would have beendelighted to learn how wrong hissuccessor was.

JFV

* * * * *

David Syrett, The Battle of theAtlantic and SignalsIntelligence: U-Boat Situationsand Trends, 1941-1945(Brookfield, VT: AshgatePublishing, 1998), $131.95 US, 628pages, ISBN 1-84014-95-2.

I t would be difficult tooverestimate the impact of signals

intelligence on the Battle of theAtlantic during the Second WorldWar. Unbeknownst to the Germans(and this is clearly a seriousintelligence failure on their behalf),the Allies were able to intercept anddecode messages to and fromGerman U-boats operating in theNorth Atlantic. This made availablea tremendous range of informationabout undersea activity, includingthe fact that the Germans hadbroken a major Allied code that wasused in convoy operations. AsSyrett points out, the number ofdecoded transmissions wasstaggering; the US Navy aloneintercepted and deciphered morethan 49,000 messages. The decryptsthen had to be analyzed, evaluated,and placed in context to produce apicture of German submarineactivity around the world.

The documents reproduced inthis book were part of the processof evaluating and utilizing thatsignals intelligence. U-BoatSituation was first printed inDecember 1941, and appeared ona weekly basis for most of the war;it provided a statistical summaryof U-boat deployment, anddescribed in general terms theiractivities, and the Allied anti-submarine activities. The report of6 March 1944, for example, givesthe numbers and actions of U-boatsin Norway, the north and southAtlantic, the Indian Ocean, theMediterranean, and the Black Sea,as well as Italian and Japanesesubmarine activity. U-Boat Trendsbegan later, in November 1942, andwas intended to provide anoverview of technologicaldevelopments and strategic andtactical trends as they emerged. So,for example, the issue of 17 May1943 reveals that convoy SC 130had been intercepted by four or fiveU-boats, and that as many as twentymore were on their way to join thefray; at the same time, U-boats wereattempting to open a new theatre ofoperations off the South Africancoast.

18




In all, the book reproduces333 documents, right up to the 21May 1945 issue of U-Boat Trends,which reports that ten or twelve U-boats were unaccounted for andshould be regarded as potentiallydangerous. Excellent explanatoryfootnotes and a comprehensiveindex make this fine volumeparticularly user-friendly. It is afascinating collection that willbecome essential to the specialistin naval or intelligence history. Eventhe armchair strategist will find itan excellent addition, for it allowsthem to follow the evolution of navalwarfare in the Atlantic using thesame information that Alliedcommanders at the time had onhand.

AF

* * * * *

Pedro de Brito, José Alberto daCosta Matos, and Maria AlexandraD.L.S. Anjos, Os Soldadinhos doPorto/Les petits soldats de Porto/Oporto’s Tiny Soldiers (Porto:Lello Editores, 1999), 50 Euros212 pages, ISBN 972-48-1750-4.

The city of Porto, or Oporto asthe British long called it, is

home to a military museum whichhas a very fine and extensivecollection of small soldiers. As willbe seen by this work, thiscollection, which has been largelyunknown outside Portugal untilnow, turns out to be quite animportant one. It gathers thousandsof 54mm soldiers from the majorEuropean makers of the lastcentury. This amazing and hugecollection, which occupies nearly awhole floor of the museum, waslargely gathered by Mr. SousaBrenadao (1905-82) and Mr.Campos Gondim (1919-91) whoalso made figurines.

The work begins with an outlineof the military history of the city ofPorto, its military museum, andshort biographies of the collection’sdonors. The main part of the bookfeatures hundreds of colourillustrations, with the text givinginformation on the makers and thesubject shown. The authors were

careful not to show the same figuresas James Opie’s book on BritainsSoldiers or Cristian Blondiau’swork on Mignot. The figures shownfrom those firms are usually therarer sets. All the figures in thecollection from the French firm ofSegom are shown and this forms,for the first time in print, virtuallythe entire catalogue of that firm’sproduction. Besides French armyfigures, it includes, suprisingly, UStroops of the American Revolution.The historical personalities ofGustave Vertunni (1884-1953) arealso given in full. The Germanmakers Heyde, Lineol, and someSpanish makers are alsorepresented and include 1930sfigures of Nazi personalities whichare rarely seen. Portugueseproducers of figures were few butall are presented, includingGondim’s attractive colour bearers.A bibliography and a good indexround out this book which isarguably one of the best and mostattractive catalogues on figurines yetproduced.

RC

* * * * *

Chris Madsen, Another Kind ofJustice: Canadian Military Lawfrom Confederation to Somalia(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999)$75.00 (softcover, $25.95), 236pages, ISBN 0-7748-0718-0.

The peacekeeping debacle inSomalia and the series of

sexual discrimination cases thathave surfaced within the CanadianArmy in the past few years haverecently raised the profile ofdiscipline and law in the ArmedForces of Canada. Madsen hasplaced these ignominious eventswithin the context of the Canadianmilitary jurisprudence since 1867,and in doing so provides a historyof the development, structure, andfunction of that institution. Theauthor argues that sinceConfederation, the legal branch ofthe armed forces has not developedas part of a systematic process of“Canadianization” – that is, into anapparatus specifically suited to

Canadian law, politics, and militarytradition. Instead, it has grown byexpediency and necessity,borrowing from the British modelor developing by improvisation.Furthermore, Canadian militarylaw has, to its detriment,traditionally sought to differentiateitself from mainstream civilianpractice, eschewing any outsideinfluence or assistance.

This ad hoc developmentalprocess, with its emphasis uponexclusivity, has meant that sinceConfederation, Canada’s officersand men have consistently failed toreceive the necessary education inmilitary law concomitant with theirposition. With the exception of thetwo world wars, Canadian soldiers,sailors, and airmen have often beenlargely unfamiliar with even themost basic tenets of military lawand discipline: as a result of thisdeficiency, such tragic events asSomalia have occurred. Madsentherefore concludes that improvedlegal training for the members ofthe armed forces coupled withbetter organization and integrationof the military legal infrastructureitself are needed. The author hasconvincingly demonstrated theweaknesses of the Canadianmilitary legal system: hisrecommendations are logical andshould be taken into account by theCanadian Armed Forces should theywish to avoid the public disgraceof another Somalia.

BJD

* * * * *

Trevor Pidgeon, The Tanks atFlers: An Account of the First Useof Tanks in War at the Battle ofFlers-Courcelette, The Somme,15th September 1916 (Surrey,UK: Fairmile Books [Distributed inthe US by Articles of War], 1995),$64.95 US, Published in 2 Volumes,Vol.1, 247 pp, Vol.2 ,12 maps.ISBN 0-9525175-2-3 (for the set).

I n the early morning of 15September 1916, the harbinger

of a new way of warfare creakedforward amid the shell craters andbarbed wire of the Somme.

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General

Another Kind of Justice: CanadianMilitary Law from Confederation toSomaliaby Chris Madsen .............................. 19

Brave Soldiers, Proud Regiments:Canada’s Military Heritageby Allen Andrews ............................. 14

In the Morning: Veterans of VictoriaCounty, Cape Bretonby Bonnie Thornhill and W. JamesMacDonald, eds. .............................. 10

Os Soldadinhos do Porto / Les petitssoldats de Porto / Oporto’s TinySoldiers by Pedro de Brito, JoséAlberto da Costa Matos, and MariaAlexandra D.L.S. Anjos .................... 19

Pre-1914

Holding the Line: The Third TennesseeInfantry, 1861-1864by Flavel C. Barber ............................ 11

Mystic Chords of Memory: Civil WarBattlefields and Historic SitesRecapturedby David J. Eicher ............................ 10

The Necessity of Regularity in QuarteringSoldiers: The Organization, MaterialCulture and Quartering of the BritishSoldier at Michilimackinacby Brian Leigh Dunnigan ................... 8

Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in theWestby William L. Shea andEarl J. Hess ...................................... 8

Sherman’s Civil War: SelectedCorrespondence of William T.Sherman, 1860-1865by Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V.Berlin, eds. ....................................... 14

The CSS H.L. Hunley: ConfederateSubmarineby R. Thomas Campbell .................... 14

Where a Man Can Go: Major GeneralWilliam Phillips, British RoyalArtillery, 1731-1781by Robert P. Davis .............................. 7

1914-1939

Anzacs, the Media and the Great Warby John F. Williams ........................... 6

Devil Dogs: Fighting Marinesin World War Iby George B. Clark ............................ 10

Field Marshal Sir William Robertson,Chief of the Imperial General Staff inthe Great Warby David R. Woodward ...................... 18

Fighting the Bolsheviks: The Russian WarMemoir of Private First Class DonaldE. Carey, U.S. Army, 1918-1919by Neil G. Carey, ed. .......................... 13

A History of the Canadian ArmyVeterinary Corps in the Great WorldWar, 1914-1919by Cecil French ................................. 12

No Place to Run: The Canadian Corpsand Gas Warfare in the First WorldWarby Tim Cook ..................................... 15

The Tanks at Flers: An Account of theFirst Use of Tanks in War at theBattle of Flers-Courcelette, TheSomme, 15th September 1916by Trevor Pidgeon ............................. 19

War by Revolution: Germany and GreatBritain in the Middle East in the Eraof World War Iby Donald M. McKale ........................ 17

1939-1945

The Battle of the Atlantic and SignalsIntelligence: U-Boat Situations andTrends, 1941-1945by David Syrett ................................. 18

HX72: The First Convoy to Dieby David O’Brien ................................ 8

Hellions of the Deep: The Developmentof American Torpedoes inWorld War IIby Robert Gannon ............................. 14

The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland,1944-1945by Henri A. van der Zee .................... 17

Never Leave Your Head Uncovered: ACanadian Nursing Sister inWorld War IIby Doris V. Carter ............................. 12

Of Luck and War: From Squeegee Kid toBomber Pilot in World War IIby Les Morrison ............................... 13

Ortona: Canada’s Epic WorldWar II Battleby Mark Zuehlke ............................... 9

Book ReviewSupplement Editor

Jonathan F. Vance

Contributing ReviewersCharles Aziz

René ChartrandBrendan J. Dominick

Christopher EvansAlan Flecker

Laura FrenièreDoug GatesSusan LeeJim Lotz

David RozanskiJeffrey Stephaniuk

Cathy TerschJonathan F. Vance

Lee WindsorJim Woycke

Our Spirit Unbroken: Memoirs of aPrisoner of Warby Andrew B. Cox ............................. 13

Remember: Helen’s Storyby Sandra Oancia ............................. 16

Top Secret Tales of World War IIby William B. Breuer ......................... 12

When I Was a German: An Englishwomanin Nazi Germanyby Christabel Bielenberg .................... 16

Women Overseas: Memoirs of theCanadian Red Cross Corps (OverseasDetachment)by Frances Martin Day, Phyllis Spence,and Barbara Ladouceur, eds. ........... 16

Post-1945

The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundyand William Bundy, Brothersin Armsby Kai Bird ....................................... 11

Ungainly, loud, and capable of onlya slow, grinding movement, thetank made its debut and sparked arevolution in how warfare wasconducted.

Combining exhaustive researchand unbridled enthusiasm for hissubject, Trevor Pidgeon hasproduced a truly remarkablehistory of, and guide to, the firstuse of tanks in battle. The Tanksat Flers features many colour

photographs including aerial shotsand detailed studies of survivingtanks. The twelve fold-out mapsallow the reader to chart the courseof the armoured attack throughoutthe entire battle. In fact, this twobook set also serves as tour guide,making it an indispensablecompanion to any battlefield tourof the Somme.

The text is supplemented withnumerous illustrations, diagrams

and reproduced primarydocuments such as telegrams andmessage logs, imparting the closestfeeling possible of ‘being there.’ Ofspecial note is the attention paid tothe role of tanks with the Canadian2nd Infantry Division.

If armoured warfare is one ofyour interests, you owe it to yourselfto pick up The Tanks at Flers.

CE

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book review supplement spring 2000

Documents