Digital Commons Network^™

The Rise And Fall Of Canadian Military Assistance In The Developing World, 1952–1971, Greg Donaghy

Canadian Military History

Since the end of the Second World War, military assistance has emerged as an important instrument of international diplomacy. Initially employed by the United States in Europe, Latin America and Asia for a variety of economic and political reasons in the mid-1940s, by the end of the decade American military assistance had been fashioned into a coherent program “whose principal goal was the containment of Communist expansion.” By the mid-1950s, both the Soviet Union and Communist China had responded with their own assistance programs designed to woo the developing states of Asia and Africa. As Britain and France dissolved their …

The Calgary Tanks At Dieppe, Hugh G. Henry

Canadian Military History

Since 1942 the Dieppe Raid has been the subject of much controversy and debate concerning its political and military background, aims, plans, execution and supposed “lessons learned.” Although historians have documented their arguments well, they have not examined accurately or in any detail the operations of The Calgary Regiment (Tank), 14 Canadian Army Tank Regiment (14 CATR), Canadian Armoured Corps. Some misunderstandings and myths concerning the tanks and men, their performance and conditions affecting their actions, must be dispelled. At this point it is worth noting that not only was 14 CATR the first Canadian armoured unit ever to go …

The Battle Of Lundy’S Lane: On The Niagara In 1814 By Donald E. Graves [Review], Barry Gough

Canadian Military History

Review of Donald E. Graves, The Battle of Lundy's Lane: On the Niagara in 1814. Baltimore, MD: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1993.

True Patriot: The Life Of Brooke Claxton, 1898–1960 By David Jay Bercuson [Review], David A. Lenarcic

Canadian Military History

Review of David Bercuson, True Patriot: The Life of Brooke Claxton, 1898-1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.

A Loss Of The Hmcs Clayoquot, Douglas M. Mclean

Canadian Military History

The torpedo struck without warning. HMCS Clayoquot was returning from an anti-submarine sweep in the approaches to Halifax harbour when its stern rose into the air, mangled by the detonation of a German T-5 acoustic homing torpedo. The men aboard felt two concussions, the second likely being depth charges stored on Clayoquot’s stern set off by the torpedo. Whatever the details, the explosions were devastating for the small Bangor class minesweeper. A grainy photograph of the doomed ship shows the stern blasted vertical, the ship listing to starboard. Clayoquot lasted barely ten minutes after being hit, just long enough …

Communications In The Canadian Corps, 1915–1918: Wartime Technological Progress Revisited, Bill Rawling

Canadian Military History

Warfare has, for millenia, been a rich source of myth and legend, and one of the main reasons many historians proclaim Herodotus to be the first to ply their trade is because, at least, he discounted divine intervention as the prime explanation for the ebb and flow of battle. Myths, however, persist to this day, one of the most popular in our industrialized culture being a common belief that technological development accelerates in wartime. In many cases this might be true; the First World War, for example, saw much innovation (this author hesitates to use the word “progress”) in the …

The Suicide Battalion By James L. Mcwilliams And R. James Steel [Review], A.M.J. Hyatt

Canadian Military History

Review of James L. McWilliams and R. James Steel, The Suicide Battalion. St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell Publishing, 1993.

War Through The Ages, Robert Vogel

Canadian Military History

Review of John Keegan, A History of Warfare. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

Intelligence Secrets, David Stafford

Canadian Military History

Review of James Rusbridger, Betrayal at Pearl Harbour: How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II and Bradley Smith Eric Nave: The Ultra-Magic Deals and the Most Secret Special Relationship, 1940-1946

Encounter Over Korea, Andy Mackenzie

Canadian Military History

No abstract provided.

A Worm’S Eye View: The 1/4 Koyli In Normandy, Lewis Keeble

Canadian Military History

No abstract provided.

Canadian Infantry: Besting The Best, Gil Drolet

Canadian Military History

Review of Terry Copp, The Brigade: The Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade, 1939-1945. Stoney Creek, ON: Fortress Publications, 1992.

Technology And The Great War, A.M.J. Hyatt

Canadian Military History

Review of Tim Travers, How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917-1918. London: Routledge

The Canadian Attack At Amiens, 8–11 August 1918, Dean Chappelle

Canadian Military History

By mid-1918, the character of the First World War had changed completely from the relatively static previous three years of battle. In March, the Germans had launched their desperate gamble to win the war in a single massive offensive and had been halted, at great cost to both sides, by June. On 18 July the French, aided by American forces, launched their highly successful counter-attack at Soissons and demonstrated that the German forces were far weaker t h a n the previous year. The opportunity was ripe to strike quickly and in force. This occurred at 4:20 a.m. on the …

Fifth Canadian Armoured Division: Introduction To Battle, William Mcandrew

Canadian Military History

The Canadian government authorized the formation of 1st Canadian Armoured Division (CAD) early in 1941. It organized at Camp Borden in March and, redesignated 5th CAD, sailed for the United Kingdom in the fall. Originally its organization was based on two armoured brigades (each of three regiments, a motor battalion and a support group composed of a field regiment, a Light Anti-Aircraft (LAA) regiment, an anti-tank regiment and an infantry battalion). In light of operational experience with armour in North Africa the organization was subsequently changed; an armoured brigade was changed for one of infantry (three battalions), and the support …

Christmas In Ortona, Italy 1943, S.W. Thomson

Canadian Military History

No abstract provided.

In The Tradition Of Nelson: The Royal Navy In World War Ii, Robert Vogel

Canadian Military History

Review of Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991.

War In The Trenches, A.M.J. Hyatt

Canadian Military History

Review of Bill Rawling, Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914-1918. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.

Victims Of Circumstance: The Execution Of German Deserters By Surrendered German Troops Under Canadian Control In Amsterdam, May 1945, Chris Madsen

Canadian Military History

On the morning of 13 May 1945, five days after the formal capitulation of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, a German military court delivered death sentences on two German naval deserters, Bruno Dorfer and Rainer Beck. The trial occurred in an abandoned Ford assembly plant on the outskirts of Amsterdam, a site used by the Canadian army for the concentration of German naval personnel. Later that same day, a German firing squad, supplied with captured German rifles anda three-ton truck from the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and escorted by Canadian Captain Robert K. Swinton, executed the two German prisoners of war a …

The American Influence On The Canadian Military, 1939–1963, J.L. Granatstein

Canadian Military History

On Armistice Day in 1927, officials of the Canadian and United States governments dedicated a monument at Arlington Cemetery near Washington to commemorate the service of those Americans who had fought with Canadian forces before their country became a belligerent in the Great War. The occasion, stage-managed by Vincent Massey, Canada’s first Minister to the United States, was a glittering ceremony featuring permanent force infantry of the Royal Canadian Regiment and the Royal 22nd Regiment in their British-pattern scarlet tunics, as well as the pipes and drums of the 48th Highlanders, a well-known kilted Toronto militia regiment. Everyone was on …

L’Intervention Militaire À Oka: Stratégie, Communication Et Couverture De La Presse, Claude Beauregard

Canadian Military History

The incidents which occurred in Oka during the summer of 1990 represent the outcome of a situation judged to have been totally unacceptable by the Mohawk community. What was originally to have been an enlargement of a golf course provoked a conflict which ended in the death of a police officer of the Surete du Quebec and intervention of the Canadian Armed Forces; in short, the Oka crisis became a national crisis.

Masters Of The Channel Night: The 10th Destroyer Flotilla’S Victory Off Ile De Batz, 9 June 1944, Michael Whitby

Canadian Military History

It was a dark and somewhat stormy night. In the western English Channel, off the Ile de Batz, twelve destroyers, eight Allied (including two Canadian) and four German, hurtled towards each other at a combined speed of 47 knots. Radar, penetrating the black murk ahead of the Allied ships, detected hostile contacts at ten miles range and the force deployed for action. Minutes later they opened devastating fire upon a startled enemy.

The battle that ensued on the night of 9 June 1944 was the raison d’etre of the 10th Destroyer Flotilla, a destroyer strike force based on Plymouth. When …

Some Reflections On The Teaching Of Military History In Canada, Robert Vogel

Canadian Military History

Military History occupies a somewhat tenuous position in the curricula of Canadian universities. It is most often regarded as a kind of marginal enterprise to be offered by a faculty member who has some side-interest in these matters as a relief from the more serious social, economic and cultural questions with which History is properly concerned. This is, of course, not a new phenomenon. It is, quite to the contrary, a tradition which stretches back to the very beginning of history as an academic discipline in the 19th century. It was particularly the attitude within the British historical profession.

William Drummond And The Battle Of Fort Erie, Donald E. Graves

Canadian Military History

The officers and men of the British army that defended Canada from American invasion during the War of 1812 knew they were “forgotten soldiers.” Fighting in a distant and secondary theatre, far from the gaze of a government and public pre-occupied with events on the continent, especially in Spain, they took a somewhat perverse pride in their status as outcasts. As one quipped about the Duke of Wellington—“thank God he managed to do without us” at Waterloo. But they also took a particular pride in their own local heroes including such men as Gordon of the 1st Regiment of Foot, …

Operations Of 1 Canadian Infantry Divisional Artillery, 24 August-22 September 1944, Lee A. Windsor

Canadian Military History

In January 1944 1st Canadian Infantry Division reverted to command of I Canadian Corps after seven months of campaigning in Sicily and Italy under a British Corps. The story of the division’s resentment toward the level of paperwork foisted on them by H.D.G. Crerar’s untried corps headquarters is legendary. Modern military historians assume this rancour is indicative of a 1914–18 mindset among Second World War Canadian senior officers which prevented them from adapting to the fast–paced nature of modern mechanized warfare in the 1940s.¹ Ironically, much of that “paper–pushing” appears to have contributed to the Canadian Army’s victories over …

Death At Licourt: An Historical And Visual Record Of Five Fatalities In The 1st Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade, 25 March 1918, Cameron Pulsifer

Canadian Military History

No abstract provided.

Relief Amid Chaos: The Story Of Canadian Pows Driving Red Cross, Hugh A. Halliday

Canadian Military History

No abstract provided.

Byng’S And Currie’S Commanders: A Still Untold Story Of The Canadian Corps, Patrick H. Brennan

Canadian Military History

In 1915, the Canadian Corps was little more than a rabble of enthusiastic amateurs. Yet by 1917-18, it had become an accomplished professional fighting force, one characterized by Denis Winter as “much the most effective unit in the BEF” and by Shane Schreiber as “the shock army of the British Empire.” While Canadian military historians have studied this evolution extensively few have examined the decisive element in the transformation—the development of a cadre of proficient senior combat officers. No one questions Currie’s status as Canada’s best fighting general, but of the supporting team he and his predecessor, General Byng, assembled …

A Cape Bretoner At War: Letters From The Front 1914-1919, Brian Tennyson

Canadian Military History

No abstract provided.

Colour Of War: Works On Paper From The Canadian War Musuem, 1914 To 1945, Laura Brandon

Canadian Military History

Eighty percent of the Canadian War Museum’s 13,000 works of art are on paper, in the form of drawings, prints and watercolours. They date from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day, recording 250 years of Canadian military history.

The paintings presented in the exhibition Colours of War demonstrate the quality of work completed in watercolour during the First and Second World Wars, as well as the variety of subjects. Artists from Canada, Britain, and Belgium approached war in many different ways, often finding a tragic beauty in the human and material destruction they witnessed. Many were officially commissioned war …