Recommended Readings and Discussion Points

 

NB: Sources in Comic Sans MS are well worth a look in the time before the trip.

Our primary aim is to introduce students to some of the strategic, operational and tactical problems faced by soldiers during the First and Second World Wars. In addition, we want to study how the nations involved in the fighting constructed a memory of these conflicts through museums, monuments and cemeteries.

Some of these sources will be familiar to you, but they should be readily accessible in university or public libraries, as well as in book stores or online. A complete index of Canadian Military History is available on the CMH website. (canadianmilitaryhistory.com)

We expect that you will come prepared each day to discuss a wide variety of issues relating to Canada’s role in the First and Second World Wars. The list below is not exhaustive, but it is important to read at least one or two works for each of the days we're on the ground. In other words, this is a graduate seminar on Canadian military history. Come prepared to contribute.

 

The First World War

 

G.W.L. Nicholson, The History of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1918 (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1965)

 

Nicholson, Histoire officielle de la participation de l'Armée canadienne à la Première Guerre mondiale: Le Corps expéditionnaire canadien, 1914-1919

 

Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory

 

Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914-1918

 

David Mackenzie (editor), Canada and the First World War

 

Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory

 

Jonathan Vance, Death so Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War

 

Denis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War

 

Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning

 

Jay Winter, "Historical Remembrance in the Twenty-First Century," The Annals Of The American Academy Of Political And Social Science, vol. 617, no. 1, pp. 6-13, May 2008

 

Serge Bernier, The Royale 22e Regiment 1914-1999 (Montreal: Art Global, 2000)

 

Jean-Pierre Gagnon, Le 22e Bataillon (Ottawa/Quebec: Les Presses de l'Universite Laval en collaboration avec le Ministere de la Defense Nationale et le Centre d'edition du gouvernement du Canada, 1986)

 

Tremblay, Thomas-Louis. Journal de guerre 1915-1919. Présenté par Marcelle Cinq-Mars. Athéna éditions, 2006.

Marcelle Cinq-Mars, L'Écho du Front, Athéna, 2008

 

The Somme, 1 July 1916-18 November 1916

 

Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme

 

John Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire: Myths and Anti-Myths of War, 1861-1945

 

John Keegan, “The Somme” The Face of Battle.

 

            John Terraine’s chapters in the Smoke and the Fire are worth contemplating as we explore the Somme. 1 July 1916 was (to that time) the single worst day for British arms. Across a 14 mile front, the British lost almost 60,000 casualties, including 23,000 dead. On the first day. Included in that number were the Newfoundland Regiment, who faced the second highest rate of casualties on 1 July 1916. How do the Newfoundland and Canadian governments interpret this loss?

 

The Battle of the Somme continued until 18 November 1916, costing hundreds of thousands of Allied casualties, including some 24,000 Canadians who fought in such places as Courcelette and Regina Trench.

 

  • What was the strategic situation in the early summer of 1916?

 

  • Were there alternatives to the Somme offensive?

 

  • Why were there so many losses on 1 July 1916?

 

  • Why did the battle continue into November? What innovations or ‘lessons’ were learned on this battlefield?

 

  • As the year 1916 ended, why did Germany, France and Britain fail to agree to the peace proposals of December 1916? (In other words, why did the war continue?)

 

Vimy Ridge, 9-12 April 1917

 

Hayes, Bechthold, Iarocci (eds.) Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment (Waterloo: WLU Press, 2007)

 

            As we begin at Canada’s impressive national shrine at Vimy Ridge, we should pause and ask about the origins of the First World War. How have historians understood that debate since 1914? (Sheffield has some intriguing answers to this)

 

Why was Canada involved in the First World War, and how did Canadians understand the war through 1916 and 1917, when the Nivelle Offensive was launched?

 

Why was Vimy Ridge so tactically important?

 

Finally, we should discuss the memory constructed at Vimy Ridge. How did it become synonymous with Canadian nationhood? How did the memory of Vimy Ridge emerge from the battlefield itself?

 

The Final Hundred Days, 8 August-11 November 1918

 

Shane Schreiber, Shock Army of the British Empire: The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the Great War (Westport: Praeger, 1997)

 

The Second World War

 

General

 

C.P. Stacey, Histoire officielle de la participation de l'Armée canadienne à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Vol I Six années de guerre (Ottawa: 1956)

 

C.P. Stacey, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, volume I, Six Years of War, The Army in Canada, Britain and the Pacific (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1957)

 

C.P. Stacey, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, volume III: The Victory Campaign, Operations in North-West Europe, 1944-1945 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1960)

W.A.B. Douglas and Brereton Greenhous, Out of the Shadows, Canada and the Second World War. (1977, 1995)

 

Terry Copp, A Nation at War, 1939-1945, Essays from Legion Magazine (Waterloo: LCMSDS, 2004)

 

Terry Copp, Fields of Fire: The Canadians at Normandy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003)

 

Carlo D'Este, Decision In Normandy (1983)

 

Various Readings from Canadian Military History (CMH)

 

Wilfred I. Smith, Code Word CANLOAN (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992)

 

W.A.B. Douglas, Roger Sarty and Michael Whitby, A Blue Water Navy: The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War, 1943-1945, Volume II, Part 2. (St. Catharines: Vanwell Publishing Limited, 2007), Chapter 17.

Serge Durflinger, Fighting From Home: The Second World War in Verdun, Quebec (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006)

 

Dieppe, 19 August 1942

 

Students may be asked to take part in a decision-making exercise on the Dieppe raid, so we should contemplate these questions as we walk Blue, Red, White and Green Beaches. I’ve included fairly a long list here. Be selective.

· What was the purpose of the raid?

  • Why Dieppe?

 

  • Why the Canadians?

 

  • What was the significance of the various changes to the original plan, codenamed “Rutter”?

 

  • What were the “lessons” of Dieppe?

 

The work by Henshaw is sensible, but the debate he and Villa have had in CHR is also worth exploring.

Balzer, Timothy. ""In Case the Raid is Unsuccessful . . .": Selling Dieppe to Canadians." Canadian Historical Review [Canada] 87, no. 3 (2006): 409-430.

Dickson, Paul. "The Tragedy at Puys." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 18, no. 2 (2006): 70-80.

Drolet, Gilbert. "Dieppe: 1942-1992. A Tribute." Canadian Defence Quarterly [Canada] 22, no. 1 (1992): 38-42.

Franks, Norman L. R. Greatest Air Battle: Dieppe, 19th August, 1942. London: W. Kimber, 1979.

Greenhous, Brereton. Dieppe, Dieppe. [MontreLal]: Art Global, 1993.

Henry, Hugh G. "The Calgary Tanks at Dieppe." Canadian Military History [Canada] 4, no. 1 (1995): 61-74.

Henshaw, Peter J. "The Dieppe Raid: A Product of Misplaced Canadian Nationalism?" Canadian Historical Review [Canada] 77, no. 2 (1996): 250-266.

———. "The British Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Preparation of the Dieppe Raid, March-August 1942: Did Mountbatten really Evade the Committee's Authority?" War in History [Great Britain] 1, no. 2 (1994): 197-214. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=9917599&Fmt=3&clientId=16746&RQT=309&VName=PQD

———. "The Dieppe Raid: The Quest for Action for all the Wrong Reasons." Queen's Quarterly [Canada] 101, no. 1 (1994): 103-115.

Hunter, T. Murray. Canada at Dieppe. Canadian War Museum Historical Publication ; no. 17; Canadian War Museum Historical Publication. [Ottawa]: Balmuir, 1982.

Leasor, James. Green Beach. New York: Morrow, 1975.

Robertson, Terence. Dieppe: The Shame and the Glory. Boston: Little, 19uu.

Thompson, R. W. (Reginald William). Dieppe at Dawn : The Story of the Dieppe Raid, 19 August 1942. London: White Lion Publishers, 1972.

Villa, Brian Loring. Unauthorized Action : Mountbatten and the Dieppe Raid. Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Edmondson, John S. and R. Douglas Edmondson. "Memories and Reflections on the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942." Canadian Military History [Canada] 13, no. 4 (2004): 47-61.

Villa, Brian Loring and Peter J. Henshaw. "The Dieppe Raid Debate." Canadian Historical Review [Canada] 79, no. 2 (1998): 304-315.

Normandy

 

 

            Central to our understanding of the Canadian performance in the Normandy campaign is the verdict of C.P. Stacey, who published the third volume of the Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War in 1960. In that volume, (“the Victory Campaign”) Stacey offered a generally negative assessment of the Allied soldiers’ performance in general, and of the Canadians specifically. Stacey reflected the prevailing opinion that the German armies in Normandy were far superior to their Allied opponents: “Man for man and unit for unit, it cannot be said that it was by tactical superiority that we won the Battle of Normandy.”(Stacey, 274) Stacey concluded that Canadian inexperience showed, particularly within its regimental officer corps: “There still remained, [Stacey concluded] . . .that proportion of officers who were not fully competent for their appointments, and whose inadequacy appeared in action and sometimes had serious consequences.” (Stacey, 275) Stacey quotes Charles Foulkes, who commanded 2 Canadian Infantry Division in Normandy to reinforce German opinion: “When we went into battle at Falaise and Caen we found that when we bumped into battle-experienced German troops we were no match for them. We could not have been successful had it not been for our air and artillery support.”(Stacey, 276) Stacey notes in closing that the 12th SS Panzer Division, (that was largely destroyed by the Canadians) “contrived to get more out of their training than we did. Perhaps their attitude towards such matters was less casual than ours.”(Stacey, 277)

 

Stacey still remains the orthodox opinion, repeated by American and British historians, but in recent years, the Stacey view has come under criticism. In 1991, John A. English published The Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign: A Study of Failure in High Command (1991) in which he argued that Canadian generals (except Guy Simonds) were to blame for what he regards as the poor performance of First Canadian Army in that summer of 1944. English takes particular aim at Foulkes for his handling of the 2nd Division in Atlantic and Spring: “It was [Foulkes’] overly complex plan and insistence on breaking up brigades, a practice Montgomery disdained as they were trained to work together, that aggravated the situation in “Spring.”(307)

 

If there is one book worth reading and bringing along on the tour, it is Terry Copp, Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy (Toronto: UTP, 2003). In typical fashion, Copp attempts to write a new balance sheet of the Normandy campaign. He argues that, from the first landings on Juno to the very end of the battle in August, the Canadians had little to apologize for. He argues “that the Canadians and the rest of 21 Army Group fought a highly successful campaign that required flexibility and improvisation.”(31)

 

Admittedly, your tour leaders are students of Terry Copp. But that doesn’t mean that you should agree with his viewpoint. Nevertheless, Copp’s book should be required reading on this tour.

 

What follows is a brief commentary and suggested readings for each of the days we’re in Normandy.

 

 D-Day

 

            Our first stops near the Orne canal will let us examine the airborne component of the Normandy landings on the invasion’s left flank. Here we can explore the famous Pegasus bridge, captured by elements of the British 6th Airborne Division in the early morning of 5-6 June 1944. Also landing that morning was the 1st Canadian Airborne Regiment. We know far too little of this unit, but Bernd Horne’s work is a good start.

 

Recommended:

 

Horn, Bernd and Michael, Wyczynski, Michel, “A Most Irrevocable Step: Canadian Paratroopers on D-Day: the First 24 Hours,” Canadian Military History, 13, No. 3 (2004): 14-32

 

Juno Beach

 

Our day on the beaches begins at St. Aubin-Sur-Mer where the 48th Royal Marine Commando will mark their contribution to the Normandy landings.

 

We will be exploring each of the Canadian beaches at Juno. Fields of Fire (FOF) offers a great overview, but some works will give special insights into individual beaches:

 

St. Aubin Sur Mer

 

    Marc Milner, D-Day to Carpiquet: The North Shore Regiment and the Liberation of Europe. The New Brunswick Military Heritage Series, Volume 9. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions/New Brunswick Military History Project, 2007.

 

Marc and Matt Symes have a terrific website that shows the North Shores landing at St. Aubin. http://www.symplicity.ca/nsr/

 

    This is a great overview of a unit that is too often overlooked, fighting on the left side of Juno Beach.

 

Bernieres-Sur-Mer

 

    Charlie Martin, Battle Diary. Martin was a Company Sergeant-Major with the Queen's Own Rifles from Toronto. His description of the touch-down at Bernieres is best considered on that beach.

 

Courseulles-Sur-Mer

 

    Terry Copp and Gordon Brown's Look to your Front . . . Regina Rifles: A Regiment at War: 1944-1945, gives a gripping account of how Brown's men survived the attack at "Strongpoint Courseulles."

 

See also Charles John Cooke, RNVR, “Landing on Juno Beach, 6 June 1944: The View From LCT 721,” Canadian Military History, 13, No. 3 (2004): 75-78.

 

 Murder at the Abbaye D'Ardennes

On this day to remember the Canadians murdered in Normandy, we should consult Howard Margolian’s Conduct Unbecoming: The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners in Normandy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

 

Why were the executions of Canadian soldiers considered a war crime?

 

Omaha Beach

We will start at the Pointe Du Hoc before exploring the American experience at Omaha Beach, where the 1st and 29th US Divisions of US V Corps went ashore against two German divisions, not the one division that intelligence predicted. The result was nearly 2000 fatal casualties.

 

Recommended: Adrian R. Lewis, “The Failure of Allied Planning and Doctrine for Operation Overlord: The Case of Minefield and Obstacle Clearance,”

The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 4. (Oct., 1998), pp. 787-807.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-3718%28199810%2962%3A4%3C787%3ATFOAPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5

 

Good footage of the American assault is found on History.com in the Video Gallery. Search under Omaha.

 

We should also consider the very different messages of the German cemetery at La Cambe and the American cemetery at Omaha Beach. What memories of the war do these two countries seek to nurture in these places? Eric McGeer’s article “Words of Valediction and Remembrance: The Beny-Sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, Normandy France,” Canadian Military History, 13, No. 3 (2004): 33-48.

 

 

The Normandy Battles of June/July 1944 

We will examine the battles of the 7th and 9th brigades as they fought to secure the rail line between Caen and Bayeux. Two battles, two different results. We will divide the group into syndicates assigned to the tasks of each battalion in the 9th brigade. Your task will be to develop a plan based on the resources that were available to the soldiers at the time. After a chance to ‘recce’ the ground, each syndicate will have a chance to revise and then present the plan to the group.

 

 

The battles of Le Mesnil Patry, and Operations Windsor and Charnwood are too little known. Donald Graves’ account of the Le Mesnil Patry from his Fighting for Canada: Seven Battles, 1758-1945 (Robin Brass Studios, 2000) is well worth examining. So too is Milner’s account of the North Shores’ ordeal fighting for Carpiquet airfield. On Charnwood, read Copp’s Fields of Fire, Chapter 4.

 

 

July/August 1944

 

We will begin at Point 67 south of Caen to survey the ground and discuss the costly battles of late July and early August along the Verrieres ridge.

 

We may organize another TEWT to understand how Operation Spring came to be such a costly day for Canadian troops.

 

The War Diary of the Royal Highland Regiment of Canada (The Black Watch) for Friday, 25 July 1944 is sobering reading. The War Diaries are available on the Regimental website at: http://www.blackwatchcanada.com/en/links.htm

 

George Blackburn was a Forward Artillery Officer (FOO) for the 2nd Division. The second of his three-volume memoirs is The Guns of Normandy: A Soldiers’ Eye View, France 1944 (Toronto: 1995) is well worth examining.

 

 

Over the next few days, we will examine closely the Canadian involvement in Operations Totalize and Tractable and the debate over the closing of the Falaise pocket. Were the Canadians too slow to exploit south towards Falaise?

 

Denis and Shelagh Whitaker’s book, Victory at Falaise: The Soldiers’ Story (Toronto: 2000) also provides an excellent view from the trenches during that summer.

 

Jack English’s criticisms of Operation Totalize in The Canadian Army in Normandy, are also worth reading.

 

Available online is Jody Perrun’s “Best-Laid Plans: Guy Simonds and Operation Totalize, 7-10 August 1944,” The Journal of Military History 67 (January 2003): 137-173. I’m not sure if this link will work outside of my University system. Let me know. http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_military_history/v067/67.1perrun.pdf

 

John Buckley’s British Armour in the Normandy Campaign, 1944 (Frank Cass, 2004) provides an important discussion of the challenges faced by the Allies.