On The Battlefields Two World Wars That Shaped A Nation Canada At

On The Battlefields Two World Wars That Shaped A Nation Canada At

Michael Benedict
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Modern-day war reportage wasn't invented in a network boardroom. On the Battlefields, a collection of stories gleaned from Maclean's, takes the reader back to a time before armed conflict seemed staged for CNN cameras. "Tank Battle" and "They Kill U-Boats" explore the logistics of war with you-are-there realism. "Canada's Fighting Airmen" and "Mark Brown, Fighter Pilot" profile war heroes, while "The Black Hole of Germany" and "Three Against Death" are tales of survival. The Battle of Vimy Ridge is the subject of W.W. Murray's "Vimy V.C.'s" and Will R. Bird's "What Price Vimy?" "Unheeded Warning" recounts a series of mistakes that could have prevented hundreds of deaths from mustard gas and "The Truth About the War" responds to American misinformation about the involvement of British Empire troops during World War I. Some of the stories come from professional journalists, others from servicemen. Taken collectively, the pieces--all from the two world wars--emphasize the Canadian contribution to the war effort, and how the Canadians were perceived (during the World War II they were called "victory troops" by the English).

The tone in some of the World War II pieces recalls old newsreel narration. "The spirit of the Canadians overseas is best expressed in a three word quotation: 'We want action!'" writes Wallace Reyburn in "Over There." Much of the prose is newsy and somewhat drab, but there is poetry too. In Robert E. Coffman's "Three Against Death," the fighter pilot describes the conditions he and two other downed airmen encounter as they navigate icy waters to the Greenland shore: "All this clash and movement [of the ice] filled the night with an uproar like nothing on earth, but there were moments of stillness like the calm of a crowded room when all the voices happen to stop together. In these moments there was a peculiar rustle and tinkle all over the place. The skin of the sea was freezing lightly and the ice crystals whispered together like fragments of thin glass." On the Battlefields is a valuable reminder both of Canadian lives lost (and saved) and the intrepid pioneers who laid the groundwork for today's more glamorous frontline journalists. --Shawn Conner