Tim Cook’s myth-busting Shock Troops revisits Canada’s Great War
Canadians were the elite fighting force of the second half of the First World War
“It might be a surprise to some Canadians to find out that we had… perhaps the elite fighting force on the Western Front in the First World War” says Tim Cook Great War historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa Carleton University professor and author of At the Sharp End and Shock Troops a two-volume history of the Canadian First World War fighting experience. His exhaustively researched study is the first of its kind in decades. It’s a timely release with this year being the 90th anniversary of the war’s end. As Remembrance Day 2008 approaches the release of Paul Gross’s Passchendaele and recent books like Joseph Bowden’s Three Day Road have stirred Canadians’ interest in their nation’s war history. Cook acknowledges that the expert killing abilities of our grandfathers sometimes sits uneasily with a nation that sees its military role as that of peacekeeper. The peacekeeping role is accurate he says but we’ve also fought six wars in the 20th century and lost 110000 dead over two world wars. “We are a nation that has at times when we have believed in it we have fought and we have fought to extreme lengths” he says. “You have to acknowledge that the Canadians are very very good” Cook says of the 600000-man Canadian force that fought in the Great War. “They have good commanders they have good soldiers they have a good system of fighting they understand the limitations of trench warfare and fighting against the enemy lines. And in battle after battle the Canadians succeed.” Success however was often relative. Front-line gains were made at staggering human cost. “Sometimes they suffer horrendous casualties but everyone when you’re winning on the Western Front you’re losing” says Cook. At the Sharp End chronicles the first part of the war in which the Canadians became intimately acquainted with modern industrial warfare — getting chewed up in a hail of artillery and machine gun fire in the muddy trenches that ran through southwest Belgium and northern France. The toll was heavy but the Canadians learned quickly. Contrary to popular myth says Cook every day of the war was not like the first day of the Somme that is lines of men walking upright across no man’s land into withering enemy fire. The truth is that the Canadian force evolved a sophisticated attack doctrine involving the integration of artillery and infantry tanks motor machine guns chemical warfare and tactical air power. “It’s a different view of the war than most people are thinking or what they’ve maybe been taught” says Cook. “We’re fighting in places like Second Ypres Festubert St. Eloi and on the Somme. But there is a learning process that goes on in the war and that’s not always known by most Canadians. There’s an evolution there. They’re constantly trying to figure out how do they survive? How do they overcome the German defences which of course get better and better as the war gets on — more barbed wire more machine guns.” Shock Troops details the relative invincibility of Canadian forces from 1917 to the war’s end. There’s spectacular and hard-earned victories at Vimy and Passchendaele but Cook also highlights pivotal battles he says are largely forgotten or ignored in Canadian history. Hill 70 was a key win in which the Canadians lost 10000 men while inflicting 25000 casualties on the Germans. As well there’s the Hundred Days the drive to the end of the war in which the Canadians were instrumental. “It’s the key point in the war where the Canadians are the shock troops” explains Cook. “They’re being thrown into the most difficult battles and they’re succeeding.” Through the two books Cook contextualizes the Canadian fight and the Canadians’ place within the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) while focusing on “the guy at the sharp end.” Illustrating the multiple levels of the war he balances the view from the top (that of the generals) with that of the fighting troops focusing on how they coped survived and fought. “If you just try and focus on what [BEF commander-in-chief] Sir Douglas Haig is thinking then you forget that his armies are made up of hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals and what they think too. I try to link those two.” Perhaps ironically as the last living Canadian Great War veteran 108-year-old John Babcock lives out his remaining days Cook says Canadians are more attuned to our war history than ever. “We’re on the razor’s edge of lived memory and about to fall into history” he says. The cultural and political importance of the war continues to sink in. “It’s the war that because of our sacrifices we really moved to full nationhood. And it’s a war that we still grieve over to some degree — the terrible losses of over 60000 dead. It’s a war because of its enormity and the enormous nature of its triumph and tragedies that we’re not going to forget anytime soon.”
