THE SOMME AND TOLKIEN -- A POINT OF VIEW
By Lisa Jardine, BBC News Magazone.

Ninety years ago, Allied commanders launched the World War I offensive lastingly remembered as the Battle of the Somme. At 7.30am on 1 July, 1916, officers blew their whistles to signal the start of the attack. As 11 British divisions clambered out of their trenches and walked slowly towards the enemy lines, German machine guns opened fire, causing wholesale carnage. The first day of that battle was the bloodiest in the whole history of the British Army. By the end of the day, the British had suffered 60,000 casualties; almost 20,000 were dead, including 60% of all the officers involved.

One of those who survived that horrific first assault, and who endured the prolonged ghastliness of the months of fighting that followed, was the young JRR Tolkien.

The Allied plan had been to launch a coordinated Anglo-French assault. The British would attack along a 15-mile front north of the meandering river Somme. Five French divisions would attack along an eight-mile front through rolling farmland south of the Somme. To ensure a rapid advance with minimal resistance, Allied artillery had been pounding German lines for a week beforehand, firing over a million and a half shells at the enemy.

British soldiers recalled later how throughout the night before the battle, the entire length of the English trenches shuddered and vibrated from the reverberating shock waves of uninterrupted big gun bombardment of the enemy lines.

The saturation bombardment was supposed to annihilate the opposing forces, leaving their positions undefended. Cavalry units would then pour through to pursue the fleeing Germans. But open preparations for the assault gave clear advance warning of an impending attack, and German troops simply moved into underground concrete bunkers and waited.

Almost five months later, the Allies had advanced only five miles, at a cost of over half a million lives. Early in 1917, the Germans fell back from their positions for strategic reasons. Their withdrawal made a mockery of the months of bitter battle and appalling loss of life. It had all been for 'a few acres of mud'.
Intended to be a decisive breakthrough, the Battle of the Somme instead became a byword for futile and indiscriminate slaughter.
At the Somme, the new, devastatingly efficient weapons of mass destruction -the tank, mustard-gas and the machine gun - marked the beginning of mechanised warfare on a huge scale. War would never be the same again.
The poet Wilfred Owen was killed in the final week of World War I at the age of 25. His poems offered searing testimony to the way this new kind of war ended any possibility of romanticising personal sacrifice, or elevating the individual in combat to the status of hero.

For me, his Anthem for Doomed Youth captures better than any military history an absolute disenchantment, no matter how "good and true" the cause:

"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns?
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle?
Can patter out their hasty orisons."

A more mundane kind of eye-witness account - but as compelling - comes from an extraordinary collection of audio-recordings of the recollections of ordinary serving soldiers, to be found on the Imperial War Museum website as part of a virtual Somme commemoration.
Pte Don Murray, for instance, recalls how, as he and his comrades walked towards the enemy lines, the Germans appeared from their bunkers: "They just wound up their guns on automatic and fired... and of course they just mowed us down."
And he goes on to evoke the sense of numbing isolation, still vivid to him all those years later, he says: "And it seemed to me eventually there was just one man left, I couldn't see anybody at all, all I could see was men lying dead, men screaming... and I thought what can I do, I was just alone in a hell of fire and smoke and stink."

Tolkien had just graduated from Oxford with a first-class degree in literature when he saw his first active service at the Somme. From July 1916 until he was invalided out with trench fever at the end of October, he experienced the full relentless ghastliness of day after day of trench life under fire - the discomfort, the cold, the mud, the lice, the fear, the unspeakable horrors witnessed.

He had taken comfort from the fact that he was fighting alongside his three oldest and dearest friends from his school-days - a quartet of gifted would-be-poets who hoped to become outstanding literary men. But by November, two of those friends were dead.

Tolkien and the one other surviving member of their "club" were never able to rebuild a closeness shattered by the enormity of what had occurred - by the sense of total loss, the obliteration of the band of friends almost before their creative lives had begun.

Imagination is a uniquely human attribute. Freely exercised, it allows each of us to transform our everyday experience, elevating it into something more consolingly meaningful. How, then, does the human imagination cope with trauma of the kind Tolkien and his fellow-soldiers experienced in 1916?

We might expect those months of unremitting horror in the trenches of the Somme to have fed into, and coloured, the ferocious battles and scenes of slaughter in Tolkien's three-part "Lord of the Rings" (begun in the 1930s), or in "The Fall of Gondolin" which he began writing while convalescing in the spring of 1917.

War: first, one hopes to win;
then one expects the enemy to lose;
then one is satisfied that he too is suffering;
in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
--Karl Kraus

BREAKER MORANT DID NOT SAY,

“SHOOT STRAIGHT, YOU BASTARDS!”

The movie, “Breaker Morant” is generally an excellent portrayal of the 1902 contemporary atmosphere in South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War. However, it distorts several historical events. Though Lt. Harry “Breaker” Morant was a gallant soldier in real life, there is no escaping the reality that Morant was guilty of murder as charged, and he wrote a confession to that effect the night before his death.
Among other distortions, is the movie’s melodramatic portrayal of the moments before his execution, when the actor has Morant shout at the firing-squad, “Shoot straight, you bastards!”
The facts of Morant’s last moments were described in a letter written at the time by an Australian eye-witness, Mr. J. H. Morrow, warder of the Pretoria Gaol, with reference to the shooting of Lieutenant Morant and Handcock. The letter was mailed to a mutual friend, dated March 1, 1902, and published in an Adelaide newspaper. The letter states :-
"Dear George, I write these few lines to you on behalf of Lieutenant H. H. Morant, who was shot here on February 27, two days ago, by order of court-martial. His last word was that I should write and tell you that there were four officers -- one South Australian, one Victorian, one New South Welshman, and one New Zealander, all Australians -- concerned. The South Australian and the New South Welshman were shot, and the others were transported [to prison]."
"It is quite a mystery here regarding the deed. All I know is that they shot 38 Boers, and there are rumours circulating that these Boers surrendered to them. Morant told me that he was guilty of shooting the Boers because they shot his captain.”
“I was the warder who was in charge of the officers the last week they had on earth, and they faced their doom as brave as men could do. Everyone said it was a pity to shoot two such brave men. Morant came out here with the South Australian Mounted Rifles with which you and I enlisted. Morant got a commission with the Bushveldt Carbineers, and I went on the railway here, and I was only transferred to this prison about six weeks ago. I was not here when they came here.
They had been in prison at Pietersburg for four months, and then they were transferred to Pretoria, where sentence was passed upon them. They were shot next morning at 6 o'clock, and were buried at 5 o'clock in the evening. There were a large number of Australians at the funeral; no less than 30 of them were Australian officers. I felt it very much.”
“The only reply given by the two men when asked if they were ready was, 'Yes, where is your shooting party?” and the men marched out hand in hand. The firing party went to blindfold the men, but Morant said, 'Take this thing off,” and pulled the handkerchief off. As the two sat in the chair awaiting death Morant remarked, 'Be sure and make a good job of it.' Morant folded his arms across his chest and looked them straight in the face. The firing party fired, and Morant got all in the left side, and died at once. With his arms folded and his eyes open you would have thought he was alive."
[See other passing reference in “KRUGER’S GOLD: A novel of the Anglo-Boer War.”]
http://www.amazon.com/Krugers-Gold-Novel-Anglo-Boer-War/dp/0738865850

Military history books, and related writings in general, still keep generally high standards of literacy and clarity. But even in this genre, the discerning reader is starting to notice lapses in language.
Possibly more depressing, there is also a steady decline of public interest in the entire subject. One can repeat until blue in the face the wise old saw, "A nation ignorant of its history is doomed to repeat it."
Here is one likely cause of the circumstance:
Historian Jack Granatstein, an outspoken critic of the public school system, said there is no doubt in his mind that "standards have collapsed."
After becoming director of the Canadian War Museum, Mr. Granatstein said one of the reasons he left his long-time teaching position at York University was that "the students were so depressingly bad."
"They could not write a sentence, they could not read or understand complex things, they had lost the ability to speak in sentences, and... on top of that, they had no knowledge of history," said Mr. Granatstein, author of his controversial book, Who Killed Canadian History? (HarperCollins).
He blames the schools and teachers in large measure. "They could all use a computer," he said of his former students at YorkU, "Perhaps they had some skills I didn't know about."

 

“KRUGER’S GOLD” EXPOSES UNPALATABLE FACTS ABOUT

BOTH SIDES IN THE
ANGLO-BOER WAR.

In 1902, just as in 2010, guerrilla fighters challenged the might of the pre-eminent world power. A 100 years ago it was Dutch settlers, called Boers, fighting Great Britain for possession of South Africa. Today, a band of Islamic extremists attack the United States and its allies everywhere.
The lesson from both: small forces are potent. Kruger's Gold is not a dry military history book, nor does the reader miss anything if, like this reviewer, he or she comes to it more or less ignorant of the Anglo-Boer War that took place in 1899-1902.
Victoria author Sidney Allinson has written the sort of gripping, fast-moving novel that keeps you turning pages long after bedtime. The characters and their loves and hatreds, their ideals and weaknesses, failures and triumphs, would have provided the human material for a thoroughly satisfying novel even if presented in an imaginary setting.
The novel's hero is a Canadian volunteer from Victoria, Lieut. Harry Lanyard serving with the British Army. Given the choice between disgrace before a court martial and leading a particularly hazardous mission, Lanyard takes the latter. With a rag-tag troop of mainly Canadian mounted infantry, Lanyard is ordered to recover a king's ransom in stolen gold bullion - enough money to keep the Boers fighting for goodness knows how many more years.
The gold had been looted by Boer president Paul Kruger, hence the book's title -- an actual real-life hidden treasure, portions of which are still being discovered to this day. And hence also, the skilful merging of the fictional characters in the foreground of the story with the meticulously researched historical events that provide the backdrop.
We are introduced to the tough Afrikaner Boer fighters whose title "Commando" has been handed down through generations since as the hallmark of military excellence. We discover to our chagrin that the South African War also fathered the concentration camp, a term now synonymous with death. Although these camps were devised initially by the British as shelter for destitute families whose homes had been torched by one side or the other in this increasingly cruel campaign, disgraceful mismanagement and rampant disease reduced the camps to death-traps.
Meanwhile, the action continues: ambush, deception, guerrilla warfare, espionage mutiny, pitched battles and encounters with bandits - while a forbidden romance struggles to survive across the invisible line separating friend from foe.
Lieut. Lanyard would be a real asset in today's Special Forces; but is this enough to gain his two objectives, Kruger's gold, and the love of his life, the Boer-American girl, Beth?
This book has stirred great interest among historians and military buffs of the period, some of whom have been brought up on "official" versions of events that omit what is unpalatable about your own side. The truth is that war brings out the best and the, worst in mankind and there never was an unblemished battle record. Sidney Allinson pays his respects to Boers, Brits, and colonials, and avoids any temptation to portray the fighting in terms of good guys and bad. To assist the keen researcher, the author includes a glossary, casualty statistics and bibliography, plus a summary of later events in South Africa.

Reviewer Maurice Tugwell is a retired brigadier of the British Army, and director of the Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute.
http://www.amazon.com/Krugers-Gold-Novel-Anglo-Boer-War/dp/0738865850

New findings cast more doubt on value of Canada’s 1917 military draft.

The conscription crisis caused lasting rifts in Canada. Now a self-taught expert has found the price paid brought less value than historians thought, writes Randy Boswell, in The Ottawa Citizen. Published: Monday, April 16, 2007.
A roofing salesman who studies Canada's military past in his spare time has prompted the country's professional historians to rethink one of the great controversies of the First World War: the success -- or not -- of the conscription policy that created a deep national divide along French-English lines.
Michel Gravel, a history buff from Cornwall, Ont., has unearthed what appears to be a significant error in the traditional calculation of how many conscripted soldiers were sent into battle before the end of the war. And the find has been hailed as "a great service to scholars" by none other than Jack Granatstein, the dean of Canadian historians.
Generations of war chroniclers -- most notably Mr. Granatstein himself, author of a book on the subject, as well as the conscription entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia -- have accepted the figure of 24,132 compulsory recruits who reached the front lines in Europe.
Mr. Gravel probed the conscription question while researching his recently published biography of Ottawa native Sgt. Hillie Foley, a long-overlooked hero from the First World War. Part-time researcher Gravel discovered evidence that as many as half of the supposed Canadian conscripts were actually British-born Americans who volunteered for overseas duty through a U.S.-based recruitment drive orchestrated by British patriots in North America.
The British-American recruits were sent north to enlist in Canada until mid-1918, when the U.S. military announced its own draft.
"The error came about because both volunteers obtained by the recruiting missions in the U.S.A. and conscripts raised in Canada were assigned regimental numbers from the same block (3,000,000 to 4,000,000)," Mr. Gravel writes in an appendix to his book about Foley.
"This made it impossible to tell the American volunteers apart from the Canadian conscripts ...The contribution to the great Canadian victories of 1918 by these late-war volunteers from the U.S.A. has never been examined."
Mr. Gravel's conclusions about the conscription numbers have impressed Mr. Granatstein.
"Gravel launches a full frontal assault on the standard and accepted numbers of conscripts who went overseas in 1918. I'm one of the people he attacks, and I'm afraid I must agree that he is likely right," Mr. Granatstein writes in the latest edition of Legion magazine.
"I took as fact the number of 24,132 put forth in Col. G.W.L. Nicholson's official history (as did everyone else), but Gravel -- who comes to it all with a fresh, skeptical eye -- has done a great service to scholars by parsing the data with exemplary care.
"By studying regimental numbers, by examining the late war volunteers for the Canadian Expeditionary Force recruited in the U.S., Gravel has forced me to reassess matters. The Military Service Act of 1917 clearly worked less well than the politicians -- and the historians -- believed."
The act was passed in August 1917 by the wartime Conservative government of Robert Borden. Opposition to the plan in French Canada was intense and nearly universal, prompting realignments in Parliament and riots in Quebec in response to a measure that forced thousands of young men to fight in what some Canadians viewed as an essentially "foreign" war.
Borden, who had once pledged not to impose a military draft, had become convinced by the summer of 1917 that the terrible carnage in Europe -- even in victories such as Vimy Ridge, the focus of a landmark 90th anniversary commemoration in France last week -- meant Canada's army would collapse without a faster flow of reinforcements than voluntary recruitment alone could supply.
But recognizing the huge political risks, Borden invited rival Liberals who would back conscription to join his Tories in a bipartisan Union government. Many from English Canada did, but Quebec MPs remained solidly against the policy, crippling the Conservative party in that province and deepening the country's French-English rift.
And what was achieved? Though the policy was intended to raise 100,000 front-line soldiers, the war ended in November 1918 with the number of deployed conscripts still well short of the target. To many historians, including Mr. Granatstein, even the 24,132 figure represented a failure for Borden's policy.
The much lower number suggested by Mr. Gravel's research could erase any lingering doubts about whether conscription was worth the trouble it caused for Canada.
Mr. Gravel, who spent five years and $15,000 to publish his book, says Mr. Granatstein's "gracious" endorsement of his discovery is deeply satisfying -- particularly since "I never went to university, and make my living selling roofing materials."

ROYAL CANADIAN MILITARY INSTITUTE TO MOVE TO A NEW LOCATION

Royal Canadian Military Institute: 100 YEARS 1890-1990

Sad news for many Canadian enthusiasts of military affairs, with the announcement that the 120-year-old Royal Canadian Military Institute closed the doors of its historic building on University Avenue, Toronto, in October, 2010. and will be moving to modern new quarters elsewhere in Toronto.
The announcement is particularly poignant for me personally. I have been a member of the RCMI for over 30 year, had the honour to be a member of the Board Of Directors, and was editior of both the RCMI Yearbook and SITREP Newsletter.
Here's a description of the Institute's cloising days, reported by Peter Kuitenbrouwer in the National Post.:

**********************************************************************

"Director Captain Charles Scot-Brown stood on Friday in the lounge of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, at 426 University Avenue, resplendent in his navy blazer with polished RCMI brass buttons. On his lapel glittered the wings which attest to his participation, as a Can-Loan military officer with the British troops, in the ill-fated paratrooper drop into Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 1944 (immortalized in the film A Bridge Too Far.)
Yesterday Cpt. Scot-Brown, 87, prepared to give his last tour of this 100-year old Institute before wreckers demolish it to make way for a 42-storey condo. I asked his feelings.
“It’s like watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in a new Cadillac,” he said. “Mixed emotions.”
Few living Canadians know this place as well as Capt. Scot-Brown. “I first came here as a boy in 1936 when I was getting ready to go to Jarvis Collegiate,” he recalls. He was a guest of his father, also a soldier. Six years later his father was killed in the bombing of Bristol, 1942. “Luckily I was overseas so I was able to go to the funeral.”
Thousands of memories cram the privately owned Institute, which bristles with pistols, rifles, swords, bayonets, even clubs and boomerangs, and made me well up with nationalistic pride. Canadian Forces rifles, from the 18th century to those used today, line one side of a hall; across from them are enemy rifles, including the weapon of choice for the Métis in Louis Riel’s Northwest frontier rebellion: an “Indian-modified American Army model 1863 rifled musket.”
Another case contains the history of pistols, ranging from a 1775 Wilson flintlock pistol through a “Great War 1911 German Army P-08 Luger semi-automatic pistol” to a black Browning hi-power Mark 1 automatic pistol, labeled, “1944-present.”
Cpt. Scott-Brown showed us what used to be known as “the Ladies room.” Until 1974 the club required all women to enter through the rear, with only two exceptions: the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II. “Their men’s club was their men’s club, and they didn’t like women around,” he recalled.
Pauline McGibbon, the first female lieutenant-governor of Ontario, changed that. “She wasn’t about to come in the back door,” our tour guide recalled.
The plan gives the club floors two through six in the new Tribute Communities tower, and club staff said that most members approved it.
Last fall city council overrode planning staff to approve the project. Staff had said the tower, with 210 one-bedroom and 105 bachelor units, five times the size permitted by the zoning and with just nine parking spaces, “is not considered appropriate.”
Some members had other objections: Brian Lawrie, a member, worries for the future of the collection. On Friday Lt.-Col. (ret’d) Jeffrey Dorfman, chairman of the building committee here, promised that, “It’s being all packed up and crated and going off to Fine Art Storage. The library and museum will be brought back two years later.”
Today the two British field artillery 9-pounder canons that flanked the entrance are already gone into storage. They will return when the new building opens.
In the meantime the members will meet at the Albany Club, Church and King streets; their bartender, Mike Leavy, is moving there too.
Capt. Scot-Brown remains unconvinced of the wisdom of the move: “I’m a crusty old sucker. I was brought up in a generation where you didn’t sell the family farm,” he says. But then he reached for a more optimistic metaphor: “It’s almost like a mother watching her child go off to kindergarten. It’s emotional.”

Rewriting history.

Revisionism.
The most critical issue connected with historical writing in general, and historical novels in particular, is the problem of revisionism. Revisionism is a deadly and contagious condition which afflicts some researchers – and more than a few novelists. Its chief characteristic is the urge to "reveal" something extraordinary to the public, which will cause readers to completely change their opinion about how and why the event being described occurred.

Revisionism is not to be confused with valid new research which fills broadens our knowledge and understanding of historical incidents. This is what legitimate historical research is all about, though the distinction between the two can sometimes by subtle. Revisionism, however, can be clearly identified because its theory is always astoundingly new and sensational and turns an accepted historical happening upside down.

Have you ever noticed that nowadays nothing of consequence happened the way it was originally explained? Napoleon Bonaparte died of cancer, yet now two centuries later, it is widely accepted that he was poisoned by his British guards. Millions of credulous folk firmly believe Princess Diana was not simply killed in an automobile accident caused by her drunk driver, she was "murdered by the British Secret Service". Lone assassin” Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill JFK” -- the dastardly CIA did it. Amelia Earhart did not crash her plane into the Pacific and die; “she came down on a desert island and was shot as a spy by the Japanese.” James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King; he was the patsy for some huge conservative conspiracy. These are just a few typical examples of fashionable (and comical) revisionism.

Although most of these examples are from the 20th Century, wise men throughout the ages have been well aware of this tendency by some to disbelieve the obvious. Why is this belief in "hidden truth" so pervasive? For the public, there are many reasons: an under-lying distrust of anything said by authorities; a need to believe that bad things just could not happen to people in a simple or random manner; and finally, there may be the delight caused by gossip or sensationalism.

For historians, it is even more complicated. As human beings, they are subject to the other motives, but additionally, the very validity of their field of study rests on their ability to revise. There is a fundamental presumption within the discipline that what is known to have happened did not happen in the generally accepted manner or for the generally accepted reasons. Furthermore, their professional reputations and individual egos are based on their revisions. Any historian who investigates the French Revolution and discovers that it simply happened exactly as described in history books is professionally dead. This drive to radically alter the accepted truth is not the only reason many historians change history; they also change it for cultural or national self-interests, or the simple urge for political correctness.

WWII MASS GRAVE REBURIAL IN POLAND

Mass Polish reburial of war dead.
By Adam Easton, BBC.

The remains of more than 2,000 people discovered in Poland's largest mass grave from World War II have been reburied in a military cemetery.

Polish and German officials presided over the ceremony at a cemetery for German soldiers in north-west Poland, near the border between the countries.

The victims are believed to be German civilians who died in the last months of the conflict, in early 1945.

The mass grave was discovered in the Polish city of Malbork last October.

Because no-one was prepared to pay for expensive DNA testing, the historians' best guess is that the victims were German civilians caught up in the Red Army's assault on the city.

At the time Malbork was Marienberg, a German city.

The first skeletons were unearthed by workmen digging the foundations of a new hotel near the city's medieval castle.

In the end, more than 2,000 skeletons were discovered, two-thirds of them belonging to women and children.

There were no accompanying documents, clothing or personal items except for one pair of child's spectacles.

Issues over the war have often divided Germany and Poland in the past, but not in this case.

Neither side voiced recriminations and they worked together to finally give the victims a dignified burial.

Military historical novel

KRUGER'S GOLD

South Africans in particular could enjoy KRUGER'S GOLD, my adventure novel set during the 2nd. Anglo-Boer War. See:http://tinyurl.com/6cwl3a

A FURTHER LOOK AT THE EPIC BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE

VIMY RIDGE: A Canadian Reassessment, Edited by Geoffrey Hayes, Andrew Iarocci, & Mike Bechtold, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, 353 pages, photographs, maps, bibliography, index.

The three military historians who compiled this study are acknowledged experts on Canadian participation in World War One, particularly well-equipped to select these commentaries on one of our country’s most epic battles. The result is a compendium of twenty cogently written opinions and reports about the final bloody struggle for possession of Vimy Ridge, now considered not only an important military victory but also a defining moment for Canadian nationhood.
They tell how (unusually for those days) the Canadian troops at all levels of rank were given detailed briefings on the planned strategy before the attack was launched, which enabled even private soldiers to surge forward confidently to fight a “corporal’s battle,” often independent of direction by officers.
The book puts the struggle in context; the hill’s strategic significance, the seldom-mentioned British participation, and the German point-of-view. It also provides insights about the personalities and military styles of various senior officers – including General Julian Byng, Canadian Corps commander, and Major. Gen Arthur Currie, who insisted on meticulous preparations before the attack by his First Canadian Division.


Excellent photographs movingly show Canadian warriors of all ranks who fought so valiantly that day, and good clear maps help readers follow various tactical moves during the battle. This retrospective provides a thorough explanation of exactly why those monumental concrete towers now stand atop Vimy Ridge.
-- Sidney Allinson

NEW BOOK ABOUT THE SECOND WORLD WAR.

Military history

THE STORM OF WAR. (Blackwell, UK)

‘The second world war lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion and claimed the lives of over 50 million people. That represents 23,000 lives lost every day, or more than six people killed every minute, for six long years.’ This neat summary is characteristic of the way Andrew Roberts uses statistics to bring home to the reader the enormity, the waste and the horror of that terrible conflict. The book is long, but it is tightly written, every page packed with terse comment, well-organised facts and, often, telling details.

It has a thesis: Hitler lost the war essentially because he was a Nazi, and allowed his race theories and ideological cruelty to get in the way of rational decision-taking. It is not true, Roberts says, that German atrocities began only in the closing stages of the war. On 27 May 1940, 97 British prisoners of war of the Royal Norfolks were massacred in cold blood by the SS, and the following day 90 POWs of the Warwickshire were slaughtered by grenades and rifles, the killers being from the Adolf Hitler Regiment. At the same time Hitler was allowing his political views to prevent the annihilation of the British Expeditionary Force. We originally calculated that the Dunkirk operation could save at most 45,000 troops. Thanks largely to Hitler’s interference, between dawn on Sunday 26 May and 03.30 on Tuesday 4 June 1940, 338,226 Allied soldiers were rescued, the largest military evacuation in history.

At the beginning of 1941, Hitler was master of Europe. By the end of the war he was doomed. He and his ideology were entirely responsible for his two greatest mistakes: to invade Russia, and to declare war on America. In both cases he hugely underestimated the power of the states he voluntarily made his mortal enemies. Russia seemed an easy target. The Germans destroyed 1,200 Soviet war-planes on the ground during the first morning of their invasion. They killed 27 million Russians, and took 5.7 prisoners, 3.3 million of whom (58 per cent) died in captivity. But the Russians kept on coming, and soon their production of tanks outstripped Germany’s. In the two-month battle of Kursk in 1943, the biggest and largest tank battle in history, the Germans lost 500,000 men, 3,000 tanks, 1,000 guns, 5,000 motor vehicles and 1,400 aircraft. The Russian losses were 50 per cent heavier, but could be absorbed, and the Germans lost the battle.
-- Andrew Roberts.

History of The Royal Canadian Regiment

Military history

Establishing A Legacy: The history of The Royal Canadian Regiment 1883-1953, by Bernd Horn.

This regimental unit history is particularly well done, likely because it was written by a distinguished army officer. Colonel Bern Horn clearly did Trojan work to distil a wealth of archives and reminiscences into a highly readable book.

He tells how The Royal Canadian Regiment started out as an infantry school corps to train the Militia. Soon it became a fully-formed army unit, and is now Canada's oldest permanent force infantry regiment. First, its soldiers took part in helping to suppress the Riel Rebellion, then provided the Yukon Field Force. A grimmer period followed, when the RCR went to South Africa with the Canadian contingent in the Anglo-Boer War, where "The Royals" acquitted themselves during the crucial battle of Paadeberg.

But it was the regiment's service in two world wars that tested the bravery and combat expertise of Canadian volunteer soldiers. The book gives a splendid account of RCR service in the 1914-1918 war, but provides most coverage of the RCR fighting in Italy during World War Two. There are harrowing descriptions of combat in both major conflicts, and the now almost forgotten Korean War.

Numerous atmospheric photographs are included, showing regimental activities in various campaigns across the years. One photo is especially poignant, showing two senior officers together just a couple of days before both were killed in action. Good maps are also included, which help the reader follow the battles described.

Sidney Allinson.

COMOX AUTHOR PENS SEA-GOING HISTORICAL ADVENTURE NOVEL.

Military history

Successful Vancouver Island author Sean Thomas Russell has combined his twin passions for sailing and history to write a splendid naval historical novel, ‘Under Enemy Colors.’ Published by Putnam/Penguin in September, it is a rollicking good read that follows the adventures of Royal Navy Lt. Charles Hayden in 1797 during Britain’s war with Revolutionary France.

The book’s fact-based focus is quite a departure for the 55-year-old Russell, who has written nine previous books during the past 15 years, all in the genre of “fantasy fiction.” First published in the United States, they are also available in eight languages world-wide, with one version awarded France’s Imaginale Award for best fantasy novel in translation.

Asked why this latest creation is so different from his usual Tolkien-like tales, Russell says, “I guess I needed a break from what I had been doing before. Besides, I have a collection of over 500 books on sailing and history, which started me thinking about doing a straight historical novel for about five years before I tackled writing one.”

“I am a great admirer of John le Carré, who writes really a hybrid of a genre novel and a literary novel. So I wanted to emulate the way he writes genre novels that also have some literary merit. Also, I am absolutely enthralled by the language of the 18th Century, not just the speech of sailors but of everyday people as well back then. I really wanted to capture their rich, vibrant language, and long, lyrical sentences in a novel. The Oxford English Dictionary became my friend during the two years I was writing ‘Under Enemy Colors.’ Incidentally, my US publishers insisted on using the American spelling of ‘Color’ on the cover title, even though the entire text throughout uses my original British-style spelling.”

To compose a meticulously accurate account, Russell drew on his personal knowledge of sailboat racing and nautical lore, spent five weeks travelling in England and France familiarizing himself with details of various locations, and added more volumes to his already extensive reference library. The result is a salty tale of naval derring-do that also includes enough introspection about the morality of war, divided loyalties, and sympathy for the enemy, to appeal to readers as much interested in the clash of ideas as the crash of cannon.

Russell enthuses, “The story takes place soon after the revolutions in America and France, which brought about huge social changes everywhere. It was a fascinating watershed in human affairs, outcomes of the writings of egalitarian thinkers like Thomas Paine about the rights of man. I wanted to go back to look at that turbulent period, and shrink the concept of revolution itself down to the size of a single ship. It let me look at the characters, circumstances, and emotions of revolutionaries who typically incite a mutiny.

The novel’s protagonist, Lt. Hayden, has the leadership qualities worthy of a Master and Commander, but his promotion is held back by lack of political connections, and having a French mother which opens him to unfounded suspicion of divided loyalties. So instead he is posted to HMS Themis, under the orders of cowardly Capt. Josh Hart, whose arrogance and harsh discipline soon drives his crew to mutiny.

With all that tension aboard, the frigate is also soon in the thick of dangerous storms, coastal patrols, and bloody sea-battles. Along the way, Haydon confronts his dastardly captain and settles a crew of violent mutineers, slips ashore in France on a secret spying mission, plus becoming romantically smitten with a delightful young Englishwoman along the way.

Russell says, “It took a terrific amount of research, but writing it was a lot of fun.” He modestly does not mention that it was also a lot of hard work. Russell produces all his books by following a disciplined regimen of writing six or seven hours a day, five days a week. He is a relentless re-writer as well, revising entire drafts, ruthlessly going over and over what he has written to prune and improve wording until it says exactly what he intends. “I just have to get all the period details exactly right as well, and I take a lot of care to prune out any anachronisms that might have sneaked in.”

He has an ideal writing-place -- a book-lined study in the Comox home he shares with his wife and nine-year-old son, looking out at glorious seascape views and surrounding mountains. As an occasional break from pounding the keyboard, Russell loves to board his wooden sailboat and cruise the waters of south Vancouver Island. His first-hand experience with handling ropes, canvas, and tiller shines through particularly when he describes a hazardous escape in an open boat across the stormy English Channel.

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VON RICHTHOFEN DISPLAY IN LIBRARY OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN MILITARY INSTITUTE.

The "Red Baron" display case in the Library of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, Toronto, holds artefacts from the downed Fokker Triplane in which famed German fighter-ace Rittmeister Manfred von Richtofen's met his death, on the morning of 21st April, 1918. They include the aircraft's seat, wingtip, and piece of fuselage fabric bearing the German Airforce cross. These central objects of the Wings Room are well known to students of military aviation history and members of the Institute. Visitors also take particular interest in the displayed Spandau machine-gun, typical armament aboard von Richthofen's Fokker and many German military aircraft during the First World War.
Canadian fighter-pilot Captain Roy Brown somehow obtained the seat shortly after von Richtofen's death, and donated the seat to the Institute in 1920, where it has remained ever since. The seat is of sheet aluminum and plywood, covered with a red ochre fabric: very light construction. The holes in the seat centre are not bullet holes (despite a persistent but inaccurate legend.) They are actually mounting-holes for rivets which joined the seat to the fuselage. The side holes were caused by the force of the mounting bolts being torn out by the impetus of the Triplane's crash.
Mr. Arthur Bishop, son of the famous Great War ace Air Marshal William "Billy" Bishop VC, donated the Fokker Triplane wingtip to the Museum in 1968. This joined the seat and fabric piece to create the exciting trinity in the display case. The fuselage fabric cross is believed to have also been donated by Captain Roy Brown at some unknown exact date. The fabric shows the German late-version Latin Cross of 1918, and an area of paint has been scraped away for the signatures of eleven members of 209 Squadron, including Roy Brown and "Wop" May.

The Institute has the responsibility of caring for these artefacts for the benefit of future generations, and this has been done. The Museum Committee arranged for professional restoration work on the wingtip and fabric piece. Conservator Moya Gillett removed a large glue stain on the wingtip, and reframed and stabilized the fabric, which was slowly flaking away. We are sure these artefacts will last for another 70 years. The RCMI will always be indebted to Captain Brown for his generosity in giving to the Institute these very important Great War artefacts.

Sad to say, the Royal Canadian Military Institute closed its 110-year-old doors on University Avenue, Toronto, in October, 2010, in preparation for its move to new premises expected to re-open in two years or so. At that time, all its unique collection of military memorabilia will be available for viewing once more.

D-DAY TO CARPIQUET

Military history
D-DAY TO CARPIQUET: The North Shore Regiment and the liberation of Europe, Marc Milner, Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, NB, 138 pages, photos, maps, index, bibliography. $16.95
The North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment is little known today; seldom mentioned even in official accounts of Canadians in the Second World War. Yet their heroic front-line achievements during the early days of the liberation of Normandy deserve far more recognition. Now at last, proper homage is paid to them in this authoritatively written study by well-known military historian Marc Milner.
The NFR was an unassuming outfit, composed of sturdy farmers, fishermen, lumbermen, and millhands, who made ideal infantry soldiers. After three years of training in Britain, they landed on Juno Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and fought their way inland. Milner includes many personal accounts of combat experiences, which vividly convey their bravery in face of carnage.
Clear maps help the reader to follow description of various actions during this short but costly campaign. Over 200 NSR men were killed or wounded during the bloody battle for the village of Carpiquet that lasted just six days, and became known ever after as the “regiment’s graveyard.”
The book includes numerous photographs of members of the regiment, often identified by personal names. Another photographic feature is the inclusion of printed frames from film footage of the regiment’s landing on D-Day, printed on successive pages that can be “played” in motion by fanning them from front to back.
-- Sidney Allinson.

"THE BANTAMS" TELLS THE LITTLE KNOWN SAGA OF FIVE-FOOT WARRIORS

IN WORLD WAR ONE.



"THE BANTAMS: The Untold Story Of World War One" is a newly revised military history by Canadian historian, Sidney Allinson, published in July, 2009, by Pen & Sword Books, UK.


"The Bantams" recounts the factual but well-nigh incredible story of how the British and Canadian Army recruited over 50,000 men who were below the regulation minimum height of 5ft. 3ins. to serve as front-line soldiers. Short but sturdy volunteers stepped forward all over Britain, until there were Bantam battalions in a score of famed regiments, plus two Bantam units raised in Canada.
Sidney Allinson's researches took him off on a three-year quest for information, journeying across Canada, the U.S., Britain, and the old Western Front battlefields of France and Belgium, and interviewed over 300 survivors of the Bantams, to obtain the many first-hand accounts of battle told in his book. The result is a fascinating picture of social conditions of the 1914-1918 era, army recruiting methods, and unblinking personal descriptions of brutal trench warfare.
He graphically describes how the patriotic fervour in Britain at the time enabled recruitment of Bantam-sized volunteers to join the demand for a huge citizen army to feed a conflict of murderous attrition. English and Scottish Bantams fought along the Somme front, while Welsh Bantams helped win the Battle of Bourlon despite hideously large casualties that virtually annihilated them.
Originally published some years ago, this revised version of THE BANTAMS reveals disturbing new information about battlefield executions by firing-squads that was only recently released from British official records long held secret from the public. It adds even more poignancy to the story of how thousands of patriots not much taller than a rifle themselves flocked to the colours.
Sidney Allinson was born in England, served overseas with the Royal Air Force, emigrated to Canada, and became an advertising executive, film producer, and communications consultant. He is author of six books, a past-Director of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, and now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Allinson is Chairman of the Pacific Coast Branch of the Western Front Association, and President of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Vancouver Island.
For more details about the Bantams," click here: http://offto.net/d8wpzx/

ALLINSON CONNECTION WITH FAMED WWI POEM, "IN FLANDERS FIELDS."

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

-- Maj. John McCrea.

Maj. John McCrae, Canadian Army Medical Corp.,

wrote famed war poem "In Flanders Fields" in 1915.

My own late father, Private Thomas W. Allinson, served in the First World War, as a private soldier with The Green Howards, a famous infantry regiment of the British Army. To my eternal regret, I seldom took the opportunity to break through his modest silence about the horrors he faced in the trenches and learn his battlefield experiences. However, I did remember one casual mention by him that our family had a connection with the author of the most famous war poem of all time: “In Flanders Fields.” It did not dawn on me as significant until many years later, when I finally set about learning the background details.
The incident is described in "Welcome to Flanders Fields - The Great Canadian Battle of the Great War: Ypres, 1915", by Daniel G. Dancocks. It recounts:
"On May 3, Maj. McCrae had spent 17 weary days performing surgery on hundreds of wounded soldiers, and took a brief respite on the back of an ambulance near his dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser. McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches there, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook."
"A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. 'His face was very tired but calm as he wrote,' Allinson recalled. 'He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Lt. Helmer's grave.' When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO."
"Sgt. Maj. Allinson was moved by what he read, saying later, 'The poem was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word 'blow' in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.'"
I now feel a quiet pride that an Allinson relative -- Canadian cousin of my father -- was the first person to read the immortal words of "In Flanders Field" moments after it was penned by Major John McCrae.
-- Sidney Allinson.

The British Columbia Bantams

The B.C. Bantams

by Sidney Allinson.

The little men in khaki seemed impossibly short to be Canadian soldiers. Barely over five feet in height, they marched proudly, four abreast, to tunes of their brass band, smiling at the cheering crowds that lined Humboldt Street, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, that bright morning of February 10, 1917.

These tiny soldiers of the 143rd Overseas Battalion (B.C. Bantams), were being given a civic send-off by fellow townspeople with mixed emotions. After three years of what was known as the Great War, the notably patriotic city of Victoria had previously bade 'adieu' to seven other army units. -- including splendid soldiers of the Canadian Scottish Regiment, strapping Naval reservists, and picked men of the Victoria Rifles. But never had they expressed such a fond farewell or sent off a more improbable unit than these almost Lilliputian warriors.

Boots polished to a black sheen, buttons bright and puttees tight, soft peaked caps square on heads, bearing heavy back-packs, the men were like miniature Guardsmen in their smart military turnout, singing lustily:.

"Good-bye-ee,

Don't cry-ee,

Wipe that tear from your eye,

Good-bye-eeee..."

The British Columbia Bantams were volunteers all, and keen to be getting a chance to fight at last. Almost half of them would never see Canada again.

More thoughtful observers that morning might have wondered about the departing soldiers for other reasons than their novelty. Here were perhaps living symbols of the extreme scarcity of British Empire manpower reserves, that now such undersized recruits were needed to make up for the carnage of trench warfare on the bloody Western Front.

Slaughtered, ignored, their survivors even dismissed as failures, the Bantams formed one of the most unusual and little-known chapters in the annals of military history. Theirs is a neglected story, which involved over 50,000 British and Canadian soldiers who never quite made it into the war books. They volunteered to serve when they could have stayed safely at home, suffered physical hardship often beyond their capacities, and sometimes endured with good humor the ridicule of less-courageous men, all for the privilege of fighting for their country in some of the fiercest battles of the First World War. Among them were almost a 1,000 men who served in a little-known unit dubbed proudly, "The B.C. Bantams".

It was modelled on 20 other Bantam battalions raised by the British Army, to mobilize the many volunteers who were below the regulation minimum height. Revised medical standards to allow for bantam-size troops specified acceptable heights between 4ft.l0ins, and 5ft.3ins. "with a proportionately good chest expansion."

Mobilization was authorized for the 143rd Overseas Battalion (B.C. Bantams) and recruiting begin in Victoria on February 20, 1916. Driving force behind this unique formation was Lieutenant Colonel A. Bruce Powley, a front-line veteran, who had been wounded twice in battle before being invalided home to Victoria. Eager to get back into the fray, he managed to gain command of the 143rd, and engaged a talented group of local officers to assist with recruiting.

There was steady stream of volunteers towards the hoped-­for total of 1,000 men, but LCol. Powley soon found it difficult to find accouunodation for the thousand men he hoped to sign up. The situation was solved by a grant of $9,000 by the city of Victoria, to secure building materials for a new camp at Beacon Hill Park parade-ground. The recruits themselves built wooden structures for sleeping barracks, cook-house, and headquarters, far more comfortable than the usual canvas tents.

At this stage of the war, Canada had 200,000 men under arms, all volunteers. The nation had been quick to supply fighting-men after the outbreak of war, and many Victorians were among the First Contingent that sailed in October, 1914. By early 1916, Canada had sent three divisions to the Western Front, forming the Canadian Corps. They had fought in many major battles, always in the thick of things, and suffered heavy casualties. (The 1914-1918 war cost Canada a total of 65,000 war dead.)

Sparsely-settled British Columbia had responded whole­heartedly early in the war. Intensely loyal, with a high proportion of British immigrant stock quick to volunteer, BC had virtually shot its bolt by early 1916 in its capacity to supply manpower.

With recruits at a premium, the coal-mining communities up-Island promised the likeliest source of strongly-built bantam-sized men. One of them was Benjamin Barnes, a red­headed Cornishman who volunteered from his well-paid job as fire-boss of Coal Creek Mine. Another was Peter Campbell, an office worker from Sidney, who joined "B" Company in camp just down the road from his home. Allan Bell came over from Vancouver on the same ferry that brought Humbert Campbell back from his job on an Alberta ranch.

"It seemed the greatest adventure in the world", said Bell. "The sun shone on the water and the mountains stood out against the sky as we sailed across that day, and I felt my chest swell as if we were all setting out on a great crusade. My comrades proved to be such happy chaps, forever telling jokes, with never a cross word, and I never felt so happy in all my eighteen years."

Despite such enthusiastic recruits, LCol. Powley could not enlist enough suitable men at the pace needed. He regretfully reported to Ottawa on Oct. 15, 1916. "We were finally forced to take in some larger men as well, with a view to exchanging them later for smaller men from other units. But exchanges are not easy, and the result is I have a battalion of over half bantam, and the balance of larger men, though the average height is still below 5ft. 4ins."

When the unit returned from a summer of hard training at Sidney Camp, its members were so outspokenly impatient to be sent to France, they were known as "The Fire-eaters". Their attitude was all the more remarkable, considering the high proportion of family men in the ranks. Oldest of whom was Joseph Daniel, a 43-year-old Sidney resident who managed to wangle his way to combat in France.

Among those chafing to get overseas, was Ben Barnes, who as an accomplished cornet-player, found himself in the battalion band. In January, 1917, he wrote to his brother in immaculate penmanship from the Dominion Hotel. "We are all classed as soldiers, and though bandsmen do not put in as much time now with a rifle, we are all well prepared for the firing-line. Each of us in the band has learned machine-gun drill, signalling, first-aid, and stretcher-bearing."

He wrote again, soon after, excited by news of embarkation, but depressed by feelings of foreboding. "I get a little down-hearted when I dwell too much on my home, but shake it off as best I can, and will be content when I get a little more excitement at the front. If I get a bullet to put me to sleep, I will only be among my comrades, so I should not worry."

With men so keen, there was some disappointment when Ottawa announced the 143rd would be sent to France as a Railway Construction battalion, instead of as infantry. However, they were mollified by learning that trench railway duty was as vital as it was dangerous, a prime target of German artillery.

News of their departure brought out a tremendous wave of affection from Victoria residents, who cheered the little men all along their march from Beacon Hill, past flag-draped balconies of St. Joseph's Hospital where patients and nurses gave rousing cheers. Banners proclaiming "Good Luck - God Speed" hung from buildings at the mouth of Courtney Street, and people leaned through open windows, adding their applause to those packing the sidewalks.

By the time the soldiers reached the wharf on Bellville Street, they had to break ranks and march in single file through the press of dense crowds. It gave opportunity for many emotional scenes; last-minute kisses from families, friends and sweethearts, Quickly, the 32 officers and 667 other ranks boarded two CPR ferries, ‘Princess Victoria’ and ‘Princess Mary.’ where many climbed the rigging for better views as the vessels pulled away. Cheers, cries, and shouted well-wishes mingled with a cacophony of horn-blowing from other ships in the harbor, while the Bantams' band played a last refrain of "Old Lang Syne" as they sailed off to war.

Three weeks later, the British Columbians were in England, at the Canadian Holding Depot, Shorncliff. "We felt like cattle, the way they treated us there," said Allan Bell. The Canadian Corps needed more men in France in a hurry, and made no secret that we were viewed as cannon-fodder. One could not help but notice that while ordinary soldiers were getting this treatment, there were over five hundred lieutenants lounging around camp, many of whom had stayed there in safety since the previous summer."

"But that was the least of our irritations, because it didn't take long to figure out that the BC Bantams as a unit were about to be broken up forthwith!"

Peter Campbell recalled how it was for the crestfallen Victoria battalion. "After a brief landing-leave in London, we were called before a medical board at Shorncliff. The 143rd was broken up so suddenly that Local. Powley and his officers were not even given time to say farewell to us."

About a third of the unit became railway troops, while the rest were sent to the trenches as infantry after all. Ben Barnes was among a draft of 667 men from the B.C. Bantams who went to the 24th Canadian Reserve Battalion in France on May 11, 1917. They joined the new formations thrown immediately into the hideous meat-grinder known as the Battle of Lens.

This affair was yet another brain-wave of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, British commander in chief. He decided to increase pressure on the Flanders front, and as part of some grand strategy, flung the Canadian Corps against Lens as the first objective.

The Canadians surveyed the black slag-heaps, the shell­churned graveyard of so many troops before them, and were not inspired. "If we have to fight there at all", said General Sir Arthur Currie, the one-time Victoria school-teacher who was now corps commander, "Let us fight for something worth having.". Why not try to sidestep Lens, he asked, and burst out into open mobile warfare? But Haig was adamant. Lens was to be taken by direct assault.

On August 15th, the Canadians took Hill 70; little more than a low mound, really, but riddled with concrete pill­boxes, machine-gun nests, and concealed artillery. In a single morning, they captured the hill which had repulsed the British Guards Division in 1915, and pushed on through smoke and poison gas and shrapnel into the mining hamlets on the outskirts of lens itself. The ruined suburbs -- St. Emilie, St. Pierre, Calonne -- were made up of clumps of miners' cottages and pithead workings, and had been fortified in an interlocking maze of strong German defences over the past two years.

All Lens was like that; street after street of rubbled buildings hiding blockhouses and m.g. posts inter-connected by miles of passage-ways knocked through cellar walls. Alex Batchelor recalled an officer telling him, "Fix your bayonet, soldier. We have to winkle the Huns out."

Batchelor and other Bantams found their small size to be an advantage during the next ten endless days and nights, though it singled them out them for very hazardous duty. "We could pop through those tunnels as easy as could be. We left our packs off, stripped down to undershirts and went crawling around with a bagful of bombs and a revolver. Find a Heinie­hole, bung a grenade through, then nip in after it before the dust settled." Batchelor explained, still matter-of-fact in his old age. "After a while, I could tell if no bomb was needed in the next cellar. My nose would tell me when the Heinies in there had been dead for a long time."

Allan Bell fought there, too, attaching himself to some Nova Scotian machine-gunners to keep them supplied with ammunition. He would make repeated trips back through the hellish streets, casually employing his Lee-Enfield to snipe stray Prussians who tried to stop him. On one such journey, he stopped to aid the wounded Humbert Campbell, the clergyman's son he'd first met on a British Columbia ferry.

Street by street, the 4th Prussian Guards were forced back, dying hard for every cellar and crossroad. On the third day, reinforcements came in: two more Guards Divisions, the 11th Reserve, and the Saxon Brigade, until there were 46 German battalions battling to keep the Canadians from capturing the battered compost-heap that used to be the town of Lens.

Ben Barnes told a little of this to the folks at home. "Had a busy time of it," he pencilled in flawless copperplate on YMCA stationery. "But we all went forward and accomplished our objective. It was mostly street fighting, and we worked hard for protection from gunfire. When we got settled in our new ground, Fritz did not give us much rest as he had our range down pretty fair."

The indomitable attitude of Barnes and his comrades comes out in his final paragraph. "The Bantams certainly made a name for themselves this time. We are all of British stock here and fight with British spirit, and the Canadian Bantams are not going back without a name worthy of being set down in history for future generations to take notice."

He was never to know the eventual irony of those words he wrote on the battlefield. There have been so many other cataclysms throughout this century, that there is scant public memory now of distant heroism. Yet the belief sustained this modest soldier, whose letters were filled with loving memories for nephews and nieces he had met for only a few precious days. Though he had already seen so many friends cut down six thousand miles from homes they left in beautiful British Columbia, he retained his generation's simple faith in posterity's appreciation. It was a faith that sustained so many men through the misery of the First World War..

Then the Canadians went north to Flanders again, summoned to help break the deadlock on a vile, mad place called Passchendaele. This dread region in the Ypres Salient had already become the graveyard of hundreds of thousands of dead, and for four months previously British, Australian, and New Zealand regiments had lost entire battalions in a matter of days. On October 26, 1917, it became the Canadians turn, and they went forward through torrential rain mingled with the sleet of lead and steel from German guns. After a week of some of the war's most desperate fighting, four Canadian divisions managed to capture the previously­impregnable Passchendaele at last, on November 6, 1917.

The day after the battle ended, Sir Launcelot Kiggel, Haig's chief of staff, arrived to take his first look at the battlefield. When his Daimler limousine began to lurch through the mud, the general stared out unbelievingly at the endless quagmire, then burst into tears. "My God!", he moaned. "Did we send men to fight in this ?"

One of the men who had, was Benjamin Barnes. On October 29, during a lull, he wrote home in despair. "Had a very busy time of it for eight straight days and nights. I am sorry to say my pal Alf Patterson got napooed [killed] yesterday. I had many narrow escapes myself. One shell burst outside the dug-out, buried three of us. One blinded, one wounded, and all I got was shock. When I heard about A1f, it brought tears to my eyes, and I had the painful duty of writing to his aunt in Cumberland. Kindly excuse scribble, as I am quite upset. Au-re-voir."

As there was no conscription in Canada, fresh volunteer replacements were getting scarcer every month for the embattled Canadian Army. Veteran troops were kept in the line until death, or a lucky "Blighty" wound released them to hospital. Barnes managed to get letters home past the indulgent censorship of his officers. "Not many of the originals left now," he wrote on January 22, 1918. "If we did not get our rum ration, we would be laid up more often, as we are subject to wet feet and chills through our system. Disappointed at no leave, anxiously awaiting a square deal, and we cannot see why we have not had it yet."

There were only a few more letters from Barnes that year, in which he made no further mention of warfare, other than his address, "In the trenches." He sent a stream of suggestions about how to make his nieces and nephew happy, and often sent them what money he could afford.

His last letter was devoted to them. "Whenever you feel like making up a parcel for me, fix things fine, then let the children have a party of their own instead, to enjoy the contents ... Not much time to write. Continually on the alert. We Bantams are in a battle platoon, so we are not here as ornaments."

A week later, he heard his C.O. read out a commendation for his gallantry in rescuing a wounded comrade. The same day, August 11, 1918, Ben Barnes' luck finally ran out. He was killed in an obscure skirmish near Amiens -- one of the last of the B.C. Bantams to die in the Great War.

-end­

Victoria writer Sidney Allinson is author of "The Bantams: the untold story of World War One", Pen & Sword Books, UK, 2009.

THE BANTAMS march again!

NEW REVISED EDITION OF MY MILITARY HISTORY BOOK, "THE BANTAMS", TO BE PUBLISHED BY PEN & SWORD BOOKS IN BRITAIN IN 2009.

"The untold story of World War One" is the sub-title of "The Bantams", a recently revised military history book by Canadian author, Sidney Allinson.
"The Bantams" provides fascinating additional details to the factual but nigh incredible story of how the British and Canadian armies recruited over 50,000 tiny men who volunteered to serve as front-line soldiers. Such Bantam battalions eventually numbered over twenty units in Britain, plus two battalions from Canada. The movement spread all over Britain, particularly the coal mining regions of Wales and Northern England, then to Canada, particularly among British immigrants there.
Originally published by Howard Baker Press, London, in 1981, this revised 2008 version includes new material, and reveals disturbing new information about battlefield executions by firing squads that was only recently released from British official records long held secret from the public. It adds even more poignancy to the story of how thousands of patriotic ‘bantams’ -- not much taller than a rifle themselves -- well below the army’s 5ft. 3ins. minimum regulation height, flocked to the colours.
Canadian military historian Sidney Allinson's researches took him off on a three-year quest for information, journeying across Britain, Canada, the U.S., and the old battlefields of Flanders. He contacted over 300 survivors of the Bantams, to gather the many first-hand accounts of battle told in his book.
It also recreates the social conditions in Britain and Canada during the First World War. Patriotic fervour enabled many famed British regiments to recruit eager volunteers for bantam-designated battalions. English and Scottish Bantams fought along the Somme front, while Welsh Bantams helped win the Battle of Bourlon despite hideously large casualties. In Canada, the 216th Bantam (Toronto) Battalion was recruited within a few weeks, and the 143rd B.C. Bantams was quickly raised on Vancouver Island. Soldiers from both these now-forgotten Canadian units served at Vimy Ridge and in other later battles.
"The Bantams" has been recognized as an important new volume of original military research into the Great War of 1914-1918. Allinson served overseas in the Royal Air Force, and is a past director of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, Toronto. He now lives in Victoria, British Columbia, where he is Chairman of the Pacific Coast Branch of the Western Front Association. Contact him at: allsid@shaw.ca

For a free sample chapter, go here:
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=22708