J. L. Granatstein - The Best Little Army In The World

By the end of the war, having paid a steep price in blood for the peacetime neglect of military professionalism, [First Canadian Army] was probably the best little army in the world. Certainly in the performance of the Canadian Army overseas the government of Canada got much more than it deserved.

LCol (ret.) Dr. John A. English, Lament for an Army: The Decline of Canadian Military Professionalism

CANADIAN LANDINGS ON D-DAY

June 6, 1944

THE NORTHERN FRONT

OctoberNovember 1944

THE RHINELAND

FebruaryMarch 1945

THE FINAL PHASE

MarchMay 1945

VICTORY IN EUROPE

June 6, 1944May 8, 1945

Maps by Dawn Huck

I t is now more than seventy-five years since the Second World War began and Canada went to war on September 10, 1939. The nation had been mired in a long economic depression, hundreds of thousands of men and women were unemployed, and there was no great enthusiasm for going to war. The memories of the casualties and losses of the Great War of 191418 remained fresh, but there was in Canadastill very much a British dominionthe certainty that the United Kingdom was right in all circumstances, and that if England felt compelled to do so, London was right to fight Hitler. Then, if Britain was at war, Canada had to be at her side. Independent in law she may have been since the Statute of Westminster of 1931, but in practice Canada remained a psychological colony.

The next six years can only be characterized as a mixed blessing for Canadians. The national economy boomed, there were jobs for everyone, and living standards improved even after rationing and controls were put in place by Ottawa. The nation mobilized a huge military force10 percent of the 11 million total Canadian population. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) went from effectively nothing to 250,000 men, manning a full bomber group and countless fighter, fighter-bomber, and transport squadrons in Europe, Asia, and at home. The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), again from a standing start, increased its strength to 100,000, and by wars end had convoyed across the North Atlantic half of the merchant vessels that supplied Britain. In addition, the RCN crewed aircraft carriers, cruisers, Tribal destroyers, minesweepers, and dozens of corvettes. These were amazing achievements.

The Canadian Army expanded by even more. In all, 750,000 men enlisted in the Army, almost all of them volunteers for service anywhere. The troops had to learn their new trade on the job, and there were very few competent instructors in the tiny Permanent Force (PM), or the Saturday-night soldiers, of the militia. Initially, there werent even boots or helmets for all the men, let alone rifles, tanks, artillery, or Bren guns. But as the war went on, battalions, brigades, divisions, and corps took shape, and the Canadian Army built up a large force in England, initially to defend the British Isles but then to prepare for the invasion of Northwest Europe.

There was a disastrous deployment of a two-battalion brigade to Hong Kong, lost entirely to a Japanese attack in December 1941. There was the disastrous raid on Dieppe in August 1942, when few men made it off the beaches and few who got ashore at all made it back to England. And in mid-1943, soon after the creation of First Canadian Army in England, with five divisions and two armoured brigades, there was the dispatch of the 1st Canadian Division and the 1st Armoured Brigade to fight in the invasion of Sicily as part of the British Eighth Army. That deployment had, by the end of 1943, expanded into a two-division corps, splitting the Army, and leaving three divisions and an armoured brigade under its direct command in England. First Canadian Army would not be reunited until March 1945.

The costly Italian Campaign was, sadly, something of a sideshow, especially so after D-Day, the invasion of Normandy by the British, Americans, and Canadians. The 3rd Canadian Division, supported by the 2nd Armoured Brigade, distinguished itself on D-Day, and it fought long and hard through the Norman villages and the cities of Carpiquet and Caen. The 2nd Canadian Infantry and 4th Canadian Armoured divisions joined it in France in July, and in August First Canadian Army played a major role in closing the Falaise Gap in the face of fierce opposition from the best German panzer divisions.

But there was much criticism, then and since, that the Canadians were slow in sewing the Falaise Pocket closed, and that they were laggard in taking the Channel ports in September. Even the Canadians stellar, gruelling performance in clearing the Scheldt estuary, thus opening Antwerp to the shipping that the Allies desperately needed, won few kudos. Nor did the Canadians role in the Rhineland, in crossing the Rhine, and in liberating the Netherlands win much praise (except from the ever-grateful Dutch). First Canadian Army was the Cinderella army, spattered with mud but with no gallant prince to sweep it off to glory.

The argument of this book is that First Canadian Army, with its 185,000 soldiers, backed up by many more in the lines of communication and in England and Canada, became the best little army in the world in 194445. There were no Canadians with field marshals batons in their knapsacks, only officers without battle experience who learned how to fight and defeat a skilful, determined enemy. Few soldiers would win the Victoria Cross, but there was enough gallantry and courage to go around, enough brave men to lead their platoons, companies, and battalions to victory. There were even public relations officers who somehow failed at the task of convincing the world that First Canadian Army truly mattered.

This was unfortunate because in the First World War, the Canadian Corps had earned and established an extraordinary reputation as the shock troops of the British Expeditionary Force. Under Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, the Corps defeated a quarter of the German army in the final Hundred Days offensive. Its lustre remains undiminished, even for usually critical historians in Britain and Australia.

There is no such renown for First Canadian Army, but there should be. Its unblooded divisions fought much better in Normandy than the critics concede, and it faced tough opposition in the fortified ports on the English Channel. But the soldiers learned how to defeat a formidable enemy, and the Canadians proved themselves on the Scheldt, where, in the most miserable muddy, cold conditions imaginable, they opened the great river to the port of Antwerp while paying a terrible price in blood. It took the Canadians timeand a great conscription crisis at hometo fill their ranks again, but in the Rhineland, in crossing the Rhine, and in the Netherlands and northern Germany, the Army performed with dash, courage, and great skill. General Harry Crerar, the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of First Canadian Army, was no Currie in battlefield smarts, but he provided competent and sound leadership. The commander of II Canadian Corps, Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, was arguably the best, most imaginative Allied corps commander, and division commanders like Bert Hoffmeister and Bruce Matthews, as well as brigade commanders such as Robert Moncel, James Roberts, and John Rockingham, were as good as or better than any in the British or U.S. armies. All five of those last mentioned were militiamen, not professional soldiers; all five learned under fire, on the job, how to beat the enemy.