Mud and Green Fields: The Memoirs of Major-General George Kitching

Sidney Allinson is the editor at the Royal Canadian Military Institute
and author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

“Gentlemanly writing” is so rare these days that one feels obliged
to place the term between quotation marks. This author’s style is like
that, telling an often grim story with effortless grace and polite
understatement.

George Kitching was one of Canada’s most distinguished soldiers. He
graduated from Sandhurst and served in the British army for eight years,
much of it in the Far East. His stories of peacetime army life there
read now like something out of Somerset Maugham. He had resigned his
commission and settled in Montreal when World War II broke out. He
promptly joined the Royal Regiment of Canada as a second lieutenant, and
subsequently served with such ability that he rose to the rank of
general and commanded a full division by war’s end.

Along the way, Kitching takes us behind the closed doors of high-staff
meetings, and recounts the foibles of the famous: Winston Churchill,
Generals Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Simonds, and Crerar—Kitching
met them all. During the fighting in Sicily and Italy, he was senior
staff officer, then commander of the 1st Canadian Division. Transferred
to Northwest Europe, he commanded the 4th Canadian Armoured Division in
the battle of Normandy. Later, he was chief of staff of the 1st Canadian
Corps, in Italy and the Netherlands, and had the considerable
satisfaction of being present when the German army surrendered.

Kitching served on with the Canadian army after the war, but resigned
in the face of political interference. In 1965 the proud and separate
three service arms were amalgamated to suit former defence minister Paul
Hellyer’s erratic aim of “avoiding duplication.” As Kitching
gently points out in closing, one result was that today’s Canadian
Armed Forces have more officers and NCOs than privates.