The Longest Battle: The Royal Canadian Navy in the Atlantic, 1939-1945

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and co-author
of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Shadows of War, Faces
of Peace: Canada’s Peacekeepers.

The Royal Canadian Navy’s struggle to defeat the Nazi U-boats in the
Battle of the Atlantic has become part of Canadian legend. Raw Prairie
farmboys, the story goes, put to sea and whipped the Hun and the
elements in short order. Would that it were so. Instead the struggle was
long and bloody, and not until late 1943 did the RCN begin to exert its
full weight with success. This book is a celebration, not an analysis,
and its scrapbook style, with photos and generally light comment, lends
a nostalgic tinge to the battle. There is much here on the ships,
sailors, and officers, on the Wrens, and even on the enemy and his
submarines. Harbron served in the navy at the end of the war, and his
book shows an old salt’s affection for the days of his youth.