The Price of Command: A Biography of General Guy Simonds

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

This is a meticulous biography of Lieutenant-General Guy Granville
Simonds. Despite the support he received from the Simonds Biography
Committee of the Royal Canadian Artillery Association, Graham had his
work cut out for him. Simonds died in 1974, leaving few private papers
behind.

Simonds’s childhood, as described by Graham, tells us much about his
later motivations as a career soldier. Brilliant, accomplished, yet
apparently distant in manner, he had a promising career in the small
world of Canada’s Permanent Force army between the wars.

Graham describes how Simonds, “the perfect staff officer,” moved
rapidly up the army ladder, despite occasional backstabbing by rivals.
Whether showing mastery of artillery tactics in two European campaigns,
or fending off the politics of his superiors, he served Canada well in
war and later was appointed Chief of the General Staff. The manual of
executive-survival skills implicit in this book suggests that the price
of command comes high indeed.