Hook-Up!: The Canadian Airborne Compendium

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

Airborne forces have a unique mystique about them, and none more so than
Canada’s own Airborne units, whose gallant exploits are now
regrettably little-known even in their own country. Since their origin
early in World War II, and through several Korean battles, Canadian army
paratroopers have played an important military role, equally effective
as tough combat soldiers and resolute peacekeepers. Hook-Up! summarizes
how proficient they have been and are to this day.

Authors Bernd Horn and Michel Wyczynski are both career soldiers and
leading authorities on Airborne forces’ history. Hook-Up! covers the
origins, training, and military operations of Canada’s elite Airborne
troops in a series of carefully researched lists, itemized and dated to
present a chronological record. Comparisons with similar units in other
countries are provided in a chronology of international airborne
operations. Entries are compiled from personal accounts, unit war
diaries, military histories, and museum files. Included is a brief,
unflinching account of the tragic events in Somalia that led to the
disbandment of the Airborne Regiment by nervous civilian bureaucrats in
Ottawa. Also included are a bibliography of related books and journals
and a glossary of Airborne terminology.

The cover blurb calls Hook-Up! “[t]he first definitive reference on
the Canadian Airborne forces.” Readers will find that it delivers well
on that promise.