One Village, One War, 1914-1945

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

With few exceptions, communities throughout Canada, whether large or
small, have dedicated a memorial to those who served and died in the
20th-century wars. The small (pop. 800) village of Dorchester, N.B., is
no exception. Native son Douglas How, a journalist, war correspondent,
and editor, has taken the 41 names carved in the village war memorial
and tells the story of these soldiers and their families, whose lives
were changed forever by the wars.

How has included every citizen in this village biography, sometimes
with encyclopedic reference. Dorchester men, and sometimes women, appear
in the trenches of the Somme and at the heights of Vimy, in North
African deserts and on Normandy beaches, in German skies and North
Atlantic waters, and even fighting for the German Wehrmacht in Russia.
The most fascinating entry involves Gottfried Klotz, a member of a
German immigrant family who received his schooling in Dorchester, went
back to Germany with his family in 1938, and enlisted in Hitler’s
army. His return to Dorchester in 1988 reunited him with classmates he
had not seen for 50 years.

The author explores several interesting themes: the reluctance of
returning servicemen to speak of their wartime experiences; the “guilt
of survival” felt by many who saw comrades killed in action; the high
regard with which Canadian soldiers were held by military and political
leaders from other nations; the inability of two wars to bring English-
and French-speaking Canadians together.

There is a great deal of original research in this book, and it is
unfortunate that How did not include a bibliography or any kind of
notation. There is also no index. The resulting lack of sources
inevitably limits the usefulness of this fine work of Canadian social
history.