History of the 31st Canadian Infantry Battalion C.D.F.

Tim Cook is the transport archivist at the Government Archives and
Records Disposition Division, National Archives of Canada, and the
author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War.

The 31st Battalion from southern Alberta was one of 50 front-line infantry battalions in the Great War. It served with the 2nd Division from 1915 to its disbandment in 1919, with 4,487 men passing through its ranks. Of those men, 385 won decorations and awards, while 941 were killed and another 2,312 suffered non-fatal wounds.

The author, Horace Singer, did not serve with the battalion, but he spent six years researching and writing its history in the 1930s. This workmanlike account offers deep insight into the battles, actions, and experiences of Canadians at war through the lens of the battalion, but also with valuable information on the higher direction of the war. Originally published in 1938, Singer’s history has long been out of print and Darrell Knight, a former decorated paratrooper from Calgary, has done a great service in editing and reissuing it for a broader readership. Regimental publications like this are strange beasts: for many years they were the guarded holdings of veterans and generally seen as eclectic works of limited value. More recent scholarship suggests, however, that this genre—and Singer’s history of the 31st Battalion is a very good example of the genre—contains much that is unavailable in other contemporary publications. Unique observations from veterans, as well as detailed accounts of actions and much of the inaction of the war (such as the boredom of trench warfare on the Western Front) provide a window into the lives of Canadians at war. Equally important, Singer’s work will be of great value to genealogists attempting to track down the experiences of family members who served in the “War to End all Wars.” With this in mind, it is ironic that this book may reach a broader readership now, with all of the 31st Battalion veterans dead, than in the 1930s.