Shoestring Soldiers: The 1st Canadian Division at War, 1914–1915.

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 Great War remains a focal point of interest for scholars. In Shoestring Soldiers, Andrew Iarocci adds significantly to our understanding of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Iarocci’s extensive research into archival collections in Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as a keen appreciation for the terrain of the Western Front that he has walked numerous times as a guide of battlefield tours, allows him to reappraise multiple aspects of the early history of the Canadian fighting forces. The accepted story of the Canadians is that they were a ragtag army of misfits who were forged in the fire of their first major engagement, the Battle of Second Ypres in April 1915. Iarocci challenges this assertion, and with evidence marshalled from war diaries, official records, and eyewitness accounts, he argues the Canadians were better trained than most contemporaries or historians have given them credit for. The chapters on training are now the definitive work in print for this time period.

The author ably pivots from training in England over the winter of 1914–15 to the major battles on the Western Front. Iarocci offers some new interpretations of Second Ypres, although there is already a rich historiography of this battle. Perhaps most important, Shoestring Soldiers critically assesses the German forces opposite the Canadians. In his coverage of Second Ypres and the Battle of Festubert in May 1915, Iarocci highlights the other Canadian combat arms beyond the infantry and artillery, especially engineers and logistical units, which deepens our understanding of the nature of the fighting at this point in the war. This is a book for generalists and specialists: the former will profit from this superb introduction to the Canadian Division fighting in the first year of the war, and the latter will be indebted to Iarocci for much groundbreaking scholarship and bold conclusions.