At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1914–1916, Vol. 1.

Serge Durflinger is a professor specializing in Canadian military and
diplomatic history at the University of Ottawa.

Even 90 years after its ending, the First World War continues to reverberate in the collective consciousness of Canadians. The horrors of the trenches—both actual and perceived—have become metaphors for pain and suffering. Tim Cook, one of Canada’s leading military historians, has richly added to our understanding of these events with an extraordinarily evocative and passionately rendered account of the Canadians’ experiences in the front lines from 1914 to 1916.

Perhaps Cook’s main message is that war is first, foremost, and fundamentally about people. He also makes it clear that Canada’s citizen-soldiers, following some dismal and costly setbacks at Festubert and Mount Sorrel, grew to excel at their craft and, by 1916, waged war as effectively as anyone else. He tells us that Canadian successes were “shaped by technology, tactics, command, discipline, and morale,” and all these factors are fully detailed within their evolving chronological contexts. Part narrative, part sympathetic testimonial, the book succeeds on both levels.

Cook deftly bridges the gap here between scholarly and popular history and treats the reader to the robust verdicts of a professional academic delivered in lively, compelling prose. Expertly interweaving a vast array of published and primary sources, including many mined here for the first time, Cook delivers a raw, unvarnished, intense view of the war. Battlefield deaths, arriving in ghastly circumstances and in large numbers, unsurprisingly frequently dominate the storyline. For example, when the Canadians arrived in the Ypres Salient early in 1915, “a foul-smelling mist hung over the area, charged with the … pungent sharpness of rotting men with abdominal gases escaping from their distended and bloated bodies.”         Divided into numerous short chapters amply supported by useful illustrations and maps, At the Sharp End is an information-packed, often emotive means of revisiting life and death on the Western Front. It’s all here: the weapons, food, uniforms and kit, camaraderie, trench culture, mud, rats, lice, snipers, blood, and terror; so, too, are the harrowing tales, pained anguish, and grim futility. Cook’s second volume, treating the men’s experiences in 1917–18, is much anticipated.