Soldiers Made Me Look Good: A Life in the Shadow of War.

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and author of
War and Peacekeeping and For Better or For Worse.

There are only three Canadian generals with a present-day high profile: Rick Hillier, Roméo Dallaire, and Lewis MacKenzie; Dallaire and MacKenzie have written books, and Hillier is said to be writing his. Amazing. MacKenzie’s latest book covers his life and career except for his peacekeeping service, covered in his first memoir. Here he talks of growing up, schooling, girls, racing, and his differences of opinion with General Dallaire. MacKenzie says an officer must put his men before his mission, and he cites his refusal to follow a United Nations order to use force to get supplies into Sarajevo in 1992. He had too few men for the job and he knew the only result would be casualties. In Rwanda, by contrast, Mackenzie argues that Dallaire put mission before men and chose to follow U.N. orders to fire only if fired upon. That, MacKenzie says, led to the death of Belgian soldiers who might have been saved if Dallaire had used his small forces more effectively and chosen to pay no attention to orders from New York. The account is, frankly, devastating, and so is MacKenzie’s critique of Carol Off’s The Lion, The Fox, and the Eagle, which effectively accused MacKenzie of using Bosnian girls as sex slaves. There is nothing left of Off when MacKenzie finishes. “General Lew,” as many know him, fights hard and fair, and he wins. He writes very well, too.