Royal Canadian Military Institute Year Book 1983

Stafford Johnston was a freelance reviewer living in Mitchell, Ontario.

The editor of the annual published by the Royal Canadian Military Institute enjoys an advantage that other editors and publishers will envy. He has available several hundred Institute members who are certified experts in the field of military history. In the 1983 edition, for example, members persuaded to contribute include Col. C.P. Stacey and Lt. Col. Kenneth Bell. Col. Stacey was director of the Historical Section of the Canadian Army and author of two volumes of the three-volume official history of Canada in World War II. Ken Bell was the young army photographer who landed with the assault wave on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and survived to go back 25 years later to photograph the same places and some of the same people for his book of then-and-now pictures, Not in Vain.

Articles of value to students of military history in this 1983 edition include “Some Died at Ortona,” a first-hand report by Col. Strome Galloway of Canadian infantry action in Italy in the autumn of 1943, and “The Canadian Bantams,” an account by Sidney Allinson of the two battalions of volunteers recruited in 1916 who were below the army’s minimum height standard. For the Bantam units, one from Toronto and one from Victoria, B.C., the height standard was five feet, and recruits had to be at least 22 years old. The Bantams proved that courage can come in small packages. Colour photographs used in the RCMI publication are beautifully reproduced.