The Royal Canadian Armored Corps: An Illustrated History

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

The publication of this superbly detailed, well-organized, and
beautifully printed unit history coincides with the 60th anniversary of
the formation of the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps (RCAC). A
large-format coffee-table book, it is lavishly illustrated with hundreds
of color plates, photographs, and maps, plus numerous technical drawings
of armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs). Both authors are ex-cavalrymen
(Marteinson served with the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps for 35 years,
and Michael McNorgan is a Royal Canadian Dragoon with over 30 years
service in the RCAC), and their personal enthusiasm for and knowledge of
the topic shines through on every page.

Though most of the book deals with AFVs, it makes a dramatic beginning
by first covering the RCAC’s origins as horse-mounted cavalry units
whose roots go back 180 years. Those early years are particularly
romantic, with the RCAC’s horse-borne ancestors serving dashingly in
the War of 1812, Riel Rebellion, and the Second Anglo-Boer War. However,
the book mostly covers the modern technological era, starting in the
First World War, when the earliest tanks came clanking onto
battlefields. But even then, cavalry regiments charged on horseback in
numerous gallant but doomed charges against machine guns and massed
artillery.

The authors provide a detailed explanation of the emergence of AFVs and
the organization that developed to fully employ these new weapons.
Canada was an early innovator of armoured vehicles—notably the
“Armoured Autocar” of Brutinel’s 1st Motor Machine Gun Brigade.
Marteinson and McNorgan describe how armoured vehicle innovations
evolved rapidly to meet the needs of combat in the Second World War, the
historical period that forms the bulk their book. Well-deserved praise
is accorded Lt. Col. Frank “Worthy” Worthington, pioneer creator of
our nation’s tank forces despite initial indifference in Ottawa.
Eventually, Canadian armoured units grew to a sizable force of 30,000
troops who took part in almost every major World War II battle. This
first-rate illustrated history closes 50 years later with a depiction of
tankers serving as peacekeepers in Bosnia, still out there on the sharp
end like their valiant predecessors.