The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps: An Illustrated History

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom and The History of Fort St. Joseph, and the co-author of
Invisible and Inaudible in Washington: American

This is a beautiful as well as highly informative book, replete with
artists’ sketches, maps, photographs, and prose. Without the corporate
sponsorships, it would undoubtedly have cost considerably more than the
$69.95 indicated on the cover.

The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps Association commissioned this book to
mark the 60th anniversary of its creation in August 1940. A foreword by
Desmond Morton introduces 20 chapters of Canadian land-based military
history, with Chapters 4 through 16 dealing with aspects of World War II
(but not air or naval warfare). Beginning in 1759, it skims through the
War of Independence, the War of 1812, the Fenian Raids, the South
African campaign, and World War I. Focusing on World War II, the authors
find the unfortunate soldiers who participated in the Dieppe raid to
have been heroic, but they are less charitable toward the
less-than-competent British officers who organized—and Canadian
officers who acquiesced in—Operation Jubilee. Whatever “lessons”
the Allies learned from this experience, say Marteinson and McNorgan,
could have been learned less painfully. Five chapters deal with
Canada’s role in the Italian campaign, two with the Battle of
Normandy, three with the liberation of the Netherlands.

The final four chapters say little about Canadian involvement in
Vietnam’s International Control Commission but considerably more about
the defence of West Germany, the CAST operation in defence of Norway,
the Korean War, and such UN peacekeeping operations as the Middle East,
Cyprus, Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia.

It is possible to quibble over some of the authors’ terms. Was
Versailles really a “negotiated treaty” or an Anglo-American-French
ultimatum to the fledgling Weimar Republic? Was Tito really
“ruthless” throughout the 35 years when he was Yugoslavia’s head
of government? Notwithstanding these limitations, the book is a major
contribution to Canadian military history. Marteinson and McNorgan have
written a description of what Canadian soldiers did once they were at
the scene of the action, not a diplomatic history that explains why
Canada became involved in any of these conflicts.