Second to None: The Fighting 58th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force

Tim Cook is the World War I historian at the Canadian War Museum. He is
the author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War.

Although 260 infantry battalions were raised in Canada during World War
I, most of them were disbanded to create a reinforcement pool for the
battered battalions already in the line. The men who served in one of
the 48 battalions that formed the infantry arm of the Canadian Corps had
intense loyalty to these units. The battalion was the infantryman’s
family.

After the war, surviving members wrote or commissioned histories to
document the role of the battalion and its men. Between 1919 and 1938,
more than two dozen full-length histories were published. Because it was
so difficult to find suitable historians or raise enough money to
produce a coherent work, however, many battalions failed to produce one.

The 58th Battalion was one of those units. But now, more than 80 years
after the end of the war, Kevin Shackleton has followed in the long
tradition of regimental histories and fashioned an excellent book that
documents both the battalion and the men who formed it. Driven by the
desire to know more about his grandfather’s role in the war,
Shackleton embarked on the laborious task of pulling together the
thousands of threads that formed the experience of war for the 58th
Battalion. But this is far from old-fashioned military history.
Shackleton produces the right mixture of military tactics and personal
stories. Moreover, this is a history that sheds new light on the
experience of battle. Second to None is highly recommended for all
public and academic libraries.