The role of Canadian universities in selecting and training officers for the armed forces is an important yet overlooked chapter in the history of higher education in Canada. For more than fifty years, the University of Toronto supported the largest and most active contingent of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC), which sent thousands of officer candidates into the regular and reserve forces.Based on the rich fund of documents housed in the university archives, Varsit...

There could be no truer witness to the enormity of the First World War and its terrible cost in lives than the memorials and war cemeteries along the old Western Front. In Canada, no less than in the other dominions of the British Empire, the war left a conflicting legacy of pride and sorrow that endures to this day.The soaring Vimy Memorial, the Brooding Soldier, and the monuments honouring Canada’s significant contribution to the Allied victory symbolize the spirit of shared sacr...

The Second Battle of Ypres was, by any definition, a brutal event in a brutal war. The already terrible conditions of trench warfare, punctuated by the unimaginable horror of shell fire that turned men into “pink mist,” became even worse when the Germans introduced chlorine gas. But despite the terror, the battle marked a key moment in the formation of Canadian identity and pride. After the Germans’ initial gas attack opened a 12-kilometre-long hole in Allied lines, it was the heroic 1st C...

Between 15,000 and 20,000 underage youths, some as young as ten, signed up to fight in Canada's armed forces in the First World War. They served in the trenches alongside their elders, and fought in all the major battles: Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge, and the rest. Many were injured or suffered psychological wounds. Many died. This is the first book to tell their story.Some boys joined up to escape unhappy homes and workplaces. Others went with their parents' blessin...

On 22 April 1915, the men of the 1st Canadian Division faced chlorine gas, a new lethal weapon against which they had no defence. In defiance of a particularly horrible death, or, at the very least, severe lung injury, these untested Canadians fought almost continuously for four days, often hand-to-hand, as they clung stubbornly against overwhelming odds to a vital part of the Allied line after the French units on their left fled in panic. By doing so, they saved 50,000 troops in the Ypres...

Unforgettable tales of heroism, bravery and escape—the remarkable true stories of Canadian soldiers and civilians lost behind enemy lines during the Second World War.The Forgotten tells the story of more than 10,000 Canadian servicemen, merchant mariners and civilians for whom the war ended in surrender, capture, imprisonment or escape, as seen through the eyes of a group of men who struggled to survive in Hitler's Europe. Among them were Private Stan Darc...

In May of 1941 New Zealand?s citizen soldiers, not long removed from their day jobs, were thrust into a type of fighting the world had not seen before: a land force against an airborne invasion. It was man against machines. In many ways, Crete became in the Second World War what Gallipoli had been in the First: another Dunkirk ? a scrambling effort to survive after defeat. This book breathes new life into the baptism of fire for New Zealand?s men of valour. It puts a human face on a milita...

The First World War seems to have touched almost every family in Britain. Most people will have had a relative in their family tree that served in the armed forces between 1914 and 1918. Unfortunately this is no longer living memory but has slipped into recorded history. There is now resurgence in interest as the centenary is commemorated and many people realize they know so little about the war that was supposed to end all wars. How did it start? Why was Britain involved? Who were our all...

On the morning of April 9, 1917, troops of the Canadian Corps under General Julian Byng attacked the formidable German defences of Vimy Ridge. Since then, generations of Canadians have shared a deep emotional attachment to the battle, inspired partly by the spectacular memorial on the battlefield. Although the event is considered central in Canadian military history, most people know very little about what happened during that memorable Easter in northern France.Vimy Ridge: A C...

Diary and letters of Captain Henry Evelyn Arthur Platt including his time at Eton, Sandhurst and in the First World War where he served as a Captain in the 19th Hussars before transferring to the Coldstream Guards after a dispute with his Major over the safety of his men. He describes life in the Cavalry, how he was gassed in May 1915, and life in the trenches.He was killed in action near Ypres in May 1916.The book is illustrated with maps and photographs, and includes biog...

On 1 July 1916, after a five-day bombardment, 11 British and 5 French divisions launched their long-awaited 'Big Push' on German positions on high ground above the Rivers Ancre and Somme on the Western Front. Some ground was gained, but at a terrible cost. In killing-grounds whose names are indelibly imprinted on 20th-century memory, German machine-guns – manned by troops who had sat out the storm of shellfire in deep dugouts – inflicted terrible losses on the British infantry.The ...

A critical overview of the French infantry tactics which made them masters of Europe but eventually resulted in their defeat at Waterloo.Bonaparte's Grande Armée, one of the most renowned battle-winning machines in history, evolved from a merging of the professional army of the Ancien Régime and the volunteers and conscripts of the Revolutionary levée en masse – although the contribution of the former is often underestimated. A leading authority on the history of t...