Book Reviews

Wounded By Eric Walters. Toronto: Puffin Canada, 2009

Review by Lt (Rt) A. George Fells

Marcus (full name Marcus Aurelius Campbell) lives in somewhat dilapidated housing - "Why did it have to be my room that leaked?" - on a Canadian Forces base in Canada with his younger sister, Megan, still at junior school, and his mother, working at the local Wal-Mart to keep herself busy.  They are waiting for their father, a Captain in the Special Forces, to return from his second mission in Afghanistan.  Marcus' girlfriend, Courtney O'Hearn, also has a father who is a Captain there, but he's a "loggie" (logistics) and not in active combat.

The Campbell family count the days till Dad's tour of duty will be over.  "Megan walked over to the calendar and took the black marker that was hanging beside it.  She put a big black X through the number 29.  Only 28 days left.  I could remember when it was 275".

The story is told by Marcus, who in his teens tries to assume the role left vacant by Dad's absence.  And most of the time he does it proudly.  As they count down the days they wait anxiously for phone calls (but not THE phone call) and Emails.  The days tick by.

A Strange and Formidable Weapon: British Responses to World War I Poison Gas  by Marion Girard. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2008

Through the Wheat: the U.S. Marines in World War I. by Edwin Simmons and Joseph Alexander. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2008

Review by Colonel John M. Linsenmeyer

Our column on the horrible war which ended exactly ninety years ago this Veterans ("Armistice") Day begins with a book on one of the things which made that war among the worst for the average soldier: poison gas.  While revisionist historians can quibble about who was or wasn't responsible in 1914-18 for this or that, there is no doubt that the Imperial German Army unleashed this new horror for the first time on the British Army at Ypres, Belgium, at 5:30 pm on April 22, 1915.  Professor Girard's excellent book describes exactly what its subtitle promises, ‘British responses to World War I poison gas.'

Only two days later, on April 24, 1915, a unit of Canadian soldiers in the British line became the first to withstand a gas attack successfully.  Although many were killed, "enough, armed with jerry-rigged masks of vinegar-soaked handkerchiefs, stood in place and fought off the attack."  Thereafter, as this interesting story of the good guys' response to a new and terrifying weapon shows, the whole saga of escalating savagery turned out badly for the Germans.  Why?  Because the British were simply better at employing civilian and military scientific resources to keep pace with the development of increasingly awful chemical weapons: lethal chlorine gas, phosgene, and mustard gas which blistered any exposed skin as well as destroying the lungs and poisoning the very ground for days.

Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

Review by Colonel John M. Linsenmeyer

One of the curious, and often endearing, things about our British cousins is the way they glorify and even romanticize their occasional military catastrophes.  Is there any war poem more familiar than Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" - - "Theirs not to make reply /Theirs not to reason why... /Into the jaws of death/Into the mouth of hell/Rode the Six Hundred."  Yet that was a screw-up by Lord Cardigan, a snobbish general so incompetent he was noticed even in the Crimean War.

So too it seems is the 1940 forced evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (minus, of course, numerous fatalities, many wounded and the heroic Army doctors who volunteered, yes volunteered, to stay with them and enjoy the hospitality of the Third Reich's POW camps, and the equally heroic soldiers who were left behind to cover the retreat and evacuation).  To most people moderately familiar with the history of World War Two, say "Dunkirk" and the image which pops to mind is that of the valiant civilian yachtsmen, pleasure boaters and ferry operators who sailed across the Channel to the beaches around the French port of Dunkerque, about midway between Calais and the Belgian border.