Canadian Military History

Volume 21 Issue 2 Article 7

2015

Autobiography and Biography The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

J.L. Granatstein

Dean F. Oliver

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Recommended Citation J.L. Granatstein and Dean F. Oliver "Autobiography and Biography The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History." Canadian Military History 21, 2 (2015)

This Canadian War Museum is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. and : Autobiography and Biography The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

Autobiography and Biography The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

J.L. Granatstein and Dean F. Oliver

CMH Editors’ Introduction Authors’ Introduction

he publication of The Oxford e had hoped that the Companion TCompanion to Canadian Wmight actually be read - and Military History last year was a therefore thought about and argued milestone for military history studies over. It would, of course, have more in . Its formidable size – mundane purposes – trivia trove, 514 large-format pages with seven course primer, paper weight – but hundred or more entries, ranging we had envisaged, pompously no from about 200 to about 3500 words doubt, a whole more useful, more – gives a sense of the depth and stimulating than the sum of its parts. diversity of the field. The book is also More provocative too? Perhaps, a rich resource on the development of scholarship. In addition to their vast Résumé : L’histoire constitue le dossier reading in the established literature, d’un peuple. Mais que savons-nous des individus – importants ou non, célèbres ou non – qui ont peuplé le Abstract: History is a people’s record. passé militaire du Canada? Bien peu de So, what do we know of the people – choses si l’on se base sur une évaluation great and not-so-great, famous and judicieuse du matériel produit jusqu’à not-so-much – who populate Canada’s the authors have taken particular maintenant. Rares sont les soldats military past? The answer, based on any qui ont écrit le récit de leurs actions care to draw on the most recent reasonable assessment of the material et encore moins nombreux sont les produced thus far, is precious little. Few books. Your editors suggested to the témoins qui ont mis ces sujets au jour soldiers have written their own tales authors that they might reprint in dans la littérature grand public relatant and still fewer witnesses have drawn this journal some of the innovative le passé du pays. Les raisons de ces such subjects from obscurity into the entries that bring fresh perspectives déficiences sont complexes et dignes mainstream narrative of the nation’s de susciter des études davantage on older work and provide context for past. The reasons are complex, and détaillées. Quant aux résultats, ils vont worthy of more detailed study in their current scholarship. We are grateful de soi et sont consternants : omissions own right. The results are depressingly to them for “making it so,” graciously déplorables, mythes non contestés, self-evident: frustrating omissions; asking us to choose the articles, and silences accablants. Les deux ouvrages unchallenged mythologies; damning providing further reflections on their qui suivent constituent cependant silences. The dual entries that follow des exceptions : ce sont des bijoux work. We are also grateful to the also highlight obvious exceptions - gems autobiographique ou d’interprétation, of autobiography or interpretation, publishers, Oxford University Press et des réalisations institutionnelles institutional achievements in research and the Canadian War Museum, for en recherche ou édition. Les auteurs or publishing. The authors had current permission to reprint. The articles avaient en tête de vrais soldats, soldiers, stewards, and scholars below are the first in a series that will responsables ou savants et ils ne s’en unapologetically in mind. Who will tell sont pas excusés. Qui racontera votre appear from time to time. your stories, if not you? histoire si ce n’est pas vous?

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but within careful, well-calibrated impact on knowledge and boundaries. We wrote several of understanding of the military past, the longer pieces, including those is more easily described than it is that follow, more as evaluations explained. The relative dearth of than as narratives: mini-essays, in military autobiography is a substantial other words, and not just extended impoverishment to the exploration entries. It seemed important to scan of leadership and operations, and gaps, to acknowledge failures, to leaves the personal record of wartime highlight excellence. Military history experience with frustrating gaps. Air (and those who make it) could stand and naval warfare, home defence, more humility and self-awareness senior command in all periods, the than breathless amateurism, willful Cold War, Korea, women in war, neglect, or selective memory have First Nations, and peacekeeping are sometimes allowed; it could stand among the most notable weaknesses. greater profile too, even centrality at Memoirs, diaries, and collections of times. How to temper one but spur letters exist in abundance for the the other? The Companion looked world wars, and in lesser but still cautiously forward. Especially in its quite substantial numbers for the explorations of extant scholarship more numerous, but these can be eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its enthusiasm for critical depth, of little help to the lay reader to but rarely in published form, and – for honesty, for reinvention, it plotted whom, even in an age of digitized among older accounts – almost none actively and with delight its own records and on-line documents, they remain in print. If the Northwest impending obsolescence. We could often remain physically inaccessible Rebellion of 1885 were taken as always be wrong (and often were). and intellectually disjointed. When a case in point, key personalities But we did hope to be useful. lacking the context and explanatory either died before writing their own narrative that good autobiography reflections on life and war (Louis usually provides, unpublished Riel), were illiterate and spoke only Autobiography, Military work waits for its discovery and through an interpreter (Gabriel contextualization by the spelunking Dumont), or left no autobiography ew veterans in Canada have of full-time historians, whether at all, save campaign accounts Fcommitted their memories to professional or amateur. Personal of limited scope, as in the case paper in any organized fashion. experience then speaks to posterity of Sir Frederick Middleton, who Fewer still have shaped their military only through the medium of second- commanded government forces and experiences into epistolary cautions hand sages, with the authority of compiled his later notes from a series or explanations for the ages in the having been interpreted, edited, and of military lectures. Sam Steele’s form of full-length autobiographies nuanced by those who were not there. Forty Years in Canada is perhaps the – stories of their lives and times, This weakness in Canadian best more or less comprehensive as opposed to snippets, letters, or military literature, and its resulting account of a soldier’s life from this fractured recollections of specific era. Lesser examples abound, but few people, issues, or causes. of lasting historical or literary value. Of these latter, there are a great George Denison – author, militia many indeed. Most colonial officers, booster, and member of a prominent whether French or British, and and influential family, as nearly all of those in the regular well as autobiographer – speaks of forces of the new Canada were many things, of which one at least is literate, as were many of their troops. military service. Hundreds created and circulated D. Peter MacLeod’s definitive written accounts of their lives and history of the battle of the Plains of experiences in some form or other; Abraham at in 1759, Northern others were produced as letters or Armageddon, published in 2008, tells diaries or “true tales” by family a similar tale from the previous members, descendants, or historians century. MacLeod relies heavily after the fact. Unpublished letters, on autobiographical material, but diaries, and manuscripts are even not on actual autobiography. Of https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol21/iss2/770 2 and : Autobiography and Biography The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

the scores of primary accounts he In recent years, secondary ferreted out from a decade or more works, notably the award-winning of intensive primary research, most volumes of Tim Cook, At the Sharp are unavailable to the casual student End (2007) and Shock Troops (2008), or history buff without access to a and reprint series like those from major archive. The journal of John Vanwell Books in St. Catharines Knox, for example, a captain in the and CEF Books in , have 43rd Regiment of Foot, on which revisited or republished the best of MacLeod relies extensively, often these contributions, but of readable, as his only witness, was published reliable, or essential autobiography in 1769. Of the nearly five pages of there remains remarkably little. published primary sources listed Among the rank and file, Will in his bibliography, few are real Bird’s several volumes stand out autobiographies in the sense of a for their poignancy, sophistication, post-hoc recitation and evaluation and raw emotion, but even Bird’s of the writer’s life and times by the unsurpassed Ghosts Have Warm Hands writer him (or her) self. The same is is more memoir than autobiography, true of most accounts of the War of leaving – as most such contributions 1812, the rebellions of 1837–1838, the personal accounts, of which W.E.B. do – the events of war dangling, western campaigns of 1870 and 1885, Morrison’s, a gunner and future and sometimes, disconnected from and the South African War. , is a memorable exception, lives lived before and after the Reasonable hypotheses are but it nowhere matched the avalanche conflagrations they recount. not difficult to construct. A small of British material. Senior officers from the Great Permanent Force and part-time – longer, fiercer, and War would write even less than the militia produced few professional immeasurably more costly – was a men they commanded, a welcome soldiers or men-of-letters in arms; far cry from any previous Canadian trait if one thought the horrors of that the absence of major conflicts after experience. It was Canada’s first conflict fit only for interment with 1814 provided little to write about in literary war, one in which official the millions of unfortunate dead, any case; and the market for military historians, painters, propagandists, but a grand misfortune for the study tales in underdeveloped, sparsely and photographers documented the of history and for the reputations of populated Canada hardly compared nation’s great effort in arms, and those who led Canadians so well for to that of London, Washington, from which came torrents of letters, so long. Sir , Canada’s or Paris. Adventure stories and memoirs, and diaries. Whether greatest general, left his battles and celebratory biography were officially inspired or personally explanations to biographers who produced often and sold well, but derived, the literature was vast, were more or less slow in coming; to whom would Canadian military uneven, and achingly incomplete. most of his senior comrades had autobiography have appealed in the even less to say. A handful, including nineteenth century, when curious E.L.M. Burns, would later write of readers could have followed the their time in both world wars, but lives of Napoleonic-era generals and the commanders who fought Hitler admirals, the explosion of personal would prove no less tongue-tied than memoirs from the American Civil those who bested the Kaiser. War, and, increasingly, historically General H.D.G. Crerar would tinged fiction, or the recollections not see even a biography for half a of heroes from India, the Crimea, or century. , his principal the exotic battlefields of the Sudan? subordinate and chief competitor, British literature was the mark of has seen venom, ridicule, and near- breeding, culture, and the well-read, hagiography in published surveys not poorly produced Canadian of his service, but is waiting still for tomes by minor local politicians or a modern biographer or editor to part-time farmer-soldiers. Canadian explain his brilliance and punctilio participation in the South African to modern officers and the reading War produced a minor outpouring public; his incomplete draft memoir of breathless (and often self-serving) remains unpublished. The rank and

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file were both more productive and mildly foolish a proposition to most more gripping. Volumes by Farley Canadian warriors in ages past as it Mowat, George Blackburn, and might be to publishers in Charlie Martin rank among the finest more recent days. military memoirs in any country in The miasma of post-Cold War any period. conflicts into which Canadians have Senior naval and air force officers been drawn since 1989 has produced were, if anything, even more reticent much civilian debate and little with the pen than army counterparts. military elucidation. Three senior World War II produced classic and officers – Generals Roméo Dallaire, compulsively readable accounts by Lewis MacKenzie, and Hal Lawrence, Alan Easton, James – have authored excellent accounts Lamb, and Murray Peden, but not of their years in service, a welcome one by a senior of any rank. break from the past silence of their Postwar work by official historians peers, but no sailors or fliers still, and Department of National Defence– and remarkably few of the rank and funded think tanks have for many file. A historiography of Canada’s years been reconstructing personal military autobiography would be a narratives from scratch, publishing military, a quaint but acidic holdover grim, brief, and thankless read. In its in collective biographies chapter- from a century of militia fantasies, absence, there are few biographies length accounts of the senior leaders anti-professional bias, and actuarial to fill important gaps, little certainty who brought victory in 1945. Almost prudence. There was no easy place of the motivations and knowledge to a person, to most contemporary for the thinking officer or the sharp- of key historical actors at critical Canadians they are, sadly, a vast penned sailor, and few outlets junctures, and bigger challenges list of nobodies. Korea did no better, for their works. Historian George in reconstructing basic narratives and if any non-military reader of Stanley was more right than wrong from which greater, more analytical this entry can name more than one in calling Canadians an unmilitary surveys can with confidence proceed. autobiography from any armed people, at least as judged by its The field is not empty, but it is roomy service produced during the Cold literary reflections on war, peace, enough for more. War, it is a mark of rare alchemical and security and the recollections of brilliance indeed. ’s those central to a military past. In the essential autobiography is the best end, people as individuals decided, Biography, Military of a thin lot, and also one of the en masse, not to write, publish, or few French-speaking authors to espouse, but the idea of “military erious military biography in have brought his story outside the autobiography” as a lucrative or SCanada is almost a contradiction barracks. necessary field would have been as in terms, although several recent The relative anonymity of the monographs and the ongoing people who fought Canada’s wars Dictionary of Canadian Biography has little to do with their character (DCB), a project of unprecedented and much to do with the social scholarship and vision, are important milieu from which citizen-armies exceptions. sprang, and then fast returned. No The relative weakness of military serious military history was taught biographical study is not a question in Canada until well into the late of primary records, although in many twentieth century, no publishing cases scholars have been stymied houses aspired to disseminate it, by access restrictions to personal and little funding was available for papers, by the failure of many its study. Biography was widely key figures to maintain diaries or dismissed in the academy as the study autobiographical records, and by the of dead white males; autobiography, logistical challenges of conducting as the self-serving inventions of the research in a very large country with risible old characters themselves. A a very small number of sources of lingering anti-intellectual malaise funding for military research. There permeated Canada’s small peacetime is also little tradition in Canada https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol21/iss2/772 4 and : Autobiography and Biography The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

of training or instruction in the giants nor soldiers titans. In the memorable figures in a variety of biographical arts, and little patience ceaseless bleat of military historians – hues, as has children’s or young for it as an appropriate method of or of non-historians who write reams adult literature, the focus of which honing the research or writing skills of historical doggerel unfazed by lack tends to be on a young person of young graduate students. Recent of skill – to be taken seriously by their or adult hero over-coming, rather biographies of H.D.G. Crerar and peers, it would help at times simply stoically in most cases, the endless Bert Hoffmeister, both World War II to write better history, or to expose travails of war. Soldiers, including generals, were doubly rare in having politely those who do not. Montcalm and Wolfe, were part of a originated as doctoral projects and Not all areas of military biography major renovation to the permanent been concluded as readable tomes. should be thought of in the same way. gallery of the Canadian Museum of One on Paul Triquet, VC, an equally In some respects, the market, fed by Civilization in Ottawa, which deals valuable but less readable effort, an endless stream of enthusiastic and with historic personalities, while represents the best and the worst of productive pens, is doing extremely several recent television programs biographical publishing: a dedicated well. A traditional emphasis on have elevated military biography to author pushing forward an important tales of frontier courage, military the popular reality show format, in story, and the decline in editing heroism, and patriotic sacrifice has one case following the descendants standards and marketing support of former military personnel as they that all good stories nevertheless rediscovered the lives and wars of demand. their ancestors. Simpler explanations for the Of scholarly biography, however, weakness of Canadian military there remains little. The lives of the biography as a field might be the politically great – prime ministers, broader, and arguably parlous, state especially – have fared better, of military history itself, the difficulty and from these it is often possible of biography as a literary proposition, to contextualize the choices and and the weak commercial market for parameters faced by men and women personal military narrative. Political in uniform. Laurier still awaits biography, economic biography, a royal treatment, for example, indeed any biography deemed by but Macdonald, Borden, King, the academic establishment to be Diefenbaker, Pearson, and Trudeau, primarily the province of dead white among the country’s most influential males might all be said to suffer from leaders, have all been subject to similar afflictions. But no subset of expert scrutiny, as have many of the biographical field is potentially their key lieutenants. Senior ministers as tainted for granting committees or and mandarins of World War II conference organizing teams as the and the Pearson-Trudeau years lives of former warriors. A handful transformed Montcalm, Wolfe, Laura have been especially well covered, of military autobiographies have Secord, Tecumseh, Winnie the Pooh with many senior bureaucrats, from recently defied this stricture, but it (originally a Canadian infantry defence ministers to clerks of the is of note that a commercial press mascot during World War I), John Privy Council, sometimes receiving has published each one, a competent McCrae, and many other historical monograph length treatments on shadow author or editor has played figures, real and imagined, into their own. The great wars have fared an important role in every case, and icons of Canadian military history. better than those either before or each text has been torn from the Collectively, powerful biographies of since, though not as well as one might headlines of the most recent war. Canadian soldiers have also had an reasonably expect. Unlike American Would any of them be marketable 20 impact on the popular imagination, writing, which seems capable of or 30 years later as works of serious most notably in Pierre Berton’s Vimy, nurturing a robust historiography on history instead of military journalism a work less truthful, poignant, or even the most hapless of regimental laced with polemics? It would be inspiring than the personal histories colonels, or British history, in which an exceedingly unlikely bet. The on which it was based, but immensely both illustrated nonsense and 500- egregious prose and flip judgments successful nonetheless. Fiction – page doorstoppers pour forth from of much military biographical work Timothy Findlay, Jack Hodgins, wealthy popular presses in print runs has not endeared the field to serious Alan Cumyn, and many others in the tens of thousands, Canadian readers either: not all generals were – has provided a small army of coverage has just scratched at the

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lives of senior officers and not much any other work dealing with this else. period. Biography has accumulated World War I is not much better slowly in the broad area of colonial served. Sir Arthur Currie, one of warfare. Outside of battle studies and the war’s great generals by any campaign accounts for the specialist measure, wrote little himself but market – many of them, especially was much feted by others. The those by Donald G. Graves and Carl biography by A.M.J. Hyatt, which Benn, excellent – the field is generally could use an overhaul and reprinting devoid of credible modern accounts. in light of intervening scholarship, A 50-year-old volume on Count remains a model of analysis, brevity, Frontenac by W.J. Eccles is still the and scholarly impact nevertheless. class of its field, while Louisburg John Swettenham’s excellent three- Portraits (1982), an award-winning volume epic on A.G.L. McNaughton work for young adults by popular is now 40 years old and Hyatt’s historian Christopher Moore, is opposite in terms of conciseness and among the most insightful and crispness of narrative. Sir Julian Byng, enjoyable works of Canadian history. who also commanded Canadians Wolfe has had several biographers, instance, dates from 1915. Military overseas, has a solid biography though few have exceeded the biography from British North by Jeffery Williams. Ron Haycock now-aged account in the DCB by America, the Confederation period, studied Sir Sam Hughes, Borden’s the late C.P. Stacey. More writers and the Boer War fares little better mercurial militia minister. Tim Cook, have been interested in Wolfe’s than the more distant colonial past. an award-winning historian who death, and depictions of same, than The one essential volume spanning writes with a journalist’s flare and a in his extraordinary life, imperial the period is Desmond Morton’s The populist’s skill, will soon review the accounts of heroism and tragic Canadian General: Sir William Otter Currie-Hughes relationship in an loss having now fallen victim to (1974), a work that covers more eagerly anticipated volume. Minor Canadian political proprieties and the territory in Canada’s military past, figures, including a few battalion cardinal difficulty of remembering from the Fenian Raids to the 1920s, commanders and , have anything British in a country that is than almost any other. Ministers and received occasional attention, often in partly, and increasingly, not. Recent Generals (1971), a previous work by the pages of Canadian Military History, battle accounts have diminished his Morton, is not biography at all, but a quarterly produced by Wilfrid accomplishments in any case: in Peter in charting the relationship between Laurier University, or in the annual MacLeod’s version of the Quebec military and political figures in the military history conference hosted campaign, Northern Armageddon, he first decades after Confederation, by the same school each spring. is noteworthy, in the continentally includes more biography than almost Patrick Brennan of the University of decisive clash of arms, as the doomed Calgary has assembled impressive general who bungles least. data on the full list of Canadian Other DCB accounts are equally generals throughout World War I strong, and the volumes, which and presented his findings in several now cover subjects who have died venues, but there is no monograph between the years 1000 and 1930, yet, as much as it is needed. Sandra are the essential starting point for Gwyn’s social portrait of Ottawa at any serious biographical research war, Tapestry of War (1992), will long on soldiers in this period. Most of remain the standard by which these them are by leading scholars and, things are judged. Such highpoints while many could use an update, notwithstanding, the roster is short the consistent quality of the style, and the products thin from a highly content, and bibliographical citations literate country that sent nearly are unparalleled in any comparable 700,000 of its citizens to war 90 years work of collective biography. The ago. on-line L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire World War II is better served. In du Québec, in contrast, is wildly addition to leading political figures unreliable – its Wolfe entry, for such as Charles Power, C.D. Howe, https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol21/iss2/774 6 and : Autobiography and Biography The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

Ernest Lapointe, and James Gardiner, Michael Whitby’s edited work, J.L. Granatstein’s The Generals (1993) Commanding Canadians: The Second is the standard and often-cited text World War Diaries of A.F.C. Layard on the military side, a book that (2005), would make a very good case presented a collective biography of as the finest ever written by, and every general during the war. The about, a sailor who led Canadians. research included the assembly The University of of biographical files on subjects Press, Canada’s leading publisher who had, quite literally, never of serious military titles, produced been assessed in print before. With both volumes in conjunction with similar dossiers at the Directorate the Canadian War Museum in a of History at the Department of wide-ranging series called Studies National Defence, the manuscript in Canadian Military History. Tony collections at Library and Archives Foster’s Meeting of the Generals (1986) Canada, and the biographical files and Robert Calder’s wonderful on officers, soldiers, and war artists family narrative, A Richer Dust (2004), maintained by the Canadian War are examples of excellent books that Museum, are the starting points for deserve wider readership. There biographical research in this period, A biography of H.D.G. Crerar are very few reliable biographies of just as the DCB would be for work on finally arrived in 2007, but most Canadian military figures since 1945, individuals before 1930. A handful of of his senior colleagues are still however – none of consequence on senior officers addressed themselves waiting. A potential subject’s earning Korea, peacekeeping, or the Gulf to posterity from among those who a Victoria Cross or becoming a War, and none (yet) on . had served in this period, including governor-general has helped to Carol Off’s The Lion, the Fox and Maurice Pope, , inspire writers (Reginald Roy on the Eagle (2001), although seriously and E.L.M. Burns, as well as a host , or Robert Speaight flawed, is one of a depressingly small of sailors, flyers, and soldiers in on Georges Vanier), as has becoming handful to come even close. memoirs, collections of letters, and a senior minister (David Bercuson on Historian Desmond Morton diaries. In addition to this rich vein of ) or a prime minister wrote in 1992 that “perhaps it is a memoir material, and a thin skein of (Pearson, Diefenbaker), but few fair reflection of the falling esteem useful autobiography, a half-century other endorsements seem to work for biography and the low estate of of work by official historians has on discriminating authors. There are senior officers and the sparsity of created important biographical files, thrilling exceptions. Doug Delaney’s many of their papers that adequate financed biographical research, and biography of Bert Hoffmeister, biographies of Rear-Admiral Murray, woven individual narratives into a The Soldier’s General (2005), may Generals Crerar, Foulkes, and rich, subtle account of Canadians at be the best military biography of Simonds, and Air Marshals Edwards, war. Having completed work on the a Canadian soldier ever written; McEwan, and Breadner are nowhere army’s official history some years even on the horizon.” In the nearly earlier, research in recent decades has 20 years since, only Crerar from this concentrated especially on the navy list has received a comprehensive and air force, spawning – in addition treatment, and Simonds a mildly to monumental works of operational entertaining hagiography (The Price history – ongoing publications of Command in 1994). on command, leadership, and personality. Warrior Chiefs (2001), edited by Stephen Harris and Bernd J.L. Granatstein has received the Order Horn, included 17 biographical of Canada and the Pierre Berton Award, among other distinctions. He is the former essays on both well-known and director and CEO of the Canadian War lesser-known figures. Raymond Museum. Brutinel, Jean Victor Allard, and Dean F. Oliver is the director research Admiral Harold Grant received and exhibitions at the Canadian War treatment, for example, along with Museum. In 2010 he was made a Knight Currie, Crerar, and General Roméo in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Dallaire.

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