Writing War: the Colin Mcdougall Archive Zachary Abram

Writing War: The Colin McDougall Archive Zachary Abram* In 1958, Colin McDougall’s first novel, Execution, won the Governor General’s award for fiction. The reading public, in Canada and abroad, eagerly awaited a follow-up that would never come. In the decades since its publication, the novel has been critically neglected despite its worthiness as a text that provides crucial insight into the study of Canadian war literature. An examination of the Colin McDougall Archive, housed in the McGill Rare Books and Special Collections Department, proves to be equally fruitful. The “archive,” little more than a battered banker’s box haphazardly stuffed with notes, some letters, and a notebook, contains multitudes. The McDougall fonds offers unprecedented access to the harrowing process of representing war from experience and raises significant questions of authorship. Why did McDougall never write again? The McDougall papers leave the archivist with the impression that transmuting the experience of war onto the page is a uniquely fraught process. The veteran-penned novel has proven to be a lightning rod for postmodern critics. According to Evelyn Cobley, war, fundamentally, cannot be represented. The desire of many war writers to pay tribute to their brothers in arms is problematic because “the commemorative gesture thus finds itself compelled to name the unnameable again and again.”1 Paul Fussell concurs, writing that war literature is complicit in the way in which the “drift of modern history domesticates the fantastic and normalizes the unspeakable.”2 The humble box of McDougall paraphernalia in Montreal serves as a crucial antidote to this way of thinking and reveals the process of writing war to be a complex one, characterized by guilt, responsibility, and anxiety. 1* Zachary Abram is a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa. His dissertation is about representations of the soldier in Canadian novels. 11 Evelyn Cobley, Representing War: Form and Ideology in First World War Narratives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 3. 12 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 74. CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 551-21-2 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 119999 22014-07-16014-07-16 110:13:530:13:53 200 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 51/2 The most revealing aspect of the archive is McDougall’s notebook. Written concurrently with Execution, the notebook spans the five-to-six-year time period it took him to complete the novel. Described initially as “a running record of the battle to produce,”3 the notebook transforms into a vehicle for McDougall’s anxieties as well as a meditation on the particular challenges of writing a war novel. McDougall prods himself with strained encouragement: “It is necessary to retain confidence, courage, and desire”;4 elsewhere he simply writes, “must force and compel self on.”5 He is hard on himself in the notebook, which sometimes results in pained resignation or outright anger at his inability to express what he wants to say about war and the men who fight it: “Balls! This is petty.”6 The unpredictable nature of McDougall’s notebook entries stands in sharp contrast to the notebook itself, which is organized with military precision. The twin impulses in McDougall to encourage and to deride his writing come to an interesting and maddening climax when between late 1954 and early 1956 he stops writing altogether. Figure 1. Pages from Colin McDougall’s notebook, entries from 1953. Courtesy of Rare Books and Special Collections, McLennan Library, McGill University, Montreal. 13 Colin McDougall, notebook, 16 May 1953, McDougall Papers, MS 642, Rare Books and Special Collections, McLennan Library, McGill University, Montreal. 14 Ibid., 9 April 1953. 15 Ibid., 28 April 1953. 16 Ibid., 22 April 1953. CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 551-21-2 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 220000 22014-07-16014-07-16 110:13:530:13:53 Writing War: The Colin McDougall Archive 201 Recounting the story of a group of Canadian soldiers during the Italian Campaign of the Second World War, the novel features two executions. Having met only minimal resistance from the Italian army, the Canadian 2nd Rifles take on two Italian deserters, nicknamed Big Jim and Little Joe, to cook for the Canadian soldiers despite the orders of the platoon’s commanding officer, Brigadier Kildare, that all deserters be summarily executed. When he discovers this insubordination, Kildare orders the men be killed in immediately. The novel’s main characters, John Adam and Padre Doorn, have to “acquiesce” to the execution. This initial execution prompts both men to question their ontology and the ethics of warfare. Adam gives himself over to efficiency and competence, unable to fill the “aching emptiness inside himself.”7 Padre Doorn slips further into madness and becomes obsessed with relics of the True Cross in order to regain his faith. Eventually, a member of the 2nd Rifles, the cognitively challenged but good-hearted Jones, is wrongfully arrested for the murder of an American soldier and sentenced to death. Adam and Doorn see this as an opportunity to redeem themselves for the crime of killing the two Italian deserters. Tragically, their attempts to free Jones are thwarted by Kildare, and Jones is executed by his own men. In the logic of the novel, though, this execution atones for the first and moral order is restored. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Canadian Forces maintained that it had executed none of its own men during the war. McDougall, however, did base the execution of Jones on a real-life incident. On 5 July 1945, months after the war was over, twenty- three-year-old Private Harold Pringle became the only soldier of the Canadian Army to be executed for military crimes. After his father was honorably discharged for poor eyesight, Pringle became a chronic disciplinary problem, who went AWOL several times. After the battle of the Hitler Line, he once again went AWOL to Rome where he became involved with a gang of small-time smugglers and dealers in black-market goods. Eventually, one of its members was shot dead and all members of the gang were arrested. At the trial, one gang member testified against the rest in exchange for immunity; Pringle was found guilty of murder and executed by firing squad. Through an examination of Pringle’s life and ordeal, Andrew Clark makes a convincing argument for reasonable doubt in the case and 17 Colin McDougall, Execution (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005), 49. CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 551-21-2 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 220101 22014-07-16014-07-16 110:13:530:13:53 202 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 51/2 points to a grievous miscarriage of wartime justice, characterizing Pringle as a victim of the war and its system and likely suffering from post-traumatic stress.8 It is not difficult to see the parallels between Pringle and Jones, both men victims of a system that refuses to acknowledge the nuances of wartime ethics. Clark had access to historical documents that McDougall did not because the case was ordered sealed by the Canadian government for forty years. There is no mention of Pringle in the McDougall papers. Although it is not known how much McDougall heard through the military grapevine, he heard enough to make execution the central theme of his war epic. Colin McDougall was born in Montreal in 1917 and, except for his deployment in Italy during the Second World War, lived there for his entire life. Immediately after achieving his BA from McGill University in 1940, he enrolled in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. While overseas, Major Colin McDougall excelled as a soldier and was recommended for a Distinguished Service Order three times, winning it in 1945 after a strong recommendation from his men. The recommendation describes his heroism: “This officer has twice before been recommended for gallantry in operations. He has proved at all times to be a most dashing and fearless officer of great skill and determination. This has been a real inspiration as example to his men, and largely responsible for the success of his company.”9 These exploits are conspicuously absent from the archive, where there is little evidence of McDougall’s military career at all. In fact, McDougall reminds himself often to guard against slipping into autobiography. It is certain, however, that some of his experience in the Canadian campaign in Italy did provide inspiration for Execution. After returning to Canada, McDougall took a position at his alma mater, which would be his place of employment for the rest of his life, serving as counsellor, registrar, and secretary general. His relationship with McGill University explains why his notebook and personal correspondence are housed in the McGill Rare Books and Special Collections Department. Execution was his only novel, though he did publish several short stories in the magazines, Maclean’s and New Liberty. One short story, “The Firing Squad,” won the Maclean’s fiction contest and the President’s Medal from the University of 18 Andrew Clark, A Keen Soldier: The Execution of Second World War Private Harold Joseph Pringle (Toronto: A.A. Knopf Canada, 2002). 19 Recommendations for Honours and Awards (Army), 19 January 1945, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 551-21-2 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 220202 22014-07-16014-07-16 110:13:530:13:53 Writing War: The Colin McDougall Archive 203 Western Ontario; it provides the basic structure for Execution. The notices for these awards are all housed in the archive. The McDougall papers also include a brief publication history of Execution written by the author himself. He writes rather nonchalantly, “From the year 1949 until 1953 I was engaged in writing short stories.

Load more