Great War Commands: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Army Leadership 1914-18

[Michael OLeary]

Great War Commands:  Historical Perspectives on Canadian Army Leadership 1914-1918 is a new book edited by Major Andrew B. Godefroy, PhD, on Canadian generals from the Great War. This book is being made available free of charge in pdf format and the Canadian Expeditionary Study Group is coordinating a short list of websites to host the publication.  (Hard copies will also be available soon, but details are not yet available.)

A copy of the the book can now be downloaded from The Regimental Rogue at the following page:

Great War Commands:  Historical Perspectives on Canadian Army Leadership 1914-1918

ABSTRACT

From popular literature to reprinted memoirs and new media, over the last decade military historians have taken a renewed interest in Canada's role in the First World War. In particular, their attention has focused greatly on the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) and its decisively lethal Canadian Corps, an ably-led and well-supported combat formation that was often unmatched for success on the western front. As the hammer of the British Army, the Canadian Corps soon earned the title "shock troops" and was often referred to as the "tip of the spear" in the Entente drive towards final victory on the western front. By the end of the war, over a half million men and women had served in the CEF and the Canadian Corps. Sadly, 64,944 of them never returned home.

Examinations of military organizations cannot be considered complete without some consideration for those who lead, shape, and guide them through both war and peace. Yet, despite the renewed attention on the Canadian Corps itself, the study of those who commanded this juggernaut at the highest levels remains much less well defined than the mass of men and women who filled its ranks. This is somewhat odd given that there exist many detailed political, social, operational, and tactical studies on theca, and begs one to ask how historians have assessed the movements and actions of the body of the Canadian Corps without developed understanding of what was going on in the mind of this titan as it did so.

Great War Commands: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Army Leadership, 1914-1918, brings together Canada's leading military historians of the First World War to conduct the first ever in-depth study of the senior leadership of the CEF. Although by no means exhaustive, this book presents major contribution to broadening the current understanding of how the CEF was led and why it performed as it did both at home and on the battlefields of the western front.

Great War Commands: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Army Leadership 1914-1918
Edited By Andrew B. Godefroy - Canadian Defence Academy Press

Chapter 1 The Advent of the Set-Piece Attack:
Major-General Arthur Currie and the Battle of Mount Sorrel, 2-13 June 1916
Andrew B. Godefroy

Chapter 2 "A Leap in the Dark" - Intelligence and the Struggle for the St. Eloi Craters:
Reassessing the Role of Major-General Richard Turner
David Campbell

Chapter 3 "A Bonny Fighter & a Born Leader":
A Portrait of Sir Archibald Cameron Macdonell, KCB, CMG, DSO
Ian Macpherson McCulloch

Chapter 4 "A Brutal Soul-Destroying Business":
Brigadier-General F.O.W. Loomis and the Question of "Impersonal Generalship"
David R. O'Keefe

Chapter 5 Major-General David Watson:
A Critical Appraisal of Canadian Generalship in the Great War
Patrick Brennan

Chapter 6 Leadership and Innovation:
Andrew McNaughton and the Counter-Battery Staff Office
Paul Dickson

Chapter 7 Lieutenant-Colonels Glen Campbell and Andrew T. Thompson and the Evolution of Native Canadian Participation during the First World War
Timothy C. Winegard

Chapter 8 Creating Combat Leaders in the Canadian Corps:
The Experiences of Lieutenant-Colonel Agar Adamson
Tod Strickland

 

[pbi]

Excellent: I'll have to dig into it as soon as I can.


What really never ceases to me is that from a tiny Permanent Force of one battalion of infantry, one each of Dragoons and Horse, and a few field batteries, and a Militia that was not much more than an armed social club (check the 1910 Gwatkin Report), we put not just a Brigade, nor a Division, but a Corps into a very bloody and intense war, and did damned well. We fought beside, and against, much larger and more powerful armies that had been in the game for centuries, but we had very little to be ashamed of. In artillery work, and in the set-piece attack, we were certainly a force to be reckoned with.

Too bad so many Canadians know absolutely nothing of this.

Cheers

 

[The Anti-Royal]

I printed off a copy as soon as you'd posted the link, Mike.  A good read.  Thanks.

 

[mariomike]

Something to be very proud of:
"...the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) and its decisively lethal Canadian Corps, an ably-led and well-supported combat formation that was often unmatched for success on the western front."

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

Excellent: I'll have to dig into it as soon as I can.


What really never ceases to me is that from a tiny Permanent Force of one battalion of infantry, one each of Dragoons and Horse, and a few field batteries, and a Militia that was not much more than an armed social club (check the 1910 Gwatkin Report), we put not just a Brigade, nor a Division, but a Corps into a very bloody and intense war, and did damned well.

A somewhat knowledgable guess is that maybe 50% of the first contingent had significant military experience.  A large number of former British soldiers were in the militia and the first contingent.  I would guess that somewhat less than half were raw recruits.  The CEF was pretty much strictly a militia show as Sam Hughes intended.  At the first opportunity he sent the RCR to Bermuda, only returning to be part of the 3rd Division.