bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1993) — Summer 1993 // Été 1993, pp. 37–38
The D-Day Dodgers: The Canadians in
Italy 1943-45 by Daniel G. Dancocks:
McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1992, 508
pp., $24.95.
Reviewed by W. (Bill) A. Dymond
In the Persian Gulf in 1991, Canadian soldiers, sailors and aircrew went to war for the first time in almost forty years. Now there are 1,200 Canadian battle-ready soldiers in Somalia engaged not in peacekeeping but peacemaking. There are two infantry battalions and supporting units in Croatia in an operation which may grow before long into peacemaking. After a long period of peace and peacekeeping, Canadians may increasingly find themselves involved in armed conflict. Daniel Dancock’s account of the role which Canadian forces played in the Allied campaign to liberate Italy is a timely reminder of the military prowess latent in the national soul.
The late Daniel Dancocks is best known for his books on the Great War, Sir Arthur Currie, Legacy of Valour: The Canadians at Passchendaele and Spearhead to Victory. Like those, The D-Day Dodgers is crisply and elegantly written, deftly weaving the story of individual units and soldiers with an account of the strategic considerations which governed the fighting. Its narrative of some of the units involved reads like an atlas of Canada; the Vancouver Seaforths, the Loyal Edmontons, the Saskatoon Light Infantry, the Lanark and Renfrew Scottish, the Three Rivers tanks, the West Novas, the Cape Breton Highlanders. Regiments who fought in WWI, the Princess Pats, the Royal Canadians and the Royal XXIInd, the famous vandoos, were also there.
Dancocks’ account of how Canadian forces came to fight in Italy is the familiar tale of conflicting objectives, confusion, and inspired muddle and compromise which characterizes our history. Canadian troops arrived in Britain in December 1939, destined to join the British army in Belgium. When the British were driven out at Dunkirk, the Canadians were the only fully trained and equipped troops available to resist the anticipated invasion. By the winter of 1940, there were two divisions of Canadian troops in England. While Canadian aircrew in the RAF and RCAF fought the enemy in the sky and the navy was fully engaged in the desperate opening stages of the battle of the Atlantic, the army trained and trained and trained. Apart from the disastrous Dieppe raid, it seemed destined to spend years without fighting. Lionel Shapiro of the Montreal Gazette joked that this was the only army which had a higher birthrate than death rate.
Public opinion in Canada and in the army itself clamoured for action. Mackenzie King and the Army commander, General MacNaughton were determined to preserve the army for the invasion of France, fearing that its employment in some other theatre would give it a subordinate role under British command. Colonel Ralston, the Minister of Defence, convinced King to send at least part of the army to join the Italian campaign. Playing on King’s fears — to be borne out in late 1944 — that massive casualties in Northern Europe would generate a second conscription crisis, Ralston argued that the Italian campaign would give Canadian troops valuable experience and a role in liberating Europe at a modest casualty rate, and so the Canadians embarked for Sicily.
Landing in 1943, the Canadians fought their way across Sicily, and growing to two full divisions and an armoured brigade, up the Italian boot to reach the Po valley in 1945. The name “D-Day Dodgers” coined by the notorious Lady Astor in a letter to a British soldier, was applied to all Allied troops in the Italian campaign and deeply and justifiably resented. It reflected the reality that the Italian campaign was a sideshow pending the Normandy invasion. When D-Day came, the Italian campaign became increasingly starved of resources and dropped almost entirely from public view.
In this campaign, as in the campaigns of the Great War, Canadians became the shock troops on any front where they fought. The Germans knew that the presence of Canadian troops meant an attack. Army commanders devised elaborate deceptions to conceal the movement of Canadians to a new front so that the Germans would not rush reinforcements to the threatened sector. In 1945 when the Canadians left Italy to join the First Canadian army in Holland, the move was shrouded in secrecy to prevent the Germans from relaxing in Italy. From 1943 to 1945, over 92,000 Canadians served in Italy and over a quarter became casualties including more than 5,000 dead of the some 40,000 Canadians who died in WWII.
The D-Day Dodgers will be troublesome reading for some Canadians. It is a story of the horror and carnage of war and the loss of young life — hard news for a country accustomed to a long, if uneasy, peace. It is a story of military skill and superb fighting qualities by volunteer forces that vanquished the best the enemy had to oppose us — hard news for a country that wears its peacekeeping skills as a badge of honour. But most of all, it is a story of heroism — hard news for a country which makes a national sport of denigrating its heroes. Doubtless The D-Day Dodgers will attract the attention of those determined to suppress any feeling that Canadians harbour that heroism, courage and the ability to make war, when war must be made, are an indelible and treasured part of our heritage.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1993) — Summer 1993 // Été 1993, pp. 37–38. Read the rest of this issue →
