Communications in the Canadian Corps, 1915–1918: Wartime Technological Progress Revisited

Warfare has, for millenia, been a rich source of myth and legend, and one of the main reasons many historians proclaim Herodotus to be the first to ply their trade is because, at least, he discounted divine intervention as the prime explanation for the ebb and flow of battle. Myths, however, persist to this day, one of the most popular in our industrialized culture being a common belief that technological development accelerates in wartime. In many cases this might be true; the First World War, for example, saw much innovation (this author hesitates to use the word “progress”) in the development of tanks, aircraft, submarines, and chemical warfare. In that same war, however, communications technology did not keep apace, ironic (especially in the British Expeditionary Force) given commanders’ insistence that they needed to control their troops if they were to win battles. Though much has been said of the impact of machine guns and quick-firing artillery on the Western Front, another important source of heavy casualties was the lack of communication between the troops in combat and the officers responsible for providing artillery support or sending in reserves; as a result men died in hopeless, unsupported assaults or were overwhelmed by counterattacks after capturing their objectives. Communications were further complicated by the addition of aircraft to the battlefield, with artillery observation and photo reconnaissance adding the war over land to the war on land. Maintaining contact between aircraft and the troops they were supposed to support would be an ongoing challenge. An indication of the state of the art in 1914 could be found in the the most technologically advanced arm of the British Expeditionary Force—the artillery. Batteries could call on wireless aircraft to correct fall of shot, and in December what had simply been called the wireless unit became 9 Squadron, which supplied aircraft and crews to other units as required, though its pilots did not lead easy lives, as the transmitter they carried was so bulky they could not take an observer. Further, it required so much space in the small observer’s cockpit there was no room for a receiver, so the pilot could not be entirely sure his corrections were being monitored. As he had to carry out the observer’s duties as well as his own, with no one to keep a look-out for enemy aircraft, it could not have been popular work. Radio-telephony, the transmission of human speech by wireless, had been under development since 1910 but had not moved beyond basic experimentation at the end of 1914

Paved with Good Intentions: HMCS Uganda, the Pacific War, and the Volunteer Issue

Admirals and politicians alike must have winced at the headlines: “PACIFIC SERVICE PROTEST” was splashed across the Daily Sketch; “PACIFIC? NOT US!” proclaimed the Evening News, in one of the worst public relations disasters the Royal Canadian Navy faced during the Second World War. As the two newspapers—among many others—explained, the crew of one of Canada’s two cruisers, HMCS Uganda, while on operations in the Pacific theatre, refused to volunteer for further service when requested, forcing the ship to return to port. There were, however, no accusations of cowardice or disloyalty, either explicit or implied; rather, the press explained, “The crew...had volunteered for service anywhere when they enlisted originally. They resented being asked to volunteer again.” The result was that, when war ended in the Pacific on 14 August 1945, Canada had no ship to represent it there, despite plans that at one point had called for a fleet of 60 war vessels

Providing the Gift of Life: Canadian Medical Practitioners and the Treatment of Shock on the Battlefield

The story of Ambroise Pare’s discovery has been told often; of how, during Francis I’s campaign against Turin in 1536-37, he ran out of the oil medical practitioners used to cauterize the stumps of amputees and used an herbal remedy and ligatures instead; and of how the patients treated by the latter method did so much better than those tortured with the former. The tale has much to commend it to the popular imagination: a medical hero makes a serendipitous discovery to relieve the suffering of thousands. However, the story is an exception to a steadfast rule in warfare, for in medical matters, change comes slowly. This state of affairs could be ascribed to an unthinking conservatism, but one should not rush to pass judgement. Military commanders are not so much muleheaded as wedded to techniques that, in their eyes, have worked well in the past; innovation means experiment, with perhaps catastrophic results. As we shall see in a study of how Canadian medical practitioners dealt with shock from the First World War to Korea, bringing about change is less a matter of conflict against the establishment and more of reaching a consensus on how to solve complex battlefield problems

To the Sound of the Guns: Canadians and Combat Surgery, 1938–1953

Combat surgery is almost as old as battle itself. The Iliad contains many an example of surgical intervention to heal wounds--and in the modern era, the surgeon has become an almost saintly figure in the public imagination, especially in a context where human beings are actively engaged in killing one another. Myth is not far removed from fact, and there is no doubt as to the dedication of these men (women did not enter the field until very recently), but that still begs a few questions: how did they operate (in both the military and medical senses of the word) and how successful were they? This account traces the challenges Canadian surgeons faced in the Second World War and Korea as they sought solutions to problems medical (such as shock) and tactical (operating within range of enemy fire). It is, in effect, a story of civilians attempting to apply their knowledge under the severe stress of battle

Pulling Between Old and New: Navigation and Power Development on the Trent-Severn, 1860-1911

Lorsque l’énergie hydroélectrique s’est intégrée à l’économie ontarienne à la fin du 19e siècle, plusieurs étaient impressionnés par les potentialités de la « houille blanche ». Au centre de l’Ontario, les barrages nécessaires à la production d’électricité étaient déjà en place ou en construction dans le cadre du développement de la voie maritime Trent-Severn entrepris par le gouvernement fédéral. Cependant, pour assurer le passage des bateux dans le canal, les autorités gouvernementales devaient assurer une profondeur suffisante alors que les entrepreneurs qui voulaient utiliser les barrages pour produire de l’électricité avaient plutôt besoin d’un débit d’eau élevé. Des petites compagnies d’électricité s’établirent tout de même de long de la voie Trent-Severn, mais la production d’énergie demeura secondaire par rapport à la navigation

No Task Fit for a Soldier? Canadian Forces Medical Personnel and Humanitarian Relief Missions since the Second World War

Les armées modernes du monde industrialisé exécutent leurs opérations selon une doctrine, c’est-à-dire une philosophie à laquelle est liée toute une série de procédures elles-mêmes déterminées par la situation tactique et stratégique. Ces mêmes armées, cependant, répondent aux besoins de gouvernements civils qui ne limitent pas leurs demandes ou leurs instructions aux types d’opérations qu’une armée pourrait énoncer dans sa doctrine. Pour les services armées du Canada, tel semble être le cas dans le domaine des opérations humanitaires, qui, même si elles ne faisaient pas partie de la philosophie opérationnelle de ces services, ont tout de même été d’une certaine importance dans l’histoire de l’aviation, de la marine, et de l’armée de terre depuis la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Cette étude vise à explorer les opérations humanitaires dans la période débutant dans la deuxième moitié des années 1940 et prennant fin dans les années 1990, lors de la formation et les premières opérations d’une unité spécialisant dans le domaine humanitaire. L’article se penchera surtout sur la pratique de la médecine lors de ces missions, pour tenter de déterminer si les praticiens et praticiennes des forces armées devaient changer leur approche de base pour accomplir leurs tâches, ou si il suffisait tout simplement d’adapter leurs procédures selon la situation opérationnelle.Modern armies of the industrialized world operate in accordance with a doctrine, that is to say a philosophy linked to a series of procedures themselves determined by the tactical and strategic environment. These same armies, however, answer to civilian governments that do not limit their demands or instructions to the types of operations an army might list in its doctrine. For Canada's armed services, such seems to have been the case in regards to humanitarian operations which, even if they were not part of these services' operational philosophies, have nonetheless been of no little importance in the history of the air force, the navy, and the army since the end of the Second World War. This study will explore humanitarian operations from the second half of the 1940s to the formation and first missions of a unit specializing in such work in the 1990s. It will focus mainly on medical practice during these missions and attempt to determine whether medical practitioners had to change their basic approach to accomplish their tasks, or whether it sufficed to adapt procedures in accordance with the operational situation

Technology in Search of a Role: The Machine Gun and the CEF in the First World War

In the last decades of the 19th century and the opening years of the 20th, the machine gun proved to be a most lethal and devastating weapon, but this did not guarantee its large-scale adoption by traditional-minded military institutions. Technology in Search of a Role examines how the machine gun was eventually incorporated into the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the course of the First World War, playing specialized roles depending on a particular gun's weight and mobility; light machine guns were adopted by small infantry units and heavier weapons were formed into a corps of their own. Résumé Pendant les dernières décennies du XIXe siècle et les premières années du XXe, la mitrailleuse a été l'arme la plus mortelle et la plus dévas-tatrice, mais cette caractéristique n'a pas pour autant garanti d'emblée son adoption par les institutions militaires traditionnelles. Dans Technology in Search of a Role, on examine la façon dont la mitrailleuse a finalement été intégrée aux armes des forces expéditionnaires canadiennes au cours de la Première Guerre mondiale, pour jouer certains rôles spécialisés qui dépendaient du poids et de la mobilité de chaque modèle; les mitrailleuses légères ont été adoptées par les petites unités d'infanterie, et les plus lourdes, par des corps d'armée créés expressément pour elles