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148 about the forces involved that military readers will likely seek out so as to understand their strengths and weaknesses. For example, the tables of organization that complement some battle descriptions provide delightfully detailed lists of unit names but do not provide something as simple as total strengths of personnel and major equipments. Finally, the (to me) great similarity of Peruvian, Chilean and Bolivian names forced me at times to reread passages to try and understand which side had done what to whom. The simple expedient of putting one side’s names in a different font, italic, bold or small caps, would have avoided this problem completely. In summary, the combination of missing or inadequate maps, a paucity of technical information and my difficulty keeping the players clear made the narrative harder to follow. This is unfortunate as the story is stirring and otherwise well told. Overall, despite its shortcomings, I would recommend this book to any reader seeking to expand their understanding of the nature of war, wanting to understand an event that had a major impact on South American history or simply looking for a good read. Endnotes 1. Casualty estimate as found in the Wikipedia on-line encyclopedia on 29 Jun 07. 2. Page, 309. BETRAYED: SCANDAL, POLITICS, AND CANADIAN NAVAL LEADERSHIP MAYNE, Richard O. Vancouver: UBC Press, July 2007, 279 pages. Paperback. $29.95 CAN Reviewed by Mr. Neil Chuka Admiral Percy W. Nelles, RCN, was Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS) from 1934 until he was promoted out of the position in 1944. During his tenure, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) underwent an unprecedented expansion. From the economic hardship of the interwar years, a handful of warships and less than 2000 regular force officers and men, the RCN expanded fiftyfold during World War II (WWII). By 1945, the RCN was comprised of some 100000 regular, reserve and volunteer reserve officers and ratings, 400 warships, and 500 auxiliary vessels. The scope of expansion remains staggering. In addition, the expansion was challenged by a non-existent interwar naval policy, the almost complete lack of maritime infrastructure and little national naval/scientific expertise. On top of all this, the RCN became engaged in a battle that was technologically driven, in some respects more so than any other aspect of WWII. Nelles had a staff of ten in August 1939 with which to tackle these formidable challenges. Most Canadian naval historians sympathize with Nelles and note the difficulties he faced, but fault him as lacking the appropriate leadership acumen, vision and technical knowledge necessary to succeed. Although some assessments are harsher than others, Tony German’s sums up the traditional treatment of Nelles’s wartime leadership by Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spring 2008
noting he did not fill the requirement for “a brilliant, experienced, and dynamic leader,” and that, even had he possessed these attributes, the enormity of the task may still have been unachievable. 1 In the end, the primary justification for Nelles’s dismissal was his supposed inability to facilitate the modernization of Canadian warships apace with the rapid technological advances of the Atlantic war. Richard Mayne, a historian with the Directorate of History and Heritage in Ottawa, challenges the traditional assessment of Nelles and the justifications for his dismissal in this volume. In it, he makes a cogent argument that Nelles was a political scapegoat, sacrificed in a bid by Liberal Minister of National Defence for Naval Services Angus Macdonald to stave off a potential scandal. Mayne’s complex argument has two main thrusts. The first is that a small group of influential volunteer reserve officers, including Andrew Maclean (nephew of the founder of the periodical), developed grievances based on the supposed bias of permanent force officers to their wartime reserve colleagues. To salve these grievances, and to address what they perceived as the poor leadership and conduct of the naval war by the government and naval headquarters, the network of reservists circumvented chains of command by leveraging pre-war personal and professional connections and threatened to create a political scandal based on the operational deficiencies of the RCN during the first half of the war. The second thrust of Mayne’s argument is that very real fleet modernization issues were rooted in government neglect of naval policy, the navy, and national industrial strategy during the interwar period. Exacerbating the situation was Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s nationalistic policies that forced a distancing from the training resources of the Royal Navy. Combined, these political issues left Canada unprepared to fight a technologically driven war in the North Atlantic. Mayne’s argument is that Nelles was removed from the CNS post in a move orchestrated by Macdonald’s executive assistant, John Connolly, to deflect the true origins of the modernization problems and placate the network of wartime reservists and Maclean who had the wherewithal to turn naval issues into public political issues through the press. Mayne’s assessment is certainly interesting and persuasive, providing new insight into the issue of the naval politics in WWII. One major issue though, is determining the actual influence of the reserve network and Maclean. For example, given that Maclean’s primary outlet seems to have been Boating magazine, one wonders if the readership of this periodical was large or influential enough in the 1940-43 period that it would have constituted a major threat to Macdonald or the King government. Furthermore, while acknowledging that Canada and Canadian society and political circles were smaller in the 1930s and 40s than they are today, it is difficult to assess the actual level of influence the reservist network may have had on the outcome of a political debate on the RCN’s operational deficiencies. If the strength of Maclean’s network was not what Mayne claims, then there must have been real issues with Nelles’s leadership that are not fully addressed in the book. Finally, the inclusion of some detail on the specifics of modernization would help readers unfamiliar with WWII RCN equipment to understand why the problem was so pressing. Explaining how, for example, lengthened forecastles exponentially increased the efficiency of corvettes, or even inclusion of an appendix illustrating the rapid advancements in capability of the various radar and asdic sets, would allow a novice reader to comprehend why the modernization issue was so operationally and politically critical. This book is highly recommended. Mayne’s argument is sufficiently powerful to cause a reconsideration of traditional assessments of the politics and leadership of the RCN in WWII. Moreover, the book highlights the continuing folly of Canadian naval Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spring 2008 149
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The The Canadian Canadian Army Army
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial—Soldi
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EDITORIAL—SOLDIERS AS WRITERS Maj
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ARMY UPDATE—THE JADEX PAPERS Back
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AMBUSHES, IEDS AND COIN: THE FRENCH
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Since 1945, only one major expediti
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Casualties It is difficult to deter
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March 1846, in which the insurgency
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French fortified line around the De
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an unsustainable level while using
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The FLN clearly adjusted its milita
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The overall resort to a system of d
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proposed by researchers like La Cou
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MANOEUVRE WARFARE THEORY AND COUNTE
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is tempo—the ability of one force
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In Principles, Imperatives and Para
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Canadian draft placed a significant
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to safe havens with the Morice Line
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THE FUTURE OF CANADIAN AIRBORNE FOR
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Political manoeuvring and military
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sustainment air corridors, and to s
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offensive capability would be requi
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Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spr
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Immediately after the war, there wa
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transportable brigade group, includ
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spectrum, and included global opera
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strung soldiers of the unit adequat
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45. Sean M. Maloney, “The Mobile
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the super-power of the age. Few gov
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By 7 December 2001, the Taliban had
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ideology.” 51 With the overthrow
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obvious abilities is to make a grav
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We fight them with schools, educati
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TOMORROW’S FIREPOWER Captain Ian
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dominate the much larger and more c
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Even new terminology fails to re-es
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Effects Oriented. A complete close
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armoured squadron, administration c
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system. However, the development of
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31. Today, the role of the infantry
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somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000
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Definitions Before moving on to try
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It is already clear that consensus
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increase in the levels of global co
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contracting of MPFs to provide arme
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What has been demonstrated in this
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Domestic regulation in the US has t
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Concluding Remarks This article has
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the engagement of the Canadian Mano
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Page 101 and 102: into Belgium, General Charles Foulk
Page 103 and 104: anks (mostly from the artillery),
Page 105 and 106: Shot from vantage point of Nixon in
Page 107 and 108: town. Following this, the much-cele
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Page 111 and 112: Canadian Military History (Spring 2
Page 113 and 114: On 1 August 1944, Major Dextraze co
Page 115 and 116: NOTE TO FILE—REACHING INTO THE OR
Page 117 and 118: In the years after 1945 OR became h
Page 119 and 120: narrow application. “If aircraft
Page 121 and 122: assistant” for the military. 34 T
Page 123 and 124: — BOOK REVIEWS — TERRIBLE VICTO
Page 125 and 126: CALEPIN D’ESPOIR DUFRESNE, Daniel
Page 127 and 128: as a “Villa Rogati dwelling” (p
Page 129 and 130: writes that the charge of the 21st
Page 131 and 132: Reserves the reader could put this
Page 133 and 134: superiority of numbers to overcome
Page 135 and 136: A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH WAR—ENDIN
Page 137 and 138: THE UNEXPECTED WAR: CANADA IN KANDA
Page 139 and 140: The Existential Challenge The autho
Page 141 and 142: D-DAY: JUNO BEACH, CANADA’S 24 HO
Page 143 and 144: His dispassionate analysis of the b
Page 145 and 146: PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: NEW PLAY
Page 147 and 148: Thankfully, although hard-hitting i
Page 149: Chapter Four ends with the death of
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