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In 1942, RAF flight controller Robert Wyse became a Japanese prisoner of war on the island of Java in Indonesia. Starved, sick, beaten, and worked to near-death, he wasted away until he weighed only seventy pounds, his life hanging in tenuous balance. There were strict orders against POWs keeping diaries, but Wyse penned his observations on the scarce bits of paper he could find, struggling to describe the brutalities he witnessed.

After cleverly hiding his notes in a piece of bamboo next to his bed, in December of 1943, he carefully hid his notes inside a bottle beneath his prison hut. After the war, he wrote to the Dutch authorities, asking them to dig up his diary and return it to him.

In this detailed and frank portrayal of life under Japanese occupation, Wyse reveals the both the best and the worst of human nature. He criticized his fellow soldiers for botching the defence of Java and Sumatra and admonished his captors for their brutality. Yet, Wyse also describes the selfless efforts of the Dutch civilians who helped the prisoners by selflessly doing whatever they could as well as his first-hand observations of acts of self-sacrifice among the prisoners themselves. ... Read more

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The Boer War saw the first Canadian troops sent overseas to fight.Many units of the present Canadian army first distinguished themselves in South Africa, and still proudly bear the Battle Honors earned there. ... Read more

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Harry L. Gill, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940 at the age of 18. During his short but adventure-filled career, he flew a Hurricane fighter bomber over France, England, and India and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. In 1943 his airplane was shot down over Burma and he died in the crash. Hurricane Pilot captures the perspective of a young man in the middle of a war in Europe and Asia. Drawing extensively on Gill's correspondence with his parents and his siblings, this very personal account of war shows how Gill was transformed from a small-town boy to a mature fighter pilot serving in a global war on another continent. His letters depict the enthusiasm of youth, a strong sense of humour, his plans for the future, and this continuing attachment to home. Hurricane Pilot is volume ten in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Memoirs of an RCAF Hurricane Pilot!
Part of the New Brunswick Military Heritage series, HURRICANE PILOT is the story of Harry Gill, a Candian fighter pilot who flew combat over Europe and the Pacific from 1941 to 1943. During his military service, Gill was an avid letter writer and HURRICANE PILOT recounts his life and times through those letters.

Gill joined the RCAF in 1940. After undergoing pilot training in Canada, he shipped off to England and flew combat with 607 Squadron in the ETO from September 1941 to March 1942. He earned a DFM. The squadron transferred to India in mid-1942 and began combat ops in the fall. Gill was credited with downing one Zero before being KIA on 17 January 1943.

In a series of five chapters, Gill's training, combat experiences and squadron activities come to life through his letters home. He had his fair share of bad landings and scares in training but comes across as a decent, self-effacing young man eager to get into combat...and to downplay the dangers of his new life to his parents. Once in combat, he was circumspect in relating his squadron's combat ops. Then too his mail was subject to censorship so those letters don't read as well as earlier missives. Exposure to combat and the squadron's move to India definitely opened up the young Canadian's eyes. How quickly death can claim a pilot is borne out by Gill's last letter home being immediately followed by the official telegram announcing his death.

The book is illustrated with photographs and maps.

FIGHTER PILOT is an evocative, unvarnished look at one young Canadian's life and times. Recommended. ... Read more

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The advent of nuclear weapons in the 1940s brought enormous changes to doctrines regarding the use of force in resolving disputes. American strategists have been widely credited with most of these; Canadians, most have assumed, did not conduct their own strategic analysis. Avoiding Armageddon soundly debunks this notion.

Drawing on previously classified government records, Richter reveals that Canadian defence officials did come to independent strategic understandings of the most critical issues of the nuclear age. Canadian appreciation of deterrence, arms control, and strategic stability differed conceptually from the US models. Similarly, Canadian thinking on the controversial issues of air defence and the domestic acquisition of nuclear weapons was primarily influenced by decidedly Canadian interests.

Avoiding Armageddon is a work with far-reaching implications. It illustrates Canada’s considerable latitude for independent defence thinking while providing key historical information that helps make sense of the contemporary Canadian defence debate.

Published in association with the Canadian War Museum. ... Read more

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Forging A Nation offers a collection of essays on the development of the Canadian military experience.

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Winner, 1992 Canada-Japan Book Award

With the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, all persons ofJapanese descent were declared 'enemy aliens.' Their assets wereseized and most of the Japanese Canadian population was relocated orsent to internment camps. Stone Voices is a selection of memoirs,diaries, and letters written by four Issei, the first generation ofJapanese to settle in Canada. ... Read more

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Long before she made her first trip to Afghanistan as an embedded reporter for The Globe and Mail, Christie Blatchford was already one of Canada’s most respected and eagerly read journalists. Her vivid prose, her unmistakable voice, her ability to connect emotionally with her subjects and readers, her hard-won and hard-nosed skills as a reporter–these had already established her as a household name. But with her many reports from Afghanistan, and in dozens of interviews with the returned members of the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and others back at home, she found the subject she was born to tackle. Her reporting of the conflict and her deeply empathetic observations of the men and women who wear the maple leaf are words for the ages, fit to stand alongside the nation’s best writing on war.

It is a testament to Christie Blatchford’s skills and integrity that along with the admiration of her readers, she won the respect and trust of the soldiers. They share breathtakingly honest accounts of their desire to serve, their willingness to confront fear and danger in the battlefield, their loyalty towards each other and the heartbreak occasioned by the loss of one of their own. Grounded in insights gained over the course of three trips to Afghanistan in 2006, and drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews not only with the servicemen and -women with whom she shared so much, but with their commanders and family members as well, Christie Blatchford creates a detailed, complex and deeply affecting picture of military life in the twenty-first century.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Getting to know Canada's true heroes.
Christie Blatachford's FIFTEEN DAYS is a 'must read' for anyone who wants to get a glimpse into the world of Canadian troops serving their country (and the Afghan people) in Afghanistan. Blatchford takes the reader to the front lines, and into the minds of soldiers fighting an enemy who appears from nowhere and is a constant threat. (One might sub-title this book: Trying to Find the Taliban). She also describes a country of great beauty, as well as one stricken with a dry, hot desolation. That contrast is also evident in the support the troops receive from the local population.Some helpful to the Canadians, some who live in fear of the Taliban, some who are perhaps still loyal to the Taliban. In some of her journalistic writing, I have often found Ms. Blatchford goes a bit overboard trying to tug at our emotions.Not here.Perhaps because she is managing her considerable skills at their peak, and partly because she realizes it is unnecessary, given the material. There's enough here to weep about with the uninterrupted deaths of men and women gracing each chapter. And lots to celebrate that Canada has produced the kind of soldiers ready to take on such a dangerous mission. Who knows if we will 'win' in Afghanistan. But I don't think the Canadian soldiers there need fear their contribution and sacrifice will be forgotten. Thanks to the job they are doing, and Ms. Blatchford's excellent reporting.

Canada has no idea how lucky it is
Bob Patterson's review really captured a lot of what I was feeling.As a former member of the Canadian Army, I was not only able to see in my mind's eye the scenes that Christie was describing, I was able to see many of the soldiers, often because I actually knew those men.The Canadian Army is not big - and the Army of West is probably about 6,000 Regulars and a few more thousand reservists - that's not a very big town, and all of the larger than life characters tend to become known by all - men like Mars Janek, whom I had the honor to serve with back in 1995, and who features prominently in this book as the extraordinary soldier that he is.Canadians really have no idea how lucky they are that these bright young men and women are willing to put their lives on the line in the service of their country.

Christie did a great job with this book, and clearly she wrote it her own way.My only real citicism is that I would have liked her to spend a bit more time of the achievements and field operations, and a little bit less on deaths, but I understand why she went the route that she did.

The New Canadian Army
The Canadian army is very small - many organizations claim to be like a "family" but the Canadian Army is a family. In the larger world there may be 6 degrees of separation but in the Canadian Army there may be only two. So every loss is a wound for all. Every loss is indeed the death of a brother.

This remarkable book is a revelation of what it may mean to be part of a true Band of Brothers - a world where the most senior general lends a master corporal his own wedding ring so that he can ask his girl to marry him - a world where the entire platoon comes to the home of a fallen comrade and spends a week in the community celebrating his life - a world where a 40 plus year old widow enlists so that she can continue to be part of the family - a world where Colonels weep for their men.

The book also causes the reader to think more deeply about war and soldiers. It is politically correct to feel that all war and everything about it is bad. But we discover, that for all its terror and for all the losses, for a soldier war is what he lives for. It is when he also discovers whether he is any good at his life's work. We discover how good our soldiers are. Surprisingly, for we always think the less of ourselves, in Afghanistan, we are considered the heavy weights who punch well above our weight.

We discover that while war exhausts a person more than any other activity, it also makes him more alive.

We discover that PTSD is much more prevalent in peacekeeping than in the kind of situation that we find in Afghanistan. In peacekeeping the kit was awful and the impotence high - imagine simply witnessing atrocity? But in Afghanistan our soldiers can take the initiative and they are very well equipped and have rules of engagement that make sense.

We discover a new kind of woman soldier - who are at home in this strange world, as is of course the "Blatch", and who are no longer seen as odd.

We discover how the families of our soldiers have been integrated into the mission and we see how the worst of all news is given and how the families are supported when what they all fear the most occurs.

This is not the civil service in green that was the sadness of our forces for many years. Implicit throughout the book is that someone really knows that he is doing. I think that someone might be called Rick Hillier.

We discover how great our local field leadership is too which also says something more about General Hillier -

Brig- Genl Dave Fraser to LTC Ian Hope, in radio orders given at 11.30pm on July 17 "You need to recapture Nawa and Garmser by 1600 hours.

Hope to Fraser: "Roger that. Recapture Nawa and Garmser by 1600 hours."

Fraser: "Any questions?"

Hope: "Just one: Where are Nawa and Garmser?'

Not only do we routinely pull off tough missions, but the Cols take all the risks that their men do - they lead by example. They also tend to do the really terrible things like personally extract the burnt and mutilated bodies of their dead so that the buddies in the platoon would not have to remember their friend like that. There is all this bull in the public service about "Servant Leadership". Here you see it for real at all levels from the LTC down to the Master Corporal.

We discover the central frustration of the mission. That we have to go back again and again and take the same ground because the ANP, the police, cannot hold it - we learn how complex this work is.

But most of all, we learn how fortunate we are to have those wonderful people wearing our uniform.

It is a mystery to me how, in a nation, so cut off from the reality of war, that we can once again have the kind of army that we had in 1917. A pathfinder Army.

A small army that can think and adapt. A small army that is lead by men and women of an integrity and skill that put our business and public organizations to shame. A small army largely made up from men and women from small town Canada who have that can do attitude that used to be the hallmark of Canadians.

Who else could tell this story but "Blatch"? A woman who acknowledges that she knows of only two soldiers who swear more than she. A woman who shares the hardships, the joys, the terrors, the losses and the fun. A woman who loves her boys and who is loved back.

She writes with such a love and a passion - I could not put the book down except when my eyes were so full of tears that I could no longer see.

It is exciting, it's very funny, it's very sad. But in the end it is heroic. Not in a little boy's view of heroic but in the most mythic sense of people who live for each other in undertaking a very hard task.

At the end of the book, "Blatch" goes back to see everyone to see how they are.

"Eight months later, Hope (LTC Ian Hope) answers my email form an airport lounge somewhere. I wrote back to tell him of one of the stories - bawdy and funny, loving and sad, always brutally honest - I'd heard from the troops.

You must miss them so xxxxxx much," I said. " I can hardly bear to write about them sometimes. I find them so beautiful."

"You understand what I miss," he wrote back. "I am Odysseus."

This is a wonderful book about wonderful people written by a wonderful person - who has by the way a wonderful dog but that is another story. ... Read more

Product Description
At 31 years old, Major Cyrus Inches resolved to survive the Great War, and did so without losing his sense of humour, in spite of the tragedies he constantly faced. His letters home were stored and left undisturbed for almost ninety years. Cleverly written with wit and humour, they reveal voluminous details of life during the war. Cyrus Inches also kept a diary and published a booklet called The 1st Canadian Heavy Battery in France -- Farewell Message to NCOs and Men, which chronicled the movements and the battles of his battery. The booklet and letters combine to create a complete history of one Canadian officer's experiences -- from Valcartier and the First Battle of Ypres to Mons, and the months of demobilization after that. ... Read more

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This volume brings together essays that address the problematic Louis Riel, Canadian hero/villain, at the intersection of history and myth. The emphasis is upon the shifting and ultimately indeterminable nature of representations of Riel, in newspaper, textbook, novel, poem and play. ... Read more

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The minesweepers of the Royal Canadian Navy toiled incomparative obscurity, unlike their more celebrated cousins, thecorvettes and frigates.In devoting a book to minesweepers, KenMacpherson makes amends for what he considers a long ignoredoversight. ... Read more

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Presents an insightful critique of the effectiveness of the RCAF in preparing its aircrew for war. ... Read more

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By every principle of war, every shred of military logic, logistics support to Canada's Task Force Orion in Afghanistan should have collapsed in July 2006. There are few countries that offer a greater challenge to logistics than Afghanistan, and yet Canadian soldiers lived through an enormous test on this deadly international stage - a monumental accomplishment. Canadian combat operations were widespread across southern Afghanistan in 2006, and logistics soldiers worked in quiet desperation to keep the battle group moving. Only now is it appreciated how precarious the logistics operations of Task Force Orion in Kandahar really were.

What the Thunder Said is an honest, raw recollection of incidents and impressions of Canadian warfighting from a logistics perspective. It offers solid insight into the history of military logistics in Canada and explores in some detail the dramatic erosion of a once-proud corner of the army from the perspective of a battalion commander.

Customer Reviews (1)

Where few have gone before
The Canadian Army's Lieutenant-Colonel John Conrad provides an autobiography covering both familiar ground (e.g., leadership in combat) and that too rarely tread (to include tactical logistics operations and coalition operations in 21st-century Afghanistan).His is a sincere book, one providing a look at the men and women who make possible the operations conducted by those about whom and by whom the great bulk of war memoirs are written: soldiers and marines in the combat arms.Lt.Col Conrad led those responsible for fueling, maintaining, feeding, and otherwise supporting units conducting counterinsurgency operations in some of the world's most difficult terrain.Its dust and ruggedness wore on man and machine alike.But it was not Afghanistan's mountains, hills, plains, and valleys that posed the greatest dangers to Canada's soldiers.Improvised explosive devices, a clever and able foe, and the play of chance for those who spend hundreds of hours on rough tracks all threatened life itself...and the emotions and well being of those fortunate enough to survive deployment.

There is recognition in these pages that at times the logistical soldier is too little appreciated.Such is the reality in war; to ignore it would be to misrepresent.Yet John Conrad does not dwell on the negative.He instead provides a book of interest to anyone who relies on the logistician; fills the ranks of a logistical unit; desires to better understand the nature of 21st-century conflict in Central Asia; or, in fact, cares to understand the very essence of war. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1910.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: Ottawa : Government printing bureau; Publication date: 1910; Subjects: Archives; Canada; History / Canada / General; ... Read more

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. ... Read more

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This superb volume by Patrick Martin follows on the heels of the first volume titled "Royal Canadian Air Force Finish and markings 1947-1968, These superb volumes were written by an individual whose passion and enthusiasm for military aircraft are reflected in this well researched volume, This volume covers aircraft flown by the Canadian Airforce since unification in 1968 and will appeal to the military modeller, military historian,and military buff in general, contains more than 170 drawings, over 1,000 photographs (106) in colour and a colour chart,all known features are described in full,A basic history of each aircraft is included as well as description, Aircraft featured include,Argus, Albatross, Canuck, CF-5, Challenger, Chinook, Hornet, Sabre, Voodoo and much more, other titles in this genre include "Royal Canadian Air Force Aircraft Finish and markings 1947-1968 and "Royal Canadian Navy Aircraft Finish and markings 1944-1968, Signed by the author on the title page, ... Read more

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The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps, which encompasses Canada's tank and armoured car regiments, has a proud past. Lavishly illustrated with photos, war art, maps and diagrams, this book traces the history of the RCAC from its cavalry ancestors through World War I and the interwar period that saw the advent of the tank and other new forms of armour.Most of the book deals with World War II as Canadian armoured units played important roles in the defeat of the Third Reich. Finally, the RCAC has been involved in most of Canada's military commitments since then, including peacekeeping duties.This is a large, authoritative, profusely illustrated book that is a must for all libraries and collectors of books in military history. ... Read more