"I have called this period Canada's Turbulent Years - turbulent not
only because of the battles we fought on the African veldt, the ravaged
meadows of Flanders, the forbidding spine of Italy, and the conical
hills of Korea, but turbulent in other ways. These were Canada's
formative years, when she resembled an adolescent, grappling with the
problems of puberty, often at odds with her parents, craving to be
treated as an adult, hungry for the acclaim of her peers, and wary of
the dominating presence of a more sophisticated neighbour." - From the
Introduction
Canada's twentieth century can be divided roughly into two halves. All
the wars and all the unnecessary battles in which Canadian youth was
squandered belong to the first -- from the autumn of 1899 to the summer
of 1953. From the mid-1950s on, Canada has concerned itself not with war
but with peace.
The first war of the century, which took Canadian soldiers to South
Africa, and the last, which sent them to Korea, bracket the bookends on
the shelf of history. They have a good deal in common with, these two
minor conflicts, whose chronicles pale when compared to the bloodbaths
of the two world wars.
Canada's wartime days are long past, and for many, the scars of war have
healed. Vimy has been manicured clean, its pockmarked slopes softened by
a green mantle of Canadian pines. Dieppe has reverted to a resort town,
its beaches long since washed free of Canadian blood. Nowadays,
Canadians are proud of their role as Peacekeepers, from which they have
gained a modicum of international acclaim the nation has always craved,
with precious little blood wasted in the process.
In this monumental work, Pierre Berton brings Canadian history to life
once again, relying on a host of sources, including newspaper accounts
and first-hand reports, to tell the story of these four wars through the
eyes of the privates in the trenches, the generals at the front, and the
politicians and families back home. By profiling the interwar years,
Berton traces how one war led to the next, and how the country was
changed in the process. Illustrated with maps and line drawings,
Marching as to War describes how the experience of war helped to
bind Canada together as a nation and chronicles the transformation of
Canada's dependence upon Great Britain and its slow emergence as an
independent nation caught in a love-hate relationship with the United
States.
