Foreword by His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales
Hospital ships filled the harbour of Le Havre as the 75th Mississauga
Battalion arrived on 13 August 1916. Those soldiers who survived would
spend almost three years in a tiny corner of northeastern France and
northwestern Belgium (Flanders), where many of their comrades still lie.
And they would serve in many of the most horrific battles of that long,
bloody conflict?Saint Eloi, the Somme, Arras, Vimy, Hill 70, Lens,
Passchendaele, Amiens, Drocourt-Qu�ant, Canal du Nord, Cambrai, and
Valenciennes.
This book tells the story of the 75th Battalion (later the Toronto
Scottish Regiment) and the five thousand men who formed it?most from
Toronto?from all walks of life. They included professionals, university
graduates, white- and blue-collar workers, labourers, and the
unemployed, some illiterate. They left a comfortable existence in the
prosperous, strongly pro-British provincial capital for life in the
trenches of France and Flanders. Tommy Church, mayor of Toronto from
1915 to 1921, sought to include his city's name in the unit's name
because of the many city officials and local residents who served in it.
Three years later Church accepted the 75th's now heavily emblazoned
colours for safekeeping at City Hall from Lieutenant-Colonel Colin
Harbottle, who returned with his bloodied but successful survivors. The
author pulls no punches in recounting their labours, triumphs, and
travails.
Timothy J. Stewart undertook exhaustive research for this first-ever
history of the 75th, drawing from archival sources (focusing on critical
decisions by Brigadier Victor Oldum, General Officer Commanding 11th
Brigade), diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, and interviews.
