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  • Shoestring Soldiers: The 1st Canadian Division at War, 1914-1915
  • Ian M. Brown
Shoestring Soldiers: The 1st Canadian Division at War, 1914-1915. By Andrew Iarocci. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8020-9822-1. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. viii, 362. $50.00.

Andrew Iarocci, Research Fellow at the Canadian War Museum, provides an informative, well researched and well written study of 1st Canadian Division's creation and introduction to the Western Front. The book, based on the author's doctoral dissertation, examines the creation of the division and offers an interesting statistical breakdown of its initial composition. He then proceeds to study its training on the Salisbury Plain, and careful introduction to the trenches under the husbandry of combat tested British formations. Iarocci then offers a detailed examination of the division's trial by fire during Second Ypres followed by an overview of actions in the late spring and summer of 1915 in which the division played a largely supporting role, closing with the creation of the Canadian Corps. He makes a convincing argument that the Salisbury training "cannot be written off as inconsequential" (p. 55) and that the trench apprenticeship left the division well prepared for front-line service.

The author's stated goal is to "escape the broader nationalistic and learning curve paradigms," place the early training and fighting more squarely in historical [End Page 973] context and show that the division was an effective combat formation that made a vital contribution to the allied cause (p. 10). He certainly manages to escape the nationalistic approach that is evident in many studies of the Canadian war effort and does place the division's experience in the historical context of the British Expeditionary Force, though not in that of the Entente—Second Ypres, for all its impact as the first 'gas' battle on the western front, was essentially a divisional affair at a time when the French and Germans had been hurling armies at each other.

Iarocci has done an excellent job of illustrating that the division was an effective combat formation that contributed to the war effort, and his extended discussion of Second Ypres is very good indeed. He persuades the reader that the division was a much better formation than it is often given credit for and leaves one convinced that it was well-prepared to take on the challenges to come: the full development of scientific gunnery, the growth of airpower, the advent of the tank and the battlefield consequences of the evolution of modern industrial warfare. Unfortunately, his success at illustrating the division's growth in knowledge and experience does not support his antagonism to the idea of a learning curve—calling it a paradigm is overstating its usage as a heuristic device by many historians. Indeed, the very word 'apprentice' used in the title of the third chapter connotes growth to journeyman and then mastery of a craft. Had the author chosen to reframe battlefield learning using a term such as 'experiential learning,' his argument would have been much stronger.

This criticism notwithstanding, Dr. Iarocci has produced a useful and interesting work that I recommend to anyone with a scholarly interest in either the Great War or Canadian history; I look forward to additional publications.

Ian M. Brown
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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