Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy (review)

One of the most interesting and controversial comments in Terry Copp's new book about the Canadians in the battle of Normandy comes in the jacket blurb; this claims that the book "challenges the conventional view that the Canadian contribution to the campaign was a 'failure'—that the Allies won only through the application of brute force and the Canadian officers and soldiers were essentially incompetent."

Who advances such a view and on what grounds is it based? When researching my own recent book on the Normandy battle I found no trace anywhere of such a damning allegation. An honest summation would hold that the Canadians and the First Canadian Army made a significant contribution to the Normandy campaign and Lt-General Guy Simonds of the II Canadian Corps was generally regarded as one of the star Allied Corps commanders, not only in Normandy but also in the other campaigns in North West Europe.

It is, of course, always easy to carp. It could be that the First Canadian Army commander, General Crerar, will not be ranked among the Great Captains of history and there were times when the Canadians did not do as well as expected; operations Tractible and Totalize were two bites at the same cherry. The same is true of all the other armies in Normandy, Allied and German alike, and there seems no particular reason to single out any one army for particular praise or blame; all did their best in difficult circumstances. The true lessons of the Normandy campaign are on how the campaign was fought and ended, on time, and with such a devastating effect on the German armies in the West; had that victory been followed up swiftly, there would be few complaints, sixty years on, about the conduct of the Normandy battle.

Where such complaints exist, Terry Copp has put them under the microscope, analysing the causes, the consequences and the cures with a shrewd and reasoned eye. His analysis of the campaign strikes this reviewer as fair and reasoned—and this book, largely based on Copp's 1998 Joanne Goodman lectures at the University of Western Ontario, includes Simonds's Operational Policy as an appendix. This Policy was not a doctrine but a broad outline of the strategy his II Corps would adopt in Normandy. This was issued in February 1944, four months before D-Day and remains a document that modern students and even serving officers might study with profit, not least for the insight it offers into the mind of an experienced senior officer preparing his unit for war.

Otherwise, Copp's analysis is based on the best available evidence of what actually happened in the field, often sourced from message logs and war diaries—this last a somewhat chancy source in my experience—and historical officer interviews conducted soon after action. For assessing what the Normandy fighting was actually like, this method is as good as it gets. Copp's historical training, firm and accurate writing and fair approach to his topic, always keeping the Canadian Army's performance in the context of the other armies, combines to make a book that anyone interested in the Normandy battle will greatly enjoy. Highly recommended.