From Cold War to New Millennium: The History of the Royal Canadian Regiment, 1953-2008 (review)

Regimental histories tend to be cut and dried. There are no bad officers, no retreats, and no debacles, and the histories usually were written by retired officers or graduate students writing for a (usually small) fee. Recently, however, truth-telling has become a virtue, David Bercuson's 1995 history of the Calgary Highlanders (Battalion of Heroes: The Calgary Highlanders in World War Two) being perhaps the first notable example. The same quality happily can be found in spades in this history of the Royal Canadian Regiment, one of the Canadian Forces' three regular infantry regiments, covering the period from the end of the Korean War to Afghanistan.

Colonel Bernd Horn, the author, is the most-published serving officer in the Canadian Forces with thirty-two books and more than a hundred chapters and articles to his credit. He can do research and write well, and he can be uncommonly blunt in his text and, most especially, in his endnotes. Here, for example, is Horn writing about the state of the army at the time the Somalia Commission began its work in the mid-1990s: 'The reality was that politicians and many other people no longer trusted the military to investigate itself,' and the commission, 'frustrated by a seemingly obdurate, if not at times, dishonest, officer corps produced a scathing report.' Serving officers do not ordinarily write this way. Nor do they point fingers at senior officers from their own units, scurrying for cover and abandoning subordinates to take the rap: one officer, Horn writes, 'is remembered by many as one of the most careerist, deceitful moral cowards of the period.'

If these bombshells are extraordinary, so too are the author's observations on training, equipment, mess life, and the RCR role in the Canadian Forces' various operations over the half-century and more he covers. There are good revelatory sections on the FLQ crisis of 1970, for example, and on the long, difficult 'peacekeeping' operations in Cyprus and in former Yugoslavia (where Horn briefly allows his own role to be mentioned). The 'Can'tbats,' as the Canadian battalions were derisively labelled by some other nations' officers in former Yugoslavia, were so hampered by restrictions placed on them by a fearful National Defence Headquarters that they sometimes could not move.

But it is Horn's two chapters on Afghanistan that will attract the most attention. He has already written much on the war against the Taliban, but he is perhaps blunter in his comments here. Interference in operations from senior officers is sharply criticized, sudden changes in battlefield plans are excoriated, and the occasional criticism of Canadian efforts from senior International Security Assistance Force commanders is noted. But what emerges nonetheless is that the RCR Battle Groups (and those from Canada's other regiments) that fought the war did very well, not least in Operation Medusa in the summer and autumn of 2006 where the Royals suffered heavy casualties but arguably saved Kandahar - and hence the allied efforts. Other contingents in the International Security Assistance Force, bound by caveats that restricted their ability to help the Canadians, did essentially nothing. Horn notes bluntly, 'Overall, the Europeans failed their allies and refused to participate' in Operation Medusa - all aid short of help, in other words. Only the British and Americans, though hard-pressed elsewhere, could be counted on to assist. The Taliban were a tough enemy, their trench positions in Panjwai elaborate, their command and control by their leaders impressive.

Horn has interviewed most of the key Canadian players who served in Afghanistan, senior and junior officers and warrant officers, and their testimony adds life to the text. So too does the good selection of photographs. This is a very good book, a model for other regimental histories for its being both up-to-date and critical.