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Reviewed by:
  • Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy
  • Bill Rawling (bio)
Terry Copp. Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy University of Toronto Press. xv, 347. $40.00

Some 5000 Canadian soldiers died during the three-month Normandy campaign, in comparison with 5600 who were killed in over a year and a half of fighting in Sicily and Italy. As early as the army's official history, therefore, historians have attempted to explain why the cost was so high, with no little controversy as a result. [End Page 498]

Terry Copp's Fields of Fire is thus one of many attempts to evaluate First Canadian Army's performance in Operation Overlord, and its first chapter is an excellent summary of the historiography of the subject to date. Areas where the book adds meaningfully to that historiography include a detailed description of army/air co-operation and of operational research. Further, its analysis of the Black Watch attack against Verrières Ridge is a welcome addition to the debate. Copp also provides a detailed and scholarly study of operations to close the Falaise gap. Finally, the book's explanation that Canadians suffered higher casualties than British formations because they spent more days in close combat with the enemy is a needed infusion of evidence into what has sometimes been a somewhat polemical historical debate.

The latter, however, will not end with Fields of Fire. Copp's sympathies clearly lie with the infantry battalions who did the bulk of the fighting and dying in Normandy, hence the immensely detailed battle descriptions, including tactics, but some supporting arms and services are for the most part left out of the author's analysis. Aside from discussion of psychiatric treatment, for example, there is very little on medical practice, a topic of no little importance given the heavy casualties of the campaign. Similarly, sappers, whom the author occasionally calls combat engineers when they were in fact field engineers, appear seldom in his analysis, and even then are often misnamed. Some readers might be confused by the reference to Sixth Field Regiment, an artillery designation, when the author is actually referring to Sixth Field Company, an engineer unit. In discussing problems crossing the Laison River, the author simply repeats an after-action report from Second Armoured Brigade criticizing the engineers. Had an infantry battalion been blamed he would have delved into the issue more deeply. Copp's response to those who have criticized the Canadian Army's performance in Normandy is therefore not entirely comprehensive.

Nor is it aimed at the general reader, with much militarese mixed in with the narrative. What is an AVRE? a Petard? a Centaur? What is the difference between suppressive and neutralizing fire? What is an aggressive defence? a Mulberry? What is one doing when one co-axes? Given its role in a wider debate, Fields of Fire is designed mainly for experts in the field.

The latter will, however, appreciate Copp's corrective of the technological determinism that has often muddied discussions of Second World War operations. In the very first paragraph of his preface he notes that assaults against German positions in Normandy were 'not unlike those of the Canadian Corps in the First World War.' In spite of the development of the tank and fighter-bomber, the infantryman in the attack in 1944 faced no less a challenge than did his predecessor in 1917. The 'bite and hold' doctrine Copp discusses had been adopted often in the previous war, and Montgomery's policy of attrition differed little from that of Douglas Haig. The [End Page 499] author's description of a Régiment de Maisonneuve attack could have come out of an after-action report on Passchendaele.

The fact was that the Sherman tank, as Copp points out, was too highly vulnerable to enemy armour and anti-tank guns to be of much use on the battlefield. What the author does not note is that the German platoon machine gun, with its much higher rate of fire, was superior to the British Bren gun, the Canadians' main platoon support weapon. The Canadians were therefore outgunned at the point where infantry fought infantry, a frightening prospect when one...

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