April 2, 2013

FINEST HOUR 154, SPRING 2012

BY GORDON WALKER

Mr. Walker is a Director of the International Churchill Society Canada. A Queen’s Counsel, he has served as a Member of the Ontario Parliament and as a Minister of the Crown. He previously wrote “Election 1945: Why Winston Churchill Lost,” in Finest Hour 140.

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A few months ago, Canadian troops retired from Afghanistan with casualties of 161 killed and several times that many wounded. Canada had troops on the ground fighting the Taliban by December 2001 and now, ten years later, American troops had relieved the Canadians in Kandahar Province, the toughest area of that country. Amongst NATO troops in this theatre, Canada’s war dead are are surpassed only by those of Great Britain and the United States.

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As the saying goes, Canada has “punched above her weight” in every major war over the past century. Canada’s wartime contributions rarely rate attention in the world, much to the chagrin of Canadians. To this day, the noble fight of Churchill and Britain in 1940-41 is believed to have been carried out “alone.” That is a serious disservice to the Dominions and the rest of the Commonwealth—Canada in particular.

“DURING THE GREAT WAR CANADA BURIED 66,000 OF HER SONS…. ADJUSTED FOR THE DIFFERENCE IN POPULATIONS, AMERICA WOULD HAVE NEEDED TO PLANT MORE THAN ONE MILLION CROSSES IN FLANDERS. NOW, AGAIN, THIS NATION WAS SUFFERING SEVERAL TIMES MORE CASUALTIES ON A PER CAPITA BASIS THAN THE U.S. AND ALMOST AS MANY AS BRITAIN. WHEN THE CANADIAN C-IN-C IN LONDON, GENERAL ANDREW McNAUGHTON,TRAVELED TO MALTA IN EXPECTATION OF REVIEWING HIS TROOPS IN SICILY, MONTGOMERY REFUSED.” —Paul Reid co-author with William Manchester, The Last Lion:Winston Spencer Churchill, Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

In the Second World War, Canada declared war on Germany on 10 September 1939, within a week after Great Britain, following a debate in the House of Commons in Ottawa. Until then Canada had only modest armed forces: only 10,000 in uniform in the three branches, with little equipment—for example, just ten Bren guns. By the end of the war the Canadians had the fourth largest Navy and Air Force in the World and over a million men in uniform. That represented about 41 percent of all men between the ages of 18 and 45. There were 25,000 enlisted women as well. This was a massive proportion of fighting personnel in a population, at that time, of only 11 million.

For Canada, like Britain, World War II was a six-year war. Some soldiers served that entire time. By Christmas 1939 two Canadian battalions were in England. There were times when all that stood between London and the likely German invasion beaches were Canadian troops. When the Dunkirk evacuation occurred in May 1940, the British left 75,000 military vehicles behind (they had entered the war with only 80,000). Virtually defenceless on the ground, Britain turned to Canada for replacements. Canada responded—and then some, eventually producing 800,000 military transport vehicles for Britain and the Allies, including 50,000 tanks.

Canadian armed forces fought bravely in many fronts through Sicily, Italy, France, the Low Countries and Germany, right up to the war’s end. They took huge losses in the defence of Hong Kong and the attack on Dieppe. The Canadian army stormed the Normandy coast with the British and Americans. At sea the Canadian navy took part in convoys from Halifax to Britain each year of the war, providing the materials needed to keep Britain alive and the war effort fueled.

Supplying troops was not the only war effort. Canada trained 125,000 air crew over six years, producing armaments on a huge scale, as well as largely feeding Britain. Financially this lightly-populated nation sent vast sums of money to Britain.

David Dilks, in his book The Great Dominion, records a dinner conversation between Churchill and Prime Minster Mackenzie King in Ottawa after Churchill’s “Some Chicken” speech to the Canadian Parliament. King said: “Canada plans to make an immediate gift of $1 billion to Britain.” Churchill, accustomed to speaking in terms of “a thousand million,” wasn’t sure he’d heard right and asked King to repeat himself. “We are going to give you a billion dollars,” King repeated. Churchill was floored.

He then promised the conversion of a $700 million debt into an interest-free loan and a further $200 million cash, and a further $800 million and then $2000 million. As Dilks wrote, “Canada bled herself white for the cause.” For a nation of 11 million, the billions of dollars was a huge contribution that did much to keep Britain solvent. Over the course of the War, Canada spent $21 billion on the war effort, out of $33 billion in total national expenditures.

Despite a massive financial and material effort, Canada’s greatest loss was the 46,998 soldiers who died and the 60,000 who were wounded. The army counted about 25,000 dead, the RCAF some 18,000, and the navy 4000.

Canada has taken her fair share of war sacrifice, dating back to the Boer War at the turn of the 20th century. In the First World War there were over 66,000 Canadian dead amongst 600,000 soldiers, and of course many more wounded. The Korean War saw over 500 Canadian dead, and even the Vietnam War took a toll of Canadian lives.

Peacekeeping became the Canadian way for decades. Not a single peacekeeping force in the past fifty years was without Canadians, and over 121 Canadians have died in those efforts. Whenever the United Nations went to war, Canada was there. As recently as the Libyan revolution in 2011, a Canadian general directed the entire NATO effort. Canadians flew ten percent of the missions over Libya, fortunately with no casualties.

In a press conference with Churchill in Washington on 23 December 1941, Franklin Roosevelt said, “There are a good many nations besides our own that are at war.” Churchill, seated beside him, quickly added, “Canada.” Roosevelt replied, “Yes. Canada, as the Prime Minister suggests, is also….”

Churchill interrupted: “In the line.”

We Canadians have always been “in the line.” We often lament that so few have taken note.