AT THE SHARP END: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 914-1916/SHOCK TROOPS: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918/VIMY RIDGE: A Canadian Reassessment

The depth of [Tim Cook]'s research allows him to portray the fighting in the trenches as though he were a contemporary journalist embedded with a combat unit in Iraq or Afghanistan. "One by one, the French guns fell silent," he writes in a passage detailing the Germans' first use of gas against a sector held by French and Canadian troops. "As the enormous cloud enveloped and obscured position after position, insidiously seeping into the very crevices that sheltered soldiers from conventional fire, the French defenders were smothered." The reader shares the troops' terror as the gas enveloped their positions. "Colonel E. W. B. Morrison recounted seeing the red-panted Zouaves and French soldiers stumbling from the front, Taces flecked with blood and froth. Frequently these men would fall down under the feet of the mob, and roll about like mad dogs in their death agonies'" (vol. I, 116). In both volumes, passages such as these and detailed descriptions of hand-tohand combat illustrate the ghastly realities of trench warfare. While unprecedented in its level of detail, Cook's work hews close to the traditional Canadian narrative of World War I. "The Great War was Canada's war of independence," he writes towards the end of the second volume (627). He portrays the war as an experience that unified a disparate group of colonials, overcoming fierce inter-unit rivalries and regional, linguistic, and religious differences. While Cook notes that Canada had already existed for 50 years by the time of the celebrated victory at Vimy Ridge, he argues that such successes provided tangible symbols of Canada's importance on the world stage. Canada now had something to be proud of beyond its membership in the British empire. Cook concludes his work with a salute to the men he has devoted his life to studying: "it was these citizen soldiers from across Canada - who were forged into the shock troops of the Western Front, where they fought, endured, and finally delivered victory in the Great War" (vol. II, 648).