To the Last Canadian

A controversial view from Terry Copp.

This didn't copy well so the original, along with charts, can be viewed at:
http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1491&context=cmh

To the Last Canadian?
Casualties in 21st Army Group
Terry Copp
When Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy
was assessed

before publication the commentators

were particularly unhappy with the
historiographical summary which
challenged the received version of
combat effectiveness in Normandy.
No one offered serious criticism of
the evidence; it was the tone that
concerned them. My autobiographical
comment about Clausewitz that as “a
social historian escaping a world
dominated by Marxists I was entitled
to be suspicious of yet another 19th

century authority figure” was not well
received. To follow this with pointed
criticism of C.P. Stacey and John A.
English not to mention Carlo D’Este
and Max Hastings was considered
ill-mannered and presumptuous.
After publication the book received
a number of favourable reviews as
well as some sharply critical ones.
The focus of these critiques was
my rejection of the notions that the
German army in Normandy had
demonstrated consistent “tactical
superiority” and the last paragraph
of my conclusion which read:
The Canadian citizen army that
fought in the Battle of Normandy
played a role all out of proportion
to its relative strength among the
Allied armies. This was especially
true within 21st Army Group where,
due to a mixture of Canadian pride,
and the British desire to limit their
own casualties, Canadian divisions
were required to fight more often
than their British counterparts.
The oft-quoted statistics, which
show that the Canadians suffered
considerably heavier casualties than
other divisions in 21 Army Group,
are the product of a greater number of
days in close combat with the enemy,
not evidence of operational or tactical
failure. Perhaps it is time to recognize
the extraordinary achievements
that marked the progress of the
Canadians across Normandy’s fields
of fire.




1

I wish to provide in this paper a
detailed analysis of casualties in 21st
Army Group which will substantiate
the argument made in




Fields of Fire.

Before I take you through the hard

evidence I want to offer a brief
history of the formation of both the
combat effectiveness and casualty
rate hypotheses.
A number of years ago my
longtime friend Jack Granatstein
provided readers of the Toronto




Star

with an account of what he called
the left-wing takeover of social
labour history in Canada. The article,
title “No Hostages taken in war
between historians” noted that Terry
Copp “left the field in disgust after
full-fledged assaults from Marxist
historians.” All of this came as a
surprise to me. I was unaware of any
full-fledged assaults though I did
recall that two of the leading leftists,
Greg Kealey and Brian Palmer, had
called me a “corporate liberal.” At
the time I had taken this as evidence
that they had actually read and
understood




The Anatomy of Poverty

and recognized my centrist, incomeredistribution
bias.
While work on industrial
unionism in the 1940s was interesting
to me, the truth is that the purpose
had been to lay the foundation for
a sequel to




The Anatomy of Poverty

examining the prosperity of the
1940s and 1950s. Success stories
about capitalism were not a popular
subject among academics in the 1970s
so I was open to the suggestion that
with a sabbatical coming up I should
consider a project with my friend
and mentor Robert Vogel, a military
historian at McGill University. One
attraction was exchanging time
in labour archives in places like
Hull, Detroit and New Jersey, for
France, Belgium and Holland. In
the spring of 1981 my wife and I
made our first visit to the Second
World War battlefields. Experience
as an officer cadet in the Canadian
Officers’ Training Corps during my
undergraduate years had given me an
unfashionable but very real respect
A




bstract: In Normandy, Canadian infantry

divisions suffered a higher rate of

casualties than British divisions engaged
in similar operations. These figures
have been used by some historians to

prove Canadian failure on the battlefield.
However, by using statistics gathered by
operational research scientists during
the war, this article shows that the
“considerably heavier casualties” suffered
by the Canadians in Normandy and beyond
were the product of a greater number of
days in close combat with the enemy, not
evidence of operational inexperience or
tactical failure.
©




Canadian Military History, Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2009, pp.3-6.

1
Copp: To the Last Canadian?
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009
4
for the Canadian army but I had not
read much military history. I decided
to go and see the battlefields before
I began to write about them. At the
time, Bob Vogel and I were focused
on the battle for the approaches to
Antwerp and despite constant rain
my wife and I spent a week walking
the ground. I defy anyone with an
open mind who visits the Leopold
Canal or Woensdrecht ridge to
come away without developing a
profound respect for the men who
fought to overcome their enemy
in such terrain. The ground, as my
students have heard me say so often,
must be the military historians’ basic
primary source. When I learned
from military historians that the
attacker was supposed to have
at least 3:1 odds to overcome the
defender and calculated that in the
Scheldt, the ratio was seldom better
than 1.5:1 my skepticism about
German combat effectiveness versus
Canadian inexperience became the
basis of a research question which
I have argued in a number of books
and articles. A second research
question, the one we are focusing
on today, also developed out of my
interest in the battles in the Scheldt
Estuary.
My uncle Douglas “Paddy”
Copp, who had served as a company
sergeant-major in the British 52nd
Lowland Division, had a number of
stories about his wartime experience
including strong views about the
Canadians he had met in Holland.
He thought they were undisciplined,
dirty, tough, accomplished soldiers
who were, by late October 1944,
in very rough shape. He could not
understand why his full-strength,
highly trained division had sat out
the war in Scotland and was even
at this late date used so sparingly
in the struggle to open Antwerp.
In




Cinderella Army I sketched the

tension between the Canadians and

Scots which my uncle described and


archival sources confirmed. I was able
to establish that after 52nd Division’s
role in the deception operation
“Fortitude North,” an attack on
Norway, ended, and its second role
as an air transportable division was
discarded with the failure at Arnhem,
Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke wanted
to save the division for the Far East.
In fact, in October 1944 Brooke also
asked Montgomery to return 3rd
British Infantry Division, a regular
division, to the UK for use in Burma.
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
persuaded him to leave 3rd Division
and send 52nd to the continent, but
the Far East, the Mediterranean and
post-war occupation issues loomed
large in Churchill and Brooke’s
calculations.




2

When I read this exchange in
the Alanbrooke Papers some of my
innocence about British war-time
goals disappeared but it was not
until much later when I was trying
to get background on Operation
Photo by Mike Bechthold
Canadian casualties in Normandy along the road to Bretteville-sur-Laize, 9 August 1944.
2
Canadian Military History, Vol. 18 [2009], Iss. 1, Art. 2
"To the Last Canadian?" by Terry Copp
5
“Wallstreet,” the plan to cross
the Rhine at Arnhem in February
1945 that I began to wonder if a
pattern was emerging.




3 General G.H.

Macmillan, the commander of 49th

West Riding Division, had developed


“Wallstreet,” and convinced Simonds
of its merits but Montgomery was not
interested. My interviews, especially
with Brigadier Trevor Hart Dyke,
a former battalion commander in
49th Division, suggested that the
officers of 49th Division could not
understand why they spent most of
the war holding quieter sections of
the line or conforming to the advance
of other formations during offensive
action.




4

Further research in British sources
indicated that in Normandy the 53rd
Welsh Division played a holding
role except for a very brief period in
August. Other British divisions also
experienced prolonged stretches of
relative inactivity, at least in contrast
to the Canadian experience. During
the struggle to close the Falaise
and Trun-Chambois gap, British
divisions, in a position to intervene
decisively, were ordered to keep out
of the messy business of trapping
a German army so that they could
concentrate on preparation for the
advance to the Seine and the Rhine.




5

This kind of evidence is what led
me to argue that the “considerably
heavier casualties” suffered by the
Canadians in Normandy and beyond
were the product of a greater number
of days in close combat with the
enemy, not evidence of operational
inexperience or tactical failure. Now
thanks to Army Operational Research
Group Report 21/54 “Battle Wastage
Rates of Personnel in War,” I am able
to fully document this contention.
The report, from the Ronnie Shephard
Operational Research Archives at the
Laurier Centre for Military Strategic
and Disarmament Studies, will be
published in full in the near future
with an appropriate introduction.




6

The Army Operational Research
Group produced their study in
1946 to provide “a reliable means
of forecasting battle and non-battle
Photo by M.M. Dean, Library and Archives Canada PA 132907
The Canadian War Cemetery at Beny-sur-Mer, France. This cemetery contains the bodies of over 2,000 Canadians
who were killed in on D-Day and in the battles which lead to the capture of Caen in early July 1944.
3
Copp: To the Last Canadian?
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009
6
wastage under varying military
conditions.” During the war both
the British and Canadian armies
had used tables of wastage rates
developed by Major-General Evett
who in turn had created wastage
table based on Great War experience.
These tables expressed “wastage as a
percentage of strength lost per thirty
days of activity at Intense, Normal,
and Quiet levels.” Intense rates were
defined as “at least one battalion
engaged in full scale defensive or
offensive fighting.”




7 I have used these

criteria to add the data on Canadian
casualties suffered under “intense”
conditions.
Our concern today is with the
data on infantry division casualties
in Northwest Europe which
Field Marshal Montgomery had
drawn attention to in his




Memoirs.

Montgomery’s table of “Cumulative

Casualties by Divisions, 6 June to 1


October 1944,” revealed that “3rd
Canadian Infantry Division had more
casualties than any other division in
the army group and the 2nd Canadian
Division was next.”




8 C.P. Stacey

who presented this information in

the context of his criticism of the
performance of Canadian formations
did not consider evidence about the
number of days divisions spent in
intense combat and his views have

continued to influence historians.



9

Table 1 contains information that
might be of interest.
The operational research group
recognized that British divisions were
not committed to many significant
offensive or defensive operations
between 1 October and 30 December
1944 so they combined the three
month period into a single table. The
43rd Division with seven days of
intense combat was the most heavily
committed with 3rd British at five
days second. Table 2 compares the
British and Canadian experience for
those three months.
The data presented today is
incomplete, particularly with regard
to casualty rates under “normal”
conditions. In July and August 1944,
especially during what I have termed
the stalemate, casualties suffered
while in “normal” contact with the
enemy, without significant offensive
or defensive actions, accounted for
30 percent of all casualties. There
are other limitations including the
exclusion of exhaustion casualties
from the totals but I think there is
enough evidence to substantiate my
statement that casualties are closely
related to the number of days spent
in close combat and to explain why
I continue to argue that the heavier
casualties suffered by Canadian
divisions in 1944 are the result of
a greater number of days in close
combat with the enemy, not evidence
of operational or tactical failure.
Notes
This is a revised text of Terry Copp’s
presentation to the 19th Military History
Colloquium at University of Waterloo, May
2008.
1. Terry Copp,




Fields of Fire: The Canadians

in Normandy


(Toronto: University of

Toronto Press, 2003), p.267.

2. Lord Alanbrooke Papers, Liddell
Hart Archives, correspondence with
Montgomery, September-October 1945.
3. The background to Operation Wallstreet
is sketched in Terry Copp,




Cinderella

Army: The Canadian Army in Northwest

Europe, 1944-1945




(Toronto: University

of Toronto Press, 2006), pp.213-214.

4. Interview notes, Terry Copp with


Brigadier Trevor Hart Dyke, Sheffield,
England, July 1986.
5. Copp,




Fields of Fire, p.265.

6. The report may also be found in the The
National Archives (Public Record Office),
WO 291/1482.
7. I have used the definition of intense
combat employed by the OR team
eliminating any days of combat which
fell just short of the criteria.
8. Bernard Law Montgomery,




The Memoirs

of Field Marshal Montgomery


(New York:

Signet, 1959), p.277.

9. C.P. Stacey,




The Victory Campaign: The

Operations in North-West Europe, 1944-

1945




(Ottawa: National Defence, 1960),

p.271.


Table 2




Intense Combat Days & Casualties

1 October to 31 December 1944
Days Casualties
Ten British Divisions




25 12,528

Three Canadian Divisions


54 10,097

Terry Copp is director of the Laurier
Centre for Military Strategic and
Disarmament Studies and professor
emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University.
He is the author or co-author of 14 books
and many articles on the Canadian role
in the Second World War including
travel guides to the Canadian battlefields.
Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy
(University of Toronto Press), won the
2004 Distinguished Book Award for non-
US history from the American Society for
Military History.



4

 

I always find Terry Copp's work provocative and enlightening, although his persistent refrain of what a Martyr to the Truth he is is somewhat tiresome.

It seems to me, however, that he's really advancing two arguments in this piece, one that he provides evidence for and one that he doesn't.

The overt argument - that "the heavier casualties suffered by Canadian divisions in 1944 are the result of a greater number of days in close combat with the enemy, not evidence of operational or tactical failure" - has much to commend it.

The implicit argument - that this unusually long exposure to close combat was due to "a mixture of Canadian pride, and the British desire to limit their own casualties" (the latter embodied in the article's unecessarily provocative title) - is rather less well developed, however, particularly with regard to British intentions.

I haven't read Fields of Fire or Cinderella Army in full and I don't have copies of either to hand, so it's possible that he makes a better case for it there. But there seems to be strong counterevidence that far from wanting to commit the 1st Canadian Army as heavily as possible, Montgomery was reluctant to give it any important commitments at all, mostly because of his limited confidence in Crerar, and that its eventual overcommitment was more a matter of chance than design [1]. It would be interesting to know more about Copp's position on this.

Best, Alan

[1] Stephen Hart, Colossal Cracks, p. 166-173.

 

Alan,

With respect to the 'Canadian pride' component of that argument, Hart himself acknowledges that Crerar, despite having the option to withdraw the cooperation of Canadian forces under certain conditions, chose never to do so throughout the campaign and, in particular, accepted the Scheldt operation which was beyond their existing resources [1].
The overall shortage of infantry in both the British and Canadian Armies by the fall of 1944 makes the statement about the 'desire to limit casualties' almost self evident, for all parties.
It would have been helpful if Copp had provided some relative weighting to his dual assertion, "a mixture of Canadian pride, and the British desire to limit their own casualties"


[1] Stephen Hart, Colossal Cracks, p. 156

 

The overall shortage of infantry in both the British and Canadian Armies by the fall of 1944 makes the statement about the 'desire to limit casualties' almost self evident, for all parties.

Sure, but Copp goes well beyond this to strongly imply (without ever exactly spelling it out - his language is annoyingly opaque) that the Canadians were being deliberately placed in the line of danger in order to preserve British manpower. It's an argument he may develop in his two books - as I say, I haven't read them in detail - but he presents no evidence for it here. Which is why I wonder if that provocative title of his was really wise.

Best, Alan

 

I'll have to rummage through some boxes and find my copy of Fields of Fire.

Copp does put forward some references to various British formations which were "under utilized". Perhaps an unfair comparison as the Canadian units were more difficult to extricate from the 'national' army. It might be instructive to know how many British divisions were rested during that period.

The officers of 49th Division could not understand why they spent most of the war holding quieter sections of the line or conforming to the advance of other formations during offensive action.
Further research in British sources indicated that in Normandy the 53rd Welsh Division played a holding role except for a very brief period in August. Other British divisions also experienced prolonged stretches of relative inactivity, at least in contrast to the Canadian experience. During the struggle to close the Falaise and Trun-Chambois gap, British divisions, in a position to intervene decisively, were ordered to keep out of the messy business of trapping a German army so that they could concentrate on preparation for the advance to the Seine and the Rhine.

 

After studying 50th Division, it seems clear to me that Montgomery played favorites among his divisions, trusting some more than others. He was better pleased with the work of the new divisions in Normandy, and came to have less faith in the older outfits like the 50th, 51st, and 7th Armoured. The 49th was new and did OK, but Montgomery was furious when a battalion of the Duke's collapsed in Normandy and he may have held that against the 49th thereafter. On the other side of the coin, he liked his old division, the 3rd, and the Canadians as well. He had them under his command in the UK earlier in the war, and he always thought well of the Canadian rankers and junior officers. Montgomery did not like Crerar but he was a great admirer of Guy Simonds, who seems to have been the real force in 1st Canadian Army. Simonds was a 'thruster,' of course, and many Canadians felt that he pushed too hard and showed too little regard for casualties and tactical realities. Such, at least, are my impressions from the literature. I tend to doubt that Montgomery favored 'the British' consciously, but he certainly had his preferences among the divisions. Being a Montgomery favorite was not easy for British divisions either; he used the 50th, 51st, and 7th Armd so hard in the Med that they were war-weary by the time of D-Day, the last two especially. I would like to see some information about other British divisions in NWE, such as the 43rd, 15th, and 11th Armoured, all of which had good reputations. Also, how much did Montgomery really know about the shortage of Canadian reinforcements?

 

Also, how much did Montgomery really know about the shortage of Canadian reinforcements?
An article in the Canadian Army Journal Vol 14 entitled
REASSESSMENT OF A CRISIS:
Canadian Infantry Reinforcements during the Second World War
http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/caj/documents/vol_14/iss_2/CAJ_Vol14.2_09_e.pdf

has this brief mention:
In fact, as of March, the potential shortfall of infantrymen was brought up by leaders in the Canadian Army and even by Field Marshall BL Montgomery, Commander-in-Chief of the 21st Army Group. Indeed, the forecasted wastage rate over 3 months for an infantry unit during periods of intense activity was 48 percent, rather than the 76 percent actually sustained by these units during fighting in North-West Europe in 1944.3
Unfortunately the author goes into no further detail on what Montgomery brought up.

Cheers
Mark

 

Alan,

"The officers of 49th Division could not understand why they spent most of the war holding quieter sections of the line or conforming to the advance of other formations during offensive action.
Further research in British sources indicated that in Normandy the 53rd Welsh Division played a holding role except for a very brief period in August. Other British divisions also experienced prolonged stretches of relative inactivity, at least in contrast to the Canadian experience. During the struggle to close the Falaise and Trun-Chambois gap, British divisions, in a position to intervene decisively, were ordered to keep out of the messy business of trapping a German army so that they could concentrate on preparation for the advance to the Seine and the Rhine."[1] Stephen Hart, Colossal Cracks, p. 156


I'd argue that Hart is incorrect in his statement of 53 Div's inactivity, infact the information is they were somewhat heavily engaged for much of July and August.

Equally I've noticed Copp make numerous mistakes on 53 Div, and some other British formations, I believe this is often because he only checks Divisional level documents (at least according to his references) never checking down to Battalion level to ascertain the position of units and what they are doing. A minor criticism but its one I've noticed in Fields of Fire.

 

Copp may have a bias towards the level of Canadian commitment to battle during the Normandy campaign and indeed all combat in north west Europe. The fact is the 3rd CID division was in the line from d-day until mid July, the only other division to remain in the line contuniously was the 6th airbourne [they had a Canadian battalion as well]. From d-day to d+30 there were no less than 12 British divisions landed in Normandy [none relieved the 3rd CID]. The 1st Can Corp only became operational in early July after the 2nd CID arrived [July 8th]. When Goodwood was launched with the idea of saving infantry; the 2nd and 3rd Canadian divs launched Atlantic, there was certainly no economy of infantry in this operation. Nor the follow on [holding attack] Operation Spring and the debacle it turned out to be. Brigadier Cunningham [of the 9th brigade] turned in his pips rather than order another doomed attack at Tilly. The 5th Brigade was shattered at Verriere Ridge. The 3rd division suffered nearly 100% Casualties in the first 30 days of the campaign the 2nd Div faired worse in its first month. By August 8th the 2nd CID was short almost 1900 riflemen and had had nearly 800 battle exhaustion cases evacuated. Simonds realized about this time that if his Corps was to be the spearhead of operation Totalize down the Caen-Falaise road he would have to better protect his Divisions or have nothing left to command by the end of August [hence the Kangaroo].
My unabashedly Canadian biased opinion, the Canadians were certainly exposed to very intense and close combat for extended periods in highly exposed positions in front of Carpiquet, Verson, Authie, Caen and Verriere. While fighting aggressive advances down the Failaise road in the following days. Keeping the Gap closed. Only the Poles suffered greater losses in this great victory.
IMHO
Matt

 

Randy (17thDYRCH) and I spent a delightful lunch today with a veteran of the 17th Duke of York's Royal Canadian Hussars.

This is purely anecdotal but in a rather blunt fashion he explained that Canadian soldiers, at least in his regiment, held a universal distain for Monty. Be it reality or perception, the cause for this animosity was as explained in previous posts. To quote our veteran, "He was saving the British soldiers and always sending in the Canadian and Polish units for the dirtiest jobs".
The cemeteries might refute that statement but easy to see how the 'them and us' feeling might arise. In any event, he carries that strongly held opinion 68 years later.

 

To quote our veteran, "He was saving the British soldiers and always sending in the Canadian and Polish units for the dirtiest jobs".

Rather an odd statement given the limited role (other than August) of the Poles..
Odd too that the Czech Armoured Brigade was not 'wasted' in a similar manner......

 

Rather an odd statement given the limited role (other than August) of the Poles..
Odd too that the Czech Armoured Brigade was not 'wasted' in a similar manner......

Agreed, but you can't debate opinions. It is a perception that prevails and perhaps even from an isolate incident where it was valid. Human nature thrives on "them and us".