Book Notes

Harris — Canadian Brass: The Making of a Professional Army 1860-1939

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Harris, Stephen, Canadian Brass: The Making of a Professional Army 1860-1939. 1988, U. of Toronto Press.

[Cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]

Was Canada Ever Serious? The Canadian Militia and Military Since Confederation

In a recent post, I reviewed an excellent book on Canada’s role in the Boer War. Canadian social values, actively encouraged by the media and the elites of the day, led to the self-confident assembly and transport of thousands of young Canadian men halfway across the planet. Little more than a decade later, Canada again found itself engaged in a war not of its making. And again, tens of thousands of farm boys, factory workers and office staff risking their lives in the trenches of WW1 Europe. Why? Better yet, why aren’t they still doing it? How did a nation that prides itself on G8 status somehow spend the last sixty years doing a U-turn in its attitude toward the military?

The story, it turns out, gives us a better sense of the modern Anglosphere and the role that each of the Big Five (UK, US, Canada, NZ and Australia) play on the modern stage. Canadian Brass is an excellent place to start because it tells the story of British, and then Canadian, military culture in the eighty years after Confederation, and the domestic myths which drove and shaped international military participation.

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Miller – Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War, 1899-1902

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[cross-posted at Albion’s Seedlings]

Miller, Carman, Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War, 1899-1902. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993. (Ppbk 2003, 584pp.)

In the first part of 2005, after working my way through many of the books in the Annotated Bibliography from Jim Bennett’s The Anglosphere Challenge, I became interested in the dramatic turn-of-the-20th century rapprochement between Great Britain and the United States. Books written at the time, which promoted the unity of the English-speaking peoples, cited the Spanish-American War and the Boer War as events which changed the public’s mind about whether America and the British Empire could get along. I needed to familiarize myself with these two wars.

After I read First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country A World Power (Zimmermann, W., 2002) … about the Spanish-American War era, Lex suggested a book by Professor Carman Miller called Painting the Map Red.

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Review of a Review

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Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness is reviewed by Christina Hoff Summers in the Weekly Standard. His discussion with Naomi Wolf on last week’s C-Span left me irritated. I assumed the book was not as flimsy as her accusations & his defenses implied. And, indeed, Summers’ grasp is more sure:

But one forgives Mansfield his imprecision and hyperbole because so much of what he says is profoundly true. Not all of contemporary feminism is a playing out of Nietzschean themes, but a great deal of it is. He is also right when he points out that many feminist leaders emulate some of the cruder and unappealing qualities of manliness.

. . .

Mansfield’s analysis of women’s nihilism gives us the lens to understand these developments as caricatures of the feminist will to “empowerment.” It is a form of manly assertiveness unmoderated by Aristotelian ideals. Here we have an example of women imitating masculinity in its lower range. It is the dark side of the “gender neutral society” in which we now live.

(Probably more about this in the summer, but for now, Summers’ summary might interest our readers.)

War Movies VI: Other Reviewers

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In the course of preparing my most recent war movie post I found two good war movie review sites, Sgt. Slaughter and Herr General. I should also mention the very good review section on Strategy Page. These are interesting and thoughtful reviews, and where I was familiar with the movies, I generally agreed with them.

I’ll mention one old favorite, Kelly’s Heroes that was reviewed on both Strategy Page and by Sgt. Slaughter. A very strange movie, set in World War II, but with a very late-60s feel to it. Donald Sutherland is a tank commander named Oddball, who is supposedly in 1944 but who seems like he just stepped out of a cloud of pot smoke in Haight Asbury in 1969. Clint Eastwood and Don Rickles in the same movie? Like I said, nutty. The GIs in this movie, led by Clint, are out to liberate a stash of gold bars from the Germans, but inadvertently precipitate a major breakthrough for the Allies. The final scene where Oddball’s tanks stalk German Tigers through the narrow streets of a French town is incredibly cool. Filmed in Yugoslavia, the movie looks like 1940s France. And this movie has more genuine equipment rolling around than any war movie other than A Bridge Too Far — about which I will go on and on some other time � .

(And checkout the incredible custom army guys available on this site. You can get an unpainted Oddball head (scroll down) to stick on your super-expensive, super-detailed GI Joe-type guy. The war toys for grown-ups you can find on the Net are simply breathtaking. Dig this Delta Force guy.)

UPDATE: Earlier war movie posts: A review of Downfall, and of We Were Soldiers, and 2 Korean War
movies, a post about the excellent essay “The Serpent’s Eye: The Cinema of 20th-Century Combat”, and my initial post of favorite war movies.

War Movies IV

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I finally saw Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers (2002). My sister got me the DVD, and I watched it on the laptop. Small screen indeed. I thought it was a solid effort. Gibson is a competent but not brilliant film-maker, who knows his limits and operates within them. He reminds me of something George Thorogood (I think) once said — I only know three chords, but I know ’em cold. Gibson, similarly, knows how to do war and violence and mourning and survivor?s guilt, stoicism and family life all in a very plain and unironic style. Gibson also uses stock characters — the tough commander with a heart of gold, the hard-ass top sergeant, the handsome and idealistic officer doomed to die, etc. This all works decently well in Gibson’s hands, though it is a set of artistic blunt instruments he is wielding. Gibson tells a linear story — a war is underway, troops assemble, a leader (Lt. Col. Hal Moore, played by Gibson) appears, Moore trains them, he leads them into battle, many die, there is mourning over the dead. The parallel plot about the wives at home receiving death notices allows a counterpoint to the din of gunfire, explosions and screaming, wounded men. Moore’s wife is played in a convincing and dignified way by Madeleine Stowe. She is a good actress, with striking looks, who seems to have spent almost her entire career being squandered in sub-par movies. A third somewhat muted parallel plot has unidentified men in Saigon trying to figure out how to “sell” the story of what is happening back home. This allows the suffering and courageous soldiers to be contrasted with a cynical leadership which cares nothing for their lives and which has, in effect, betrayed them before it even committed them to battle. This seems true to historical fact, alas. It is also a theme which has deep roots in American war cinema, including the similar scenes in Pork Chop Hill (discussed here). Some scenes shown from the point of view of the NVA commander and his men are done well, and the NVA soldiers are depicted without rancor or ideology.

The battle scenes are graphic in the contemporary post-Private Ryan style. However, it seemed to me that both the Air Cav troopers and the NVA regulars all fought too bunched up. There were repeated charges, by both sides, with men standing only a few feet away from each other, against an opponent with automatic weapons. That struck me as wrong. This led to a video-game-like destruction of many NVA troops by the Americans. I suspect they did not die quite so easy. Also, an American counter-attack at the end led to a very “Hollywood” moment which did not strike me as plausible. But, I haven’t read here).

The fact that the critics hated this movie on ideological grounds was strong and accurate reassurance that I would like it. One film reviewer I read (can’t find a link; it was a long time ago) went on about how it was mawkish, corny and unbelievable to see Lt. Col. Moore, saying prayers with his children at bedtime. Since I and millions of other parents do the exact same thing, this scene in the movie struck me as perfectly normal. Apparently this particular film reviewer has never met anyone in person who prays with his children. A classic contrast between red state and blue state America right there.

All in all, We Were Soldiers is a good movie. Better than The Patriot, not as good as Braveheart. Worth seeing. Three stars.