Punching Above Our Weight

With this book, Borys faced a mammoth challenge: retracing 150 years of Canadian military experience, from the Red River Resistance and the Boer War through to twentieth-century peacekeeping and Canada’s longest-ever war in Afghanistan. To this end, he includes accounts and perspectives that are as culturally significant — and as influential to battle outcomes — as the legion of women workers who backed the attack at home during the Second World War.

In 1950, and with the newly formed United Nations compelling fifty nations to uphold the peace, war broke out between North Korea and South Korea. While Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent’s government initially hesitated to send troops, External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson argued that Korea was “an important test for the newly formed Cold War Alliance.” Consequently, between 1950 and 1953, the Canadian government sent twenty-seven thousand volunteer ground troops as the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade, plus eight Royal Canadian Navy tribal-class destroyers and about a thousand RCAF personnel. Most of the latter served in 426 Transport Squadron, while others, including twenty-four RCAF fighter pilots, flew in the U.S. Air Force.

Borys gives ample coverage to what is perhaps the most extraordinary Korean War operation by Canadians, one that tested the skill of the RCN’s Jeffry Brock, commander of HMCS Cayuga: Early in the war, the Canadians were called upon to evacuate U.S. troops, with their backs to the sea, from the North Korean seaport of Chinnamp’o.

Facing a massive Chinese army onslaught, not to mention treacherous winter conditions up Daido-ko River, “Brock made the risky decision to lead the [naval flotilla] into the estuary the night of December 4 … to successfully sail in and cover the withdrawal, while inflicting damage on enemy infrastructure.” Brock earned the Distinguished Service Cross for the Dunkirk-like rescue, which helped to consolidate the United Nations position along the 38th parallel for the rest of the war.

Equally enduring, Borys argues, were operations of the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the UN and NATO chose to challenge the Taliban’s overthrow of the Afghan government. Forty thousand CAF servicewomen and servicemen participated in Allied operations during the war in Afghanistan, and Borys counts Canada’s “clear-hold-build” operations, “whereby the Canadian battle group would focus their counter-insurgency efforts on a specific village,” among its most distinguished achievements.

He cites the example of Deh-e-Begh village, outside Kandahar City, where CAF personnel conducted offensive operations and destroyed enemy forces while establishing security for civilians and local government, thereby accelerating humanitarian aid and economic development. CAF initiatives such as these “were considered a success … and provided a template for operations elsewhere,” Borys claims, adding that the mission also “engendered cultural change within the Canadian Armed Forces [and] enhanced [its] standing within NATO.” At the same time, it helped to shed “the decades-long, blue-helmeted peacekeeper myth.”

This compilation of the efforts Canadian armed servicewomen and servicemen over the past 150 years prompts a logical conclusion: that a force that has routinely “done more with less” will need more consistent, reliable support from the public, politicians, and its military leaders — at least if it’s expected to punch above its weight into the future. Borys concludes: “Defence is not an expense; it is an asset.”