Under the Red Ensign

West: Under the Red Ensign

(See Cover)

There was mud again in Flanders, churned up by last week's heavy rains. The Nazis were putting up stubborn battles for the Channel ports--hopeless, losing battles in which soldiers would die quite as definitively as in glorious victories. In short, the reconquest of the Channel coast was an ugly, thankless job. But the Canadians, whose job it was, were actually happy.

They had marched in triumph behind their bagpipes through the streets of Dieppe where 3,350 of their countrymen had fallen. They had cleared (and taken) not only Dieppe but Nieuport, Ostend and Zeebrugge. They had crossed the Somme, overrun Vimy Ridge and Ypres, where their fathers died. And now England, where they had spent four years of frustration, was immeasurably grateful to them because they had rolled up and tucked away the robot coast for good.

And all this had been done by the First Canadian Army--the first not only by number but the first in history, the first that Canada, with her long and courageous fighting record, had ever had for her own.

Wiping up the Channel coast might be a dirty job. But Dieppe was paid for in full. So were the unhappiest years that any fighting men could have--years in which Canadian soldiers had chafed almost in vain for action. Almost in vain but not quite, for they had seen action, each time under circumstances which, through no fault of their own, were painful or disastrous:

Some of their troops had been rushed

into Hong Kong just in time to be helplessly cut up by the Japs, and many of them murdered after capture.

Some of them had gone to Dieppe, and more than half had not returned.

Some of them had gone to fight in Italy, an expedition which was far from being a disaster but which, by splitting Canada's limited forces, threatened to deny Canadians again, in this war as in the last, the chance of having an army of their own.

But now, as the commander of the First Canadian Army, Lieut. General Henry Duncan Graham Crerar drove his jeep from one command post to another --pausing to read reports with the avidity of a hungry wolf, to give orders in his quiet, precise, unbending manner -- he and his men were contented. They had an important job, opening the ports that would supply the next offensive, and they were doing it.

Honor for the Dead. When the Canadians came back into Dieppe last fort night, there were no casualties, no shooting. The Germans had fled; it was almost an anticlimax. The victors who marched with tranquil pride through Dieppe's streets were the men of the 2nd Division -- the same outfit that sent 5,000 men across in the 1942 raid, brought back less than 2,500.

Major David Francis of Montreal, who lost two fingers and got a bullet in the lungs on the Dieppe raid, told correspond ents that "the first person I met this morning, believe it or not, was the French girl who dressed my wounds under fire during our raid two years ago. She didn't recognize me until she saw my hand." The men of the 2nd found that the Germans, who in 1942 could still afford gallant gestures, had honored the brave Canadian dead. They had been buried in a special cemetery, on high ground out side the port, and the caretaker said that the Germans had ordered a coffin for every one, which is more than a soldier expects.

Reasons for Pride. Just before D-day the Canadians had more than a quarter of a million men overseas. General Crerar's army contains Dutch and Polish units, as well as two Highlander divisions which more than make up for the number of Canadians fighting in Italy.

On the first day, when Crerar put ashore his first 10,000 men, the Canadians had their own ships -- destroyers, frigates, corvettes, minesweepers, torpedo boats, landing ships -- and their own air cover.

Canada had another reason for pride.

On June 6, Canada's divisions stormed ashore under the Red Ensign. Originally designed to identify Canadian ships at sea is Britain's standard merchant ma rine flag with the Union Jack in the quarter of a red field -- to which is added Canada's coat of arms in the fly. The Canadian beach was at Bernieres-sur-Mer, between Caen and the Orne River. There, for the first time in history, Canada fought under her own national flag.

At the beginning the Canadians had tough fighting and little glory. They and the British had the pick of Rommel's armor, guns and troops in front of them. Even after the capture of Caen, they were held down and unmercifully pounded by German 88s. Grimly they hung on, giving U.S. Lieut. General Omar Bradley time to take Cherbourg. Grimly, after the surprise U.S. breakthrough at Saint-Lo, they pushed down and held the north arm of the Falaise-Argentan pincer. Only when that was done could the Canadians themselves wheel and cross the Seine.

At last they rolled on with the full tide of victory; but it was a victory won earlier--at Caen and Falaise, where, in General Eisenhower's words, "every piece of dust represented diamonds and every foot of ground was worth ten miles elsewhere."

The Canadians paid their share for this victory. As announced last week, the Canadian Army's total losses for the war, up to July 31, had reached 9,788 dead, 1,308 missing, 18,343 wounded, 3,800 prisoners. Plus 15,209 casualties in the R.C.A.F. (Canadians comprise almost one-third the fighting strength of the R.A.F.), and 1,714 casualties in the Canadian Navy, Canada's war casualties total over 50,000 (compared to some 300,000 casualties for the U.S., a nation over ten times as large).

Excursions & Alarms. Dunkirk was only a time of frustration and false alarms for the Canadians. They were waiting, in England, to take their places in the Anglo-French line when Hitler's hordes burst into the Low Countries and northern

France. The Imperial General Staff called then on Canada's No. 1 soldier, Lieut. General Andrew George Latta McNaughton, for help in holding the Channel ports. McNaughton visited Calais and Dunkirk in a destroyer, which was bombed and machine-gunned by the Germans, and returned to tell the War Cabinet and Winston Churchill that he did not believe the ports could be held. The British concurred. So the great drama of the Dunkirk beaches passed the Canadians by.

But a Canadian infantry brigade and artillery were shipped to Brittany in June 1940, to take part in the Battle of France. They had not been there long when the move was recognized as futile and evacuation ordered. The only casualties from this fruitless excursion were a man killed in a motorcycle accident, and 19 men who missed the evacuation ships. One became a prisoner of war; the others got back to England through the underground.

So, without having seen a German or fired a shot, the Canadians settled down for more training, more waiting. McNaughton tried to keep them busy with real work as well: Canadians helped England mine her coal and cut her timber. But they had gone to England to fight. Every one of them was a volunteer, and 20% or more of them were from those very French regions whose influence had prevented the Ottawa Government from sending conscripts overseas.

The impatient Canadians found themselves living among Britons whose sons were fighting all over the warring world. The old joke about Britons fighting to the last Colonial, Dominion or Allied soldier fell very sourly on Canadian ears.

To assuage this feeling McNaughton intervened. The Dieppe raid was originally planned by Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as an all-British show, but McNaughton persuaded the War Office to let his Canadians take the main role. The raid was commanded from a destroyer by Major General John Hamilton ("Ham") Roberts (who is now in charge of Canadian reinforcements flowing in & out of Britain). The raid won Roberts a D.S.O., but both he and McNaughton had to listen to cries from armchair critics that it had been botched. Actually, the Canadians paid most of the price for the lessons of invasion which the Allies had to learn the hard way. The education paid off in the Mediterranean and Normandy.

The New General. Some Canadian forces were finally sent to Sicily and Italy, where they distinguished themselves at Catania and Ortona. Meanwhile McNaughton had not endeared himself to the British by his struggle to keep his Canadians intact as an Army. And, being as tough as flint, whenever he encountered steely Montgomery, sparks flew. (McNaughton's Canadians called Montgomery "God Almonty.")

Last winter McNaughton resigned, giving ill health as the reason (TIME, Jan. 3). The man picked to succeed him was Henry Crerar, then commander of the I Canadian Corps. Publicity-hating General Crerar was almost unknown to the Canadian people, and since many Canadians do not think that being colorful is good form, Ottawa war councilors made no effort to color him up. Although Crerar used to be so reticent that he had no cronies and few close acquaintances, he did become fast friends with Montgomery and renewed his old friendship (from World War I) with Field Marshal Sir Alan F. Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff.

Something Turns Up. Crerar is pure Scotch-Canadian. Born 56 years ago to a middleclass, nonmilitary family in Hamilton, he learned about war at the Royal Military College in Kingston. Deciding that he could not live on a junior officer's pay and unwilling to cadge from his father, he took a job as an electrical engineer, a commission in the militia, and waited for something to turn up.

World War I turned up. Crerar entered it as a lieutenant of artillery, left it a lieutenant colonel. Now he was fixed to stay in the Army for good. He studied at the Staff College at Camberley in England, got a duty tour at the Imperial War Office, went back to Canada and taught tactics where he had learned them, at Kingston. In 1916 he had married a handsome Toronto girl in London. They have a married daughter, and a 21-year-old son, Peter, who is a lieutenant with the Canadians in Italy. Crerar pere was in Italy when he got the call to replace McNaughton in London. He could not tell Peter he was leaving, but--he admitted in a rare burst of confidence to a correspondent--he "gave his hand an extra squeeze."

Rest Required. Crerar believes in austerity, especially for generals. He takes every opportunity to deny himself luxuries, especially food & drink. Plenty of rest, however, he considers not a luxury but a necessity. "I don't think," he once said, "that my men in Italy grudged me a caravan. After all, I am in my 50s."

When, in 1940, he became Chief of the General Staff in Ottawa, he found all hands working seven man-killing days a week. He issued an order limiting the hours of work, as binding on himself as on anyone else. Characteristically, he made it plain that he was not interested in the staff's comfort or pleasure, but in the "maintenance of good health and mental well-being."

The opposite of a backslapper, Crerar has his own way of showing approval: he leans gradually sidewise toward the other man until their shoulders touch. His main social gambit is a bawdy story, diffidently told. He keeps a methodical file of these stories, to which his officers contribute regularly, each story being neatly written out on a piece of paper.

When he is concentrating on something, which is often, Crerar clears his throat with a series of rasping half-coughs. This habit has convinced him that he has a chronic cold. In Ottawa he used to keep a box of cough drops in his desk. One night, with his eyes glued on the papers he was reading, he groped for them in the drawer and a mouse ran up his sleeve. Hearing a startled bellow, the General's military secretary ran in to find him open-mouthed and shaking. Crerar sent the secretary out for more cough drops to replace those which the mouse had contaminated.

Crerar's Mind. Last Aug. 7, the eve of the Canadians' push on Falaise, in a sunlight-flooded barn, correspondents in France took the measure of Henry Crerar as a soldier. Wearing freshly shined boots and talking like a military-school professor, Crerar gave them a briefing which turned out to be a brilliant, complex, minutely detailed analysis of the coming operation. Said Crerar: "Tomorrow . . . may be another historic day in the military annals of Canada." The newsmen agreed that his briefing was an extraordinary performance. "That man," said one, "has a department store mind on a Napoleonic scale."

Now that the Canadians are in all-out action, Crerar has become more affable and relaxed than he used to be. When his army crossed the Seine and chased the Germans beyond the Somme, he observed that the action was not a fight but an unprintable synonym for a ratrace.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.