Ebook: The Best Little Army In the World

This is the story of the Canadian First Army that fought its way from Juno Beach at D-Day in June, 1944, through Normandy, into the Netherlands to liberate that country, to the terrible battles in the Scheldt area, and finally into Germany in 1945. This is also the story of how Canada, which had no army to speak of in 1939, raised a citizen army and turned it into one of the very best fighting armies in World War II, one which helped defeat the most implacable, desperate and battle-hardened German army over the course of 11 months in '44 and '45. Canada has always produced astonishingly effective soldiers, and this book is about one of their finest moments.

The argument of this book is that the Canadian army changed from an amateur force in 1939–41 into the supremely skilled and formidably equipped army by late 1944 that was able to prevail against a first-class enemy. In effect, the citizen soldiers became professionals, able to organize and plan, to move and...