The Guns of Victory: A Soldier's Eye View, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, 1944-45 (Paperback)

This volume picks up the narrative thread where the previous volume left it, with the much-vaunted Canadian 4th Field Regiment ordered in to relentlessly pursue the Germans as they retreated through the treacherous topography of the flooded French area known as the 'Low Country'. As the pursuit ensued, the soldiers began to reach the limits of their physical and emotional endurance. And the battle as it unfolded before them promised no respite from the hellish demands posed by an enemy with no real thought of surrendering or fleeing. Yet, as they knock the Wehrmacht from its hastily devised defense perimeters within the Scheldt estuary again and again, they gradually succeeded in creating the conditions for re-opening of Antwerp, and thus helped to unleash the productive power and formidable logistics trail previously left hanging for want of such a large and capable deep-water port.

In the midst of all this, the Canadians, along with the rest of the Allied forces, had to suffer through the worst winter in decades in the European theater in the open and on the ground, and many died from such harsh exposure to the elements. Yet the Germans, fighting under these horrific conditions, still were able to mount savage resistance as they fought even more ferociously even as they began to understand how desperate their situation was. And as they beat the foe back yard by yard, mile by mile, back across the Rhine, the Canadians are enlisted in the increased fight once more in the Battle of the Rhineland, the final push toward the German heartland. And, as victory finally comes, Blackburn assures us it was indeed a bittersweet experience, felt equally with measures of pride and relief, knowing the unbelievable ordeal of the last several years was finally over.

As with his other books, here Blackburn relates his personal experience with a wonderfully literate and engagingly approachable writing style, and he surely uses his journalist's experience and his obvious facility with words to great advantage here, adding immeasurably to our understanding of what the experience on the ground was in as the first fatal hours and days turned into weeks and months of savage fighting, as the Allies bludgeoned their ways through the brutal resistance of a frenzied Nazi war machine. This is a story we should hear again and again, as we rediscover once more how truly amazing the feat of both the Canadians in particular, but all the Allies in general, stood tall in the very face of tyranny and smashed it into smithereens, saving the world from what has to be considered the face of absolute evil. Mr. Blackburn writes with surprising intensity and emotion, and his sense of recall of particular events and existential circumstances for himself and his fellows is both impressive and quite moving at points in his narrative. This is first person history at its best, one that employs both a more objective coda to the book, which also serves to lend a more authoritative aura to the proceedings than would otherwise have been possible. I recommend not only this book, but the other two volumes as well. Enjoy!

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Taking the three books together, the reader is left with a very good comprehension of the techniques of battle of the artillery, and to a lesser degree the infantry they supported, during the campaign in NWE in '44 and '45.

In addition to the technical detail, the human side that Blackburn injects into his books left me grief striken on more than one occasion. The sense of relentless, dogged courage in the face of seeming futility shown by the infantry he was supporting, and the feeling of dread as one by one his friends were killed an wounded, makes for powerful reading.

I can't speak highly enough of this trilogy - if you have an interest in the Canadian or the Commonwealth forces in WWII, or in very candid personal wartime stories I would commend this book to you.

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Even though in this book we move to new battlefields, I wondered what more George Blackburn could have to say about his war. Plenty, I discovered. He was a young newspaper reporter when he enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1939. He never stopped thinking like a reporter, always somehow managed to take notes, and preserve them. We are fortunate he lived through his battlefield experiences, are more fortunate still that he wrote of them with such brilliant detail. He reveals over and over a truly human mixture of compassion - Gunner Hardtack was a hen that miraculously survived the destruction of a farm to be adopted by B Troop as a mascot -- and detachment - what can you do for the thousands of dead all around you, all the time?

Captain Blackburn, commander of Able Troop, 2nd Battery, 4th Field Battalion, spends much of his combat time as a Forward Observation Officer, or FOO. So they can to accurately call down fire from a 4-gun troop, a 24-gun regiment, the 72 guns of the division, or even the 216 guns of 2nd Canadian Corps, FOOs lived at the front. When the action is the hottest, FOOs must be at the front of the front to order artillery fire precisely where it is needed. A FOO is often observing from a place where he can be spotted, or deduced to be there through common sense by those being shelled. The Canadians lost a lot of FOOs.

An incident in the book: Blackburn is FOOing from a towering windmill in Groesbeek, The Netherlands. It is a commodious structure, high and offering a broad view of the front from the fan window. Footsteps on the stairs, and a Canadian general appears. Blackburn diplomatically keeps shooing him back from the fan window to keep him from being visible to some German peering through binocs. Another general joins them. The two comment on such a fine observation post, an OP without peer in Groesbeek, and wonder why Fritz has left it alone. Blackburn offers the opinion that the Germans must believe that no one in his right mind would dare occupy such an obvious OP. Ahem, yes, and the generals depart.

"The Guns of Victory" takes up where "The Guns of Normandy" left off, and we're in furious combat most of the time. That courageous and enterprising Commander of D-Company, Major Bob Suckling, repeatedly earns our admiration: In one of many of his hair-raising escapades his infantry company is under a furious counter attack, and via field phone he's calling down fire dangerously close to his own position. "Can you bring your shells a bit closer?" he asks the battery commander. Another heavy barrage of 120 rounds of 25-pounders and Suckling reports, "You're right on." Then there is silence from his end, a long and ominous silence. Did we shell Suckling? the fire controller wonders. Further calls fail to draw any response until Suckling's drawl comes over the line to report, "The Heinies seem to have pulled back." The Gunners would learn later that a German had poked his head in the door of Suckling's OP house. After taking time out to pistol the enemy soldier Suckling came back on the air. So many of the soldiers and officers I had come to like got killed along the way. I worried that every next page might report that Suckling "got it" until the end of the book. Thank goodness there was no such report.

This is a splendid narrative, one that would make a fine novelist proud.

The book has some good photos, a fine index. Footnotes appear on the relevant pages, not as endnotes that require endless flipping back and forth.

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