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Re: Col. Stacey's Official History of the Cdn Army in WW2
At 09:36 PM 16/02/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'm wondering as to how much the volumes can be counted on as an
>'objective' source. Being published by the authority of the ministry of
>national defence, I would think that somewhere, somebody would have
>wanted to make sure it was portraying the army in the 'proper' image.
>Any opinions?
>
>Martin
>
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>
>
Col Stacey's history is excellent; such constraint as exists owes as much
to his own upbringing - in a time and a family where manners mattered - as
to the army command. During the war, when his job was to gather up the
documents and the interviews for the subsequent history, he was very much
aware of the tension between his reponsibility to collect the truth and the
absolute resistence of those who had it. Many of them, of course, had their
own reputations to protect, the truth be damned, and that's a state secret
anyway.
In his autobiography, Stacey writes about the struggle he had in the
aftermath of Dieppe; you'll find it in "A Date with History" from Deneau,
1982 or 1983. You can judge his integrity from this.
My favourite rule of his was that he never gave much credence to stories
soldiers told him about a battle they'd been in if that battle had been
more than five or six days before. The gaps were beginning to be filled in
by then, he believed, after much experience.
Finally, compare what Stacey says about Verrieres Ridge to what the McKenna
brothers claimed - especially, what they claimed we'd never been told.
Stacey explains more of what happened than those lightweights could ever
have imagined; he understood what he called "the military probabilities."
If he didn't ever actually say that any particular general was a fool, he
was skillful and honest enough to tell you enough to let you draw your own
conclusions. The man had some discretion.
Although Stacey's work is thorough, a great deal has been added to the
record since his time. Whenever I want to dig into something, I check what
Stacey said, and then I read the rest. So, if anybody's got a CP Stacey fan
club out there, I'll join!
Bob Kennedy
Curator
Regimental Museum of The Queen's York Rangers
Toronto
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