The Best Little Army In The World

From esteemed military historian J.L. Granatstein, the story of one of Canada's finest moments.

This is the story of the First Canadian Army, which fought its way from Juno Beach on D-Day in June 1944 through Normandy, liberated the Netherlands and helped finally defeat Germany in 1945. What our army needed was more battle experience, and this it gained in the costly efforts in Normandy to reach the city of Caen and then to close the Falaise Gap. This was followed by hard fighting to take the ports along the Channel coast and terrible combat in dreadful conditions to clear the Scheldt estuary. After a winter of "rest" around Arnhem, the First Canadian Army crossed the Rhine, drove the Germans out of the Reichswald and then participated as the major player in the joyous liberation of the Netherlands. This is also the story of how Canada, which had no army to speak of in 1939, mobilized its men, women and industrial resources to raise a military of 1.1 million from a population of only eleven million and turned it into one of the very best fighting armies in the Second World War. The army trained and learned on the job, and though the losses were high (with many killed and wounded), the Canadians were able to defeat a battle-hardened enemy with skill, courage and persistence over the course of eleven months in 1944 and 1945.