World: The Canadians

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General Sir Arthur William Currie, who commanded the Canadians in World War I, called McNaughton the finest gunner in the British Empire. Soon after McNaughton returned to England to fight in World War II, he visited an artillery school and spotted a gun which was in one of his batteries at Amiens in 1918 Said he, patting the muzzle: "I can tell you I got some grand shooting out o: that one."

People never forget his eyes. They are dark. They stab and they brood. But he is not a forbidding man, nor a distant one. His grey mustache, his whitened temples, the perpetual cock in his left eyebrow set off a face that has the deep touch of thought, the marks of 55 full years; but it is a face that can be warm and friendly. His friends and officers call him Andy.

Men on Defense. The Canadian overseas army was not a happy army during the first two years in England. The causes and the symptoms of its discontent gave General McNaughton many a bad hour and probably had something to do with the physical breakdown which interrupted his command late last year.

Britons in 1940 and 1941 said that the Canadians "took a bit of getting used to." Some of them took a good deal more than that, including tough handling from the top, before they settled down to their often dreary role in England.

Canada is not yet conscripting for overseas service (although Ottawa now has the power to do so), and all Canadians on duty abroad are volunteers. Many of the early volunteers in the ist Canadian Division were very tough cookies. They went over full of zest and fight, and some of their outfits were sadly short on discipline. They ran into one frustration after another. One brigade was ordered to relieve the British at Dunkirk, then the orders were countermanded. Another actually got to France, after Dunkirk, then had to return without firing a shot.

In the post-Dunkirk period, when Britain was rebuilding its shattered armies, the Canadians took over the defense of southern England. It was hard work, and it was vitally necessary. But it was not exciting. Morale sagged. Officers got appalling bills for damage to barracks.

In the Canadian view, the British also took some getting used to. One of Canada's finest regiments was quartered in a swamp where a local farmer grazed his pigs. The regiment proposed to clear the thick underbrush in the swamp. The farmer was delighted. When the regiment moved on, the farmer suddenly presented a $75,000 bill for damages; he said that the soldiers had ruined his pig run. The claim was settled for $85.

Last year Brigadier (now Major General) F. F. Worthington, Canada's famed tank expert, recognized this mutual irritation in an order of the day. All else having failed to induce a proper solicitude among his men for the fences, fields, roads and crops of rural England, Brigadier Worthington tried satire. He reminded his brigade that it was going on maneuvers in a countryside whose residents were neutral in the war, but generally friendly to the Allied cause. The brigade behaved very well.