A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War
General Rick Hillier
HarperCollins Publishers, 2009, 498 pages, $34.99
General Rick Hillier’s A Soldier First is the story of his journey from Campbellton, on Newfoundland’s northern coast, to the office of the Chief of the Defence Staff at National Defence Headquarters. A short distance as the crow flies, but Hillier’s route was via Lahr, Germany; Fort Hood, Texas; Croatia; Bosnia Herzegovina; and Afghanistan.
Along the way we are treated to his memories, reminiscences and the lessons learned that he implemented. We are also privy to the political battles he fought in his efforts to re-equip the military and re-instil a warrior ethic that wartime adversaries found so intimidating.
Hillier enrolled in the Army as an armoured officer in 1972. The Canadian Forces had a Cold War mentality clouded by organizational schizophrenia. Expectations of the CF were affected by the public service’s processes, lifestyle, values and principles, and the force was deprived of replacements for failing equipment and infrastructure. Moreover, military training courses and programs preferred to immediately fail candidates who did not meet course standards, rather than permit them to learn from mistakes and succeed.
He witnessed critical decisions made by the least qualified and most ignorant, such as sending troops into the cauldron that was Bosnia Herzegovina with training vehicles, rather than operationally equipped and armed fighting vehicles. Ultimately, denuded of capacity, capability, equipment and people by a risk-averse government, the Forces hit bottom. Events in Somalia, the Somalia Inquiry and allegations of fatigue exacerbated these problems. The CF, he writes, became a military force without credibility.
The first signs of positive change came with the 1997 Manitoba floods, when Manitobans came face-to-face with their military personnel working within their communities to help overcome the rising Red River. He saw the relationship improve still more with the deployment of reserve and regular force personnel to central Canada in response to the 1998 ice storm. The CF had finally connected with Canadians.
He describes Canada desperately attempting to join the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, a move resisted by the British who felt that Canada had lost its war-fighting capability. Because the federal government had failed to keep its troops at high readiness for overseas deployment, it was now paying the price for its timid, micromanaging approach.
Hillier does not speak negatively of any of his colleagues and heaps praise on those he respects, leaving us to guess about his feelings for the several he merely mentions.
His strongest praise is directed at the men and women who are the rank and file of the CF. He hasn’t forgotten a name or a situation in which he has interacted with his troops, whether it’s playfully kissing Master-Corporal Jeremy LeBlanc on the cheek, telling him his wife Melissa asked him to pass it along, or meeting wounded soldiers, like MCpl Paul Franklin and Cpl Shaun Fevens, whose lives are profoundly changed because of their new circumstances.
Most poignantly, he ends A Soldier First talking about his last day in uniform, 2 July 2008, when he quietly left family and friends who joined him and his wife Joyce to celebrate his retirement. He visited the National Military Cemetery to remember those who made that supreme sacrifice on his watch and promise that they would not be forgotten.
At first sight, A Soldier First appears to be a straightforward book written with the characteristic directness of a military leader. However, when you peel back the descriptions of people, events, decisions and circumstances, you are led to inevitable conclusions without the unnecessarily overt analysis and rationalizations of many auto-biographers. He writes passionately about the people who served with and for him, and who he expected to serve Canada, even if this meant placing themselves in harm’s way.
In return, he committed the CF to treat those who died and were injured meeting their military obligations, and their families, with the respect, dignity and honour they deserve. He became their most ardent advocate.
He forthrightly acknowledges that his troops regularly exceeded all expectations, and in return the nation rallied behind them. However, this must-read book clearly shows that General Rick Hillier, although upbeat and optimistic throughout the book, will always carry the cost paid by our fallen and wounded heroes as his personal burden.
– Reviewed by Major (ret’d) Tim Dunne
Oka: A Convergence of Cultures and the Canadian Forces
Timothy C. Winegard
Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2008, 309 pages, Free
“The Oka Crisis was an exercise of power,” Timothy Winegard writes in his introduction to this account of Operation SALON, a demonstration of military power by the federal government, which at the invitation of the Quebec provincial government, deployed 4,500 soldiers, a number that rivals Canada’s deployment of brigades to Korea and Germany.
However, as a senior Army officer noted after OP SALON was terminated, “there is no glory in conducting an operation like this against your follow citizens.”
Winegard, a historian currently studying for his doctorate at the University of Oxford, suggests that while the public may view the Oka crisis “as a defining moment in Canadian-Native relations,” the Mohawk Nation sees this incident as “simply one more example of contention within converging cultures.”
The book places Oka in a historical context of our dealings, past and present, with the Mohawk Nation and, to a lesser extent, with other First Nations. An epilogue provides further examples of “contentions” such as Caledonia.
More important, Winegard asserts that the crisis began at Akwesane, and he is able to shed light on two little known operations, OP FEATHER and OP AKWESANE, that did not fit the typical “aid to the civil power” dictum of the Canadian Forces.
Akwesane remains a possible flashpoint today. This past August, the RCMP and the Coast Guard jointly deployed an 18-meter catamaran, the Simon, to the Cornwall region to counter Mohawk smuggling. Echoes of Gretchen Peters’ Seeds of Terror, a book that deals with heroin traffic bankrolling the Taliban, are hard to ignore here; it would appear that illegally acquired monies plays a similar role in some of our own First Nations. “[T]he trend of violent insurgency has not diminished,” Winegard observes.
– Reviewed by Roy Thomas