History of the 16th Battalion CEF, 1914-19 Pub. 1932 by, Lt.-Col. H. M. Urquhart (by Download).
Cat No.: CA0209-DL: File Size 129.6 MB:
By, Lt.-Col. H. M. Urquhart, originally published in 1932.
Nicknamed The Canadian Scottish the 16th Battalion was formed from four existing regiments. The Scottish label seems to have derived from the backgrounds of the original constituent regiments: The Gordons (50th Regiment), The Seaforth (72nd Regiment), The Camerons (79th Regiment), and The Canadian Highlanders allied with Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (91st Regiment). During the course of the conflict however the battalion was reinforced from over 30 other regiments and groups, many of whom had no particular claim to a Scottish heritage, so that the nickname became more honorary than descriptive.
In this book the author, after a brief prologue to set the scene, starts this history with the formation of the Battalion at the Valcartier camp (Quebec) in May 1914. He then provides a detailed, chronological account of the battalion members experiences throughout the whole period of the fighting finishing with its disbanding in Winnipeg in May of 1919, almost exactly 5 years later.
Although the book is an important and informative history it could also be looked on as a simple diary, a large part of its charm and import being that it includes passages from many actual diaries, both official and personal. Along with the explanations of the strategic maneuvering there are insightful extracts of individuals reactions, to the shock of seeing a friend suddenly dead, to the fear, and to the brutality of war. Truly a tour de force of compelling story telling. And as if this weren't enough, the history is amply illustrated with 23 contemporary photographs and 15 detailed maps of the battles and the battalion's movements.
And yet this history only accounts for about a half of the book. The remaining half is an exhaustive package of facts in quoted records and tabulated figures giving all the factual information in easy to understand form, including an over 400 page Nominal Role of all officers and men who served, showing their promotion, previous and past service records, and for the many unfortunate to have been killed or wounded the date and nature of their misfortune.
We have provided a freely downloadable sampler of pages from the book including the table of contents, a random sampling of pages from throughout, and a small segment of one of the very detailed maps. There is no detailed index in the original so to make the contents more accessible on this CD we have made the whole text searchable and enabled the Fast Find feature allowing you to make almost instantaneous searches for any word in the book.
This valuable book has been loaned to us by Marc Leroux. Marc has joined Chris Wight to undertake the mammoth task of making a biographical database of all the Canadians who took part in The Great War. This work will be underway for a long time, but the current data base contents have been made available and can be found at http://www.canadianGreatWarProject.com/ Please visit their site so they know their work is being appreciated.
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Delivery of physical products (CDs) IS STILL AVAILABLE see CA0209 for the CD version of this product.
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