[.ca] The Canadian Soldier in World War II (ISBN 2913903517)

A Marvelous Book!:
Few military "picture books" have given me as much unexpected pleasure as this one. Having bought it by mail on the basis of its subject matter alone, I was very pleasantly surprised when it not only met - but exceeded - my expectations. Lavishly (dare I say beautifully) illustrated by abundant carefully selected and wonderfully reproduced photos and charts, it exhaustively covers almost all aspects of the Canadian soldier in Northwest Europe in the final year of World War II. The succinct text (written in homage by French authors, but adequately transcribed into English) provides a good outline against which to appreciate this visual material. While the treatment of any individual subject may not be as deep as that found in books dediciated to a specific topic, I can confidently say that no one single volume provides as much useful information as this one does!

Mounds of data marred by poor colour corrections:
My interest in the subject matter stems from hosting the largest website devoted to Canadian soldiers in the 20th Century. From that perspective, I can confidentally second the idea put forward below that this book contains more useful information than any other single volume, including uniform descriptions, uniform insignia, helmets, personal equipment, weapons, orders of battle, unit organization, vehicle markings and colours, personal items, and a useful appendix on Dieppe. The information in the book is mostly available in other sources but this is the only one-volume treatment of same. Drawbacks are a poor translation in places from French to English or else minor errors of fact (just about every page has an error of this type, for example the Calgary Highlander captioned as a Cape Breton Highlander, but most of these are easily discerned by experienced readers and should pose no serious problem to prospective buyers), and the largest criticism is the colour corrections to photos of Battle Dress. The uniform photos are so bad as to warrant holding off until a second volume can be done to correct the colours. This book cannot be used as a colour guide for uniform collectors. However, if that is not your purpose, then it too is only a minor inconvenience. Congratulations to Mr. Bouchery for his contributions to the field of research of the Canadian Army in the Second World War; his book has surpassed my own initial entry in the field in terms of quality and usefullness, which is encouraging to see. I do hope we will get a colour-corrected edition of this book in future. It certainly warrants the best treatment any publisher can give it.