Bringing Servicewomen into Focus

Exploring Methods for Indexing Second World War Archival Photographs at Library and Archives Canada

REBECCA MURRAY

Abstract : The Second World War saw women officially serving in the Canadian military in capacities other than nursing, breaking into roles historically held by men. The service of over fifty thousand Canadian women is documented in photographs held at Library and Archives Canada; photographs that allow historians to widen the lens on the traditional narrative, but only if they can find them. This article presents two methods for indexing archival photographs and highlights the particular challenges of identifying servicewomen in the archival record and bringing our aunties and grandmas into focus.

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“We are now getting a Canadian occupation”

Liberators and the Liberated in the Nijmegen Salient, 1944-45

ERIC MCGEER

Abstract : Liberation came at a high price to the already devastated city of Nijmegen during Operation Market Garden. It remained a frontline city for nearly seven months, during which time Nijmegen and the surrounding area came to be “occupied” by 1st Canadian Army. The presence of a friendly but foreign army was welcome but proved to be a mixed blessing as the local inhabitants sought to resume control of their lives in a time of shortages, suspension of normal morality and conflict between the Dutch themselves. The protracted stay of the Canadians after the war was frustrating for both the liberators and the liberated. The warm afterglow of Dutch gratitude to the Canadians rightly prevails today but should not lead us to see the liberation and its aftermath in solely heroic rather than in the very human terms reflected in diaries, newspapers and other sources from that unusual, chaotic time.

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FEATURE

“Here come the Canadians … to restore our freedom to us”

“And we will praise God, when the Canadians … have vanished back to Canada”

ERIC MCGEER

Abstract : The following editorials and articles, translated from the Nijmegen newspaper De Gelderlander, offer English-language readers insight into the concerns and perspectives of the Dutch as they dealt with the uneven transition from occupation to liberation and the welcome yet at times troublesome presence of the Allied forces, the Canadians in particular. Although the physical damage inflicted by the war was everywhere visible, it was the moral and psychological effect of the occupation on the young that formed the greatest source of concern, especially when those who had come of age during years of deprivation and disorientation encountered exotic young soldiers eager to enjoy the pleasures of life after years of training and combat. The articles reveal the conflicting reactions of the liberated to their liberators in an extraordinary and unprecedented set of circumstances.

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Book Reviews

Review of Combat Stress in Pre-modern Europe edited by Owen Rees, Kathryn Hurlock and Jason Crowley

Matthew Barrett

Review of Deserters of the First World War: The Home Front by Andrea Hetherington

Matthew Barrett

Review of For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War by Heather Jones

Matthew Barrett

Review of The Second World War: An Illustrated History by James Holland and Keith Burns (illustrator)

Matthew Barrett

Review of Heavy and Continuous Sacrifice: New Zealand, Her Allies, and the Second World War edited by Peter Cooke and John Crawford

Brian Bertosa

Review of A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of French Soldiers on the Western Front by Adam D. Zientek

Brian Bertosa

Review of The Hardest Battle: The Canadian Corps and the Arras 1918 Campaign by William F. Stewart

David Borys

Review of Afterlives of War: A Descendants’ History by Michael Roper

Tim Cook

Review of Statesmen, Strategists & Diplomats: Canadian Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy edited by Patrice Dutil and Friends and Enemies: Essays in Canada’s Foreign Relations by J.L. Granatstein

Tim Cook

Review of Stalingrad Lives: Stories of Combat and Survival by Ian Garner

Grant T. Harward

Review of We Lived in Danger: From True Prairie Boy to Royal Regina Rifleman. A Western Canadian’s WWII Memoir by Victor Hepburn Small

Geoffrey Hayes

Review of Through Their Eyes: A Graphic History of Hill 70 and Canada’s First World War by Matthew Barrett and Robert C. Engen

John R. Heckman

Review of Traitor By Default: The Trials of Kanao Inouye, the Kamloops Kid by Patrick Brode

Scott Mair

Review of Warriors and Warships: Conflict on the Great Lakes and the Legacy of Point Frederick by Robert D. Banks

Thomas Malcomson

Review of Atrocity on the Atlantic: Attack on a Canadian Hospital Ship During the Great War by Nate Hendley and Asleep in the Deep: Nursing Sister Anna Stamers and the First World War by Dianne Kelly

Craig Leslie Mantle

Review of Battlefield Emotions in Late Antiquity: A Study of Fear and Motivation in Roman Military Treatises by Łukasz Różycki

Lucas McMahon

Review of The Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front, 1941-1945: War, Occupation, Memory by Xosé M. Núnez Seixas

Ben. H. Shepherd

Review of I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton by Irene Gammel

Bradley Shoebottom

Review of Hanged in Medicine Hat: Murders in a Nazi Prisoner-of-War Camp, and the Disturbing True Story of Canada’s Last Mass Execution by Nathan M. Greenfield

Andrew Theobald

Review of Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order by Timothy Andrews Sayle

Jean-Michel Turcotte

Review of A Samaritan State Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Foreign Aid edited by Greg Donaghy and David Webster

Jonathon Zimmer