Description
Book SynopsisCanada's Mechanized Infantry explores the largely ignored development of the infantry in the Canadian Army after the First World War. Although many modern studies of technology and war focus on tanks and armour, soldiers from the Second World War onward have discovered that success really depends on a combination of infantry, armour, and artillery to form combat teams. Peter Kasurak demonstrates how the army implemented successful infantry vehicles and doctrine to ultimately further its military goals during the Second World War. In the postwar period, however, progress was slowed by a top-down culture and an unwillingness to abandon conventional thinking on the primacy of foot infantry and regimental organization. This insightful book is the first to examine the challenges that have confronted the Canadian Army in transforming its infantry from First World War foot soldiers into a twenty-first-century combat force integrating soldiers, vehicles, weapons, and electronics.
Trade Review… a book about what the Canadian Army wants to be and how it has gone about trying to achieve this vision.
-- Robert C. Engen, Canadian Military History.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part 1: Second World War
1 Pre-War Theorizing
2 Learning from Experience
Part 2: Post–Second World War
3 The Concept of a Mechanized Force
4 The Bobcat
5 Implementing the Mechanized Force
Part 3: Cold War Era and Beyond
6 The Imagined War
7 Lightweight? Mediumweight? Heavyweight?
Conclusion
Appendix; Note on Sources; Notes; Bibliography; Index
