Shortlisted, 2018 Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing

Suggested Reading by the Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative Association

Near the end of October 1941, a few hundred soldiers from New Brunswick were among the 1,975 Canadian troops who set sail from Vancouver to reinforce the British Colony of Hong Kong. Within two short months, after a hard-fought but disastrous battle against the Imperial Japanese Army, the island fell to the invaders on Christmas Day, and its defenders were ordered to surrender by the governor of Hong Kong. The survivors were taken captive.

Based on the first-hand accounts of the author's father, Andrew "Ando" Flanagan, a rifleman from Jacquet River, NB, The Endless Battle explores the Battle of Hong Kong and its long aftermath, through the eyes of the soldiers. During their captivity, the POWs endured starvation, forced labour, and brutal beatings. They lived in deplorable conditions and many died from illness. But the soldiers stuck together, bound by their cameraderie, loyalty to King and Country, and collective desire to sabotage the Japanese war effort.

Writing intimitely and sensitively about the lingering effects of the trauma of the soldiers held in captivity, Andy Flanagan shows both the heroism of individual soldiers and the terrible costs of war.

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"It is hard to believe one might maintain hope in a prisoner-of-war camp located thousands of miles from home, especially as health declines and the pages of the calendar turn with no end in sight. But it is courage, hope and resilience that shine through in The Endless Battle: The Fall of Hong Kong and Canadian POWs in Imperial Japan."

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"An intriguing mix of military, social and family history that is well worth the read."

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"One can easily see why this well-written book was shortlisted for the Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing and suggested reading by the Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative Association."

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"Excellent."

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Shortlisted, New Brunswick Book Award for Non-Fiction

During the Second World War, hundreds of New Brunswick woodsmen joined the Canadian Forestry Corps to log the Scottish Highlands as part of the Canadian war effort. Patrick "Pat" Hennessy of Bathurst was one of them. For five years, Pat served as camp cook with 15 Company of the Canadian Forestry Corps near the ancient town of Beauly, Scotland. A middle-aged New Brunswick farmer and lumberman with a third-grade education, Pat saw more of the world than he had ever dreamed of, visiting ancient battlefields he had learned about as a child, travelling to his ancestral Ireland, and attending a course of lectures in British history at Oxford University.

While in Scotland, Pat regularly corresponded with his family in New Brunswick. Drawing from this unique collection of more than three hundred letters, as well as hundreds of archival documents and photographs, Melynda Jarratt provides a rare glimpse of what life was like for Canadian servicemen overseas and for their relatives at home.

Letters from Beauly is volume 23 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series, co-published with the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society.

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Along with her previous book on war brides and war children, this work is part of a significant contribution made by Jarratt to our understanding of not only the lives lost, but the lives lived, during the Second World War.

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Through ear-splitting, thunderous explosions and fearful eerie flashes in the distance, the nurses of the Canadian Army Nursing Service in World War I waited for the inevitable arrival of wounded soldiers. At the Casualty Clearing Houses, they worked at a feverish pace to give emergency care for bleeding gashes, broken and missing limbs, and the devastating injuries of war.

Exploring the many ways in which trained and volunteer nurses gave their time, talents, and even their lives to the First World War effort, Shawna M. Quinn considers the experiences of New Brunswick's nursing sisters — the gruelling conditions of work and the brutal realities they faced from possible attacks and bombings. Using letters, diaries, and published accounts, Quinn paints a complete picture of the adventurous young women who witnessed first-hand the horrors of the Great War.

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"Agnes Warner joins the roster of only a handful of books that recount the firsthand experiences of Canadian nursing sisters in the First World War and is a worthy addition to that literature."

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"An excellent addition to any military history collection."

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"This volume, the latest in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Project, should find a diverse readership among those interested in local history, as well as those who enjoy learning more about Canada's role in the Great War."

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"Quinn’s work is a valuable contribution in furthering our understanding of the experience and diverse responsibilities of nursing sisters in the Great War."

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They fought at Ypres in the fall of 1915, on the Somme at Courcelette and Regina Trench in 1916, they carried on to Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, and Passchendaele in 1917, and they were part of the battles at Amiens and the Hundred Days campaign of 1918. The 26th New Brunswick Battalion was the only infantry unit from the province to serve on the Western Front from 1915 until the Armistice. More than 5,700 soldiers passed through the battalion during the war, of whom more than 900 were killed and nearly 3,000 were wounded.

A Family of Brothers tells the story of the 'Fighting 26th' from their mobilization to the aftermath of the war. Using a wide range of sources, including letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, war diaries, and other official documents, this compelling history recounts the stories of the soldiers at the front and behind the lines and how their wartime service affected them during the war and after they returned.

A Family of Brothers is volume 24 of the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

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In 1942, RAF flight controller Robert Wyse became a Japanese prisoner of war on the island of Java in Indonesia. Starved, sick, beaten, and worked to near-death, he wasted away until he weighed only seventy pounds, his life hanging in tenuous balance. There were strict orders against POWs keeping diaries, but Wyse penned his observations on the scarce bits of paper he could find, struggling to describe the brutalities he witnessed. After cleverly hiding his notes in a piece of bamboo next to his bed, in December of 1943, he carefully hid his notes inside a bottle beneath his prison hut. After the war, he wrote to the Dutch authorities, asking them to dig up his diary and return it to him. In this detailed and frank portrayal of life under Japanese occupation, Wyse reveals the both the best and the worst of human nature. He criticized his fellow soldiers for botching the defence of Java and Sumatra and admonished his captors for their brutality. Yet, Wyse also describes the selfless efforts of the Dutch civilians who helped the prisoners by doing whatever they could as well as his first-hand observations of acts of self-sacrifice among the prisoners themselves.

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Battle for the Bay explores a new chapter in the history of the War of 1812. Although naval battles raged on the Great Lakes, combat between privateers and small government vessels boiled in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine. Three small warships — the Provincial sloop Brunswicker, His Majesty's schooner Bream, and His Majesty's brig of war Boxer — played a vital role in defending the eastern waters of British North America in this crucial war. The crews of these hardy ships fought both the Americans and the elements — winter winds, summer fog, and the fierce tidal currents of the Bay of Fundy — enduring the all-too-real threats of shipwreck and possible capture and imprisonment. In peacetime, these patrol craft enforced maritime law. In wartime, they engaged in a guerre de course, attacking the enemy's commercial shipping while protecting their own. Now, for the first time, Joshua Smith tells the full story of the battle for the bay.

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"It’s a wonderfully fun short book about a side of the War of 1812 that is otherwise seldom seen."

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"Battle for the Bay fills an important gap in our knowledge of the War of 1812 in the Maritimes."

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"Smith’s account is well researched, immensely readable, and another excellent addition to the growing New Brunswick Military Heritage series. Combined with clear maps and well-chosen artwork, this book provides the perfect starting point to a war enthusiast’s driving expedition down the eastern seaboard."

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Steel Calvary is the story of the transformation from of a horse cavalry unit to one of Canada's most famous armoured regiments.

Twentieth century warfare is epitomized by the image of Allied tanks growling across the countryside, engaging their Nazi counterparts. One of the most storied of such regiments is the 8th (New Brunswick) Hussars. Founded in 1848 as the first volunteer cavalry regiment in British North America, the Hussars began the Second World War as a Motorcycle Regiment before converting to tanks in 1941. First posted to Italy in late 1943, the regiment was introduced to war near Ortona. They formed part of the great drive beyond Monte Cassino to Rome. But their reputation was forged at the Gothic Line and Coriano Ridge during two weeks that marked their fiercest and bloodiest trial of the war.

Steel Cavalry: The 8th (New Brunswick) Hussars and the Second World War is volume 18 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

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"Windsor provides a compelling account, often at a personal level, of how the Hussars proved themselves to Canada and to the world in the bloody battles at the Gothic Line and Coriano Ridge. His book is well-researched and includes great photos and maps that should appeal to anyone interested in military history."

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"Author Lee Windsor has done an excellent job of chronicling the accounts of these hard-fought battles. Using a combination of individual soldier's stories and previously published regimental histories, he has painted a vivid picture of modern armoured warfare."

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The word "pirate" conjures up many Hollywood images, but Trimming Yankee Sails by Faye Kert paints a very different picture. Covering the Atlantic coast from Cape Breton Island, Halifax, and Saint John to the east coast of the United States down to the Virginias, this insightful book offers a glimpse of northeastern North America's naval history and the pirates and privateers who scourged the Atlantic coast throughout the 19th century. In Trimming Yankee Sails, Faye Kert recounts a thrilling but little known story. Pirates and privateers sailed from New Brunswick ports throughout the 19th century, but their exploits began in earnest during the War of 1812. Amid tales of battles at sea and fortunes lost and won, Kert's exposure of the murky context in which these semi-legal marauders operated reveals surprising truths about Confederation and its promoters. Trimming Yankee Sails: Pirates and Privateers of New Brunswick is Volume 6 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

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"Written clearly with an engaging style... a welcome contribution to the literature."

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Saint John became a gateway to what is now Canada in the early 1600s, and Fort La Tour, built in 1632, was one of the three main forts of Acadie. In Saint John Fortifications, Roger Sarty and Doug Knight trace the history of the port's defences, from the earliest log palisades to the bunkers, gun emplacements, and communications stations built during World War II. Put to the test during the American Revolutionary War, Saint John has figured as one of Canada's most significant guardians. American independence effectively closed the shipping route between the mouth of the Richelieu River, on the St. Lawrence, and the mouth of the Hudson River, at New York City. Saint John took over some of this traffic, and so the 19th century wars and threatened wars between Canada and the United States resulted in bigger and better fortifications for the city. Each new defence system has incorporated the old, including the installations built as protection from German invasion during the two World Wars. Although the last of the modern installations on Partridge Island was disabled in 1956, many sites still contain substantial reminders of their past strength. Visitors today can trace the evidence of this great commercial port's military past. Saint John Fortifications, 1630-1956 is the first book in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series published by Goose Lane Editions in collaboration with the New Brunswick Military Heritage Project.

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"An excellent assessment of how technological advancement challenged and changed the fortifications systems and how local people had to adjust to ever-changing realities of war ... any trip to Saint John could be enlightened by the descriptions of the fortifications in and around the city and what currently remains."

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Almost since Champlain's men first settled on St. Croix Island in 1604, the French and the English fought for control of Acadia, a huge area consisting of today's Maritime Provinces and parts of Quebec and Maine. The British assault on Fort Beauséjour in 1755 was the final act in this long struggle. The frontier between the two imperial powers lay along the Chignecto Isthmus, the neck of low, fertile marshlands and parallel ridges joining Nova Scotia to the mainland. Of great strategic importance, this land was the scene of a few pitched battles and constant petty warfare. By 1750, the present-day New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border was a fortified camp amid the fertile lands that generations of Acadians had farmed. The English were building Fort Lawrence on one side of the Missaguash River, near present-day Amherst, Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, the French were constructing Fort Beauséjour in plain view on the opposite side, only three kilometres away, near what is now Sackville, New Brunswick. Relations among the British soldiers, the soldiers from France, the Acadian inhabitants, and the native Mi'kmaq were complex. Acadians and their Mi'kmaq allies traded with British soldiers by day and attacked them at night. The French boasted that Beauséjour was the third-strongest fort in North America, but it was poorly sited and unfinished, and the Acadians forced to work on it demanded payment in British gold. When a combined force of New England volunteers and British regulars wrested the fort from its defenders in June 1755, Beauséjour fell, and so did Acadia. In The Siege of Fort Beauséjour, 1755, Chris Hand outlines the events leading up to this final clash and gives a running account of the siege itself. The 30 site plans, maps, and drawings and paintings, archival and modern, show a realistic picture of the battle that made the Expulsion of the Acadians not only possible but inevitable. The Siege of Fort Beauséjour, 1755 is Volume 3 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

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"Hand paints such a vivid picture that you can visualize the siege unfolding ... [It] makes one realize that this region, Canada, and possibly the continent may have been a different place had this fort been successfully defended."

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