The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Deception -- What Will Happen Next in Ukraine, Or Will It?

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

It's a centuries-old tactic in war, to deceive your enemy.  Is that what the Russians are up to in Ukraine?  And if so are the Ukrainians falling victim to the strategy?  Brian Stewart takes a look at the issue of deception, in another of his regular weekly columns.  And Ted Barris drops by to talk about his new book, "The Battle of the Atlantic" as we continue our theme of "remembering" this week.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday, that means Brian Stewart, it means Ukraine, and today it means deception. And welcome to The Bridge, I'm Peter Mansbridge. And yes, it's Tuesday, and as has been the case since, well, almost back in February, when the Ukraine-Russia conflict began, we've been having Brian Stewart with us on Tuesdays to try and make sense, if that's even at all possible, of some of the events that have been happening in Ukraine over these past months, past brutal months, as it's turned out to be.

And today is no exception. Brian's going to tackle a subject that, well, has tracks back through military history, but has a real impact on not only the outcome and the progress of the war, but also on perceptions of the war. So we're going to get to Brian in just a moment. Also, keep in mind, most days this week, we're trying to touch on the issue of remembering, with Friday being Remembrance Day. Yesterday we talked to Dr. Tim Cook on his new book, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers.

It's really a book about the First World War. Today we shift to the Second World War. We'll be talking to the well-known, another prolific author in terms of Canada's military history. This is Ted Barris, and Ted will be with us to talk about his new book, Battle of the Atlantic, Gauntlet to Victory. But that's coming up. Let's begin with our regular commentary, our regular chat on Tuesdays with my friend, the former war correspondent, former foreign

correspondent, Brian Stewart. Here we go. You know, Brian, like so many things we cover, we're always facing a degree of spin. But, you know, in war, it's not necessarily spin. It's kind of deception, I think is the key word and one that you've taught me about. And a lot of people are wondering about deception right now in terms of the battle for Kherson. Because it's kind of unclear what exactly the Russians are up to. Are they sort of giving up on something they had occupied,

or are they lying in wait for the Ukrainians to come in? And that's where the D word, the deception word, plays. So talk to us about that. Yeah, the art of deception is absolutely critical to military science and has been for thousands of years. In Ukraine at the moment, in the Kherson, for the battle to take back the Kherson city, which is on the west bank of Kherson province. For months, really, there was talk

of the Ukrainian forces are moving to seize the city. And for weeks, it looked like, in fact, the last few weeks, the Russians were pulling out either in a well-ordered retreat from the city or a complete route leading to the opposite bank in apparent safety. And just in the last week, people began to scratch their heads, intelligence people and military analysts, and start worrying about maybe this is all deception. Maybe, in fact, what has been happening, and there's some evidence to support this, is the Russians have been moving out their weakest elements and units and putting in the really good units they still have into Kherson City. They moved out most of the civilians, almost all of them, and the Russian good forces are digging in deep. And what they're trying to do is lure the Ukrainians into attacking.

Think of a mini Stalingrad in a way, where, remember, the Germans tried to take Stalingrad, a city like, and the Russians basically trapped them. The Russians would be hoping to lure Ukrainians into attacking full out on the city and then meet them with a much stronger force than they're they're ready for suspicions that this was deception began to appear last week when a group of military analysts from around the international uh Capitals uh were allowed to visit the front just outside Kershaw City and came back saying, wait a minute, we were told the Russians were very weak. They seem to be very well dug in.

They're not running from even under heavy barrages of fire. And the returning fire, quite precisely, and in volumes that suggest they're not running out of ammunition as we've been led to believe. So that's got the Ukrainian military now trying to figure out, are we being lured into a trap here? And that's basically the debate going on. Now, once deception starts, of course, it's like a ball of string starts unraveling itself. Is there a real Russian deception? Or have the Russians invented the idea of a deception so the Ukrainians will pause and not rush into the city, giving the Russians more time to get out in good order?

Or was there never a deception? But Ukraine has invented a deception plan to excuse their slow advance on the city. So it can turn to the world that has been promising it's going to capture the city soon and say, well, there's a Russian deception plan, so we're going to be very careful here. On the other hand, the Ukrainians may also want the Russians to believe they do believe the deception plan, causing their generals to tie up their very best troops in a city the Ukrainians don't intend to attack right now, almost imprisoning themselves. Will the Ukrainians perhaps throw in an offensive at another front just before the rainy season stops all so these are all the kind of things going through the minds of military intelligence officials at the moment around the world they're debating this in military academies i'm sure and some generals are saying what no wait a minute what if this is all an invention of the media it had to get around it had to get around to the

media at some point you've got to blame the media somewhere in this no you know to get around to the media at some point. You've got to blame the media somewhere in this. You know, to me, listening to all this, though, it almost sounds like too smart by half. The people are, you know, sitting there trying to come up with a theory as to what's going on because there seems to be this pause in the action, right? This kind of delay on both sides. And so they're looking for potential reasons.

But as you said, history tells us for centuries that deception has been a part of war. Absolutely. Try and make your enemy attack you where you're strongest and not attack you where you're weakest. So you put on deception plans in the Western desert in 1942. The British had all these fake units out way out in the desert with tanks made of plaster or wood to deceive the Germans, and they did. But probably the most famous one in history was on D-Day, when Canadian troops went in with British and American allies and landed in Normandy.

Now, for months before the landing in Normandy, of course, they had run this incredible deception plan to convince the Germans the Brits were not going to go in, the Canadians and the Americans were not going to go in anywhere else but in northern France. Northern France, where the channel was narrowest, was where they were going to attack. And by and large, the Germans fell for it. So they had a huge amount of their strength up in the north of France and not further south towards the central area of Normandy. And that was a brilliant deception. And there have been many deceptions in war. It's something military officers study all the time, how he can confuse your enemy.

I want to bring up another point in this discussion, not about deception, but about tanks. Because it was about six months ago when we saw the early going of the battle and the Russians doing so poorly and losing a considerable number of tanks. You theorize that we may be looking at the end of the tank in terms of a full-on war and full-on conflict, that the tank may have passed its moment.

And then a lot of people followed you down that avenue and talking about what was happening in Ukraine. But now, perhaps, there's a rethink going on in terms of tanks. Yes, and both ideas were right for the time. When the theory of the tanks maybe be finished on the battlefield really grew was when the Russians lost. The number is still astounding, but somewhere over 2,200 tanks, almost unimaginable number. And people were seeing the Russian tanks knocked out by shoulder-fired rockets and missiles, often by

volunteer teenagers running in to join the Ukrainian forces. And they realize it's just too destructive. I mean, tanks blow up, they kill the crews inside, they can't be trusted on the battlefield. But something dramatic happened a month ago, you will remember. After months of, again, everybody looking for a big Ukrainian offensive in the southern front, the Ukrainians suddenly unleashed this extraordinary breakthrough in the northern front, Kharkiv area. And they used tanks and any armored vehicles they had to break through Russian lines and push well into the background. And now the Ukrainians are saying, we want tanks. Please, world, give us more tanks. We can use tanks.

We want to form big core of tanks of, you know, hundreds strong that can really push through enemy lines and make a big difference here. And the Americans and NATO allies have been rushing to basically find every, you know, Soviet era T-72 tank they have in their stockpiles. Many hundreds were left behind when the Soviet Union collapsed, and they're rushing them in. And people are saying, well, wait a minute, weren't they lousy tanks? Weren't they always blowing up? Well, the fact of the matter is they had very poor crews and they were very poor officers. And a lot of their losses were just mistake. They went in with a troop support around them, other armored vehicles around them. And the Ukrainians know how to build an armored force that will also protect the tanks, even as the tanks attack. And so it's a vital change now.

So all over the military academies of the world and op-ed pieces here, you're finding debates. Maybe the tank isn't dead after all. Maybe it's going to have a second coming in Ukraine. So let's hope we're ahead of that one too. Okay. Here's the changing topic, and it's to move to our theme this week on the First World War, Second World War. We've been there to see some of the ceremonies that have taken place in remembering, you know, whether it was Vimy Ridge or whether it was D-Day, whether it was in the Netherlands.

Stalham, Ashendale. Exactly. Many of these. Now, I guess my question to you, as I asked Tim Cook yesterday, your thoughts about Remembrance, Remembrance Day in particular, or just simply the importance of remembering in terms of what's happened in all these different battle areas overseas but also the home front in terms of what was being prepared by men and women who were trying to help out the war effort but overall what are your thoughts at a time like

this each year yes and remembering long after the wars, we're mainly remembering or remembering a lot of past. You know, I remember a CBC report back in the 1970s, I still look on as one of the most wrong reports I've ever listened to, which theorized that Remembrance Day in Canada would start to fade out with the poppy when the last of the World War II veterans died away and their benefits ceased to be paid

and went down of importance to the government. One could not be possibly more wrong. We've seen Remembrance Day endure. It has grown some years. It's been a little bit slack, but other times it's bounced back with enormous impact. I think there's a deep instinctive need of nations to remember those who died in their name. And we've had moments that have really re-inspired it, like the ceremony

for the unknown soldier back some years ago. The Afghanistan War, of course. And I think the 1914 centenary were big events. But basically, you know, Canada's prime minister in World War I said a memorable line I've always remembered. Let us never forget the solemn truth that a nation is not constituted of the living alone. The dead of a nation who died in their uniform, under their flag, for their cause, are remembered, just like victims of plagues are remembered. Children now of those awful schools for Indigenous people will be remembered throughout history. The veterans of Canada, and it's not just Canada, you go across the world and you'll find remembrance days of one form or another. The monuments, they endure because people need to feel again the grief, feel the solemnity of the occasion,

and also show some respect for those who really paid the highest price that any citizen can, and the families that suffered with them, and those who served. And I think it's going to go on, and it's going to be strong. And I think schools do a better job than they're given credit for, for reteaching it. I think the media has done an excellent job. I think you've probably covered more remembrance services than any living Canadian over your time. And documentaries and news and the rest of it, we do remember what has to be remembered.

And remember, that's solemn truth. We have to remember not only our living, but the dead as well of this country. Well put, sir. Brian, thank you for that and thank you for your uh regular commentaries on on this this war that has so many comparisons to past battles um you know even back to the first world war and those incredible and lengthy artillery exchanges that took place uh more than 100 years ago,

now seemingly being repeated at times on the Ukraine-Russia conflict. But thank you for all this, as always, Brian. We'll talk to you again next week. Okay, it's a pleasure. Brian Stewart with us, as he has been throughout most of this year, and discussing with us the whole issue of Ukraine, but also today adding to his thoughts the issue of remembering, the power of remembrance.

We're going to continue on that theme after our short break, a quick break, and then we'll come back with ted barris and his latest book do that right after this And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge right here on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, and on your favorite podcast platform. And a reminder that twice a week now, on Wednesdays and on Fridays, that day's program, that day's The Bridge,

is also available on a YouTube channel. So you can actually watch us putting the program together. And that YouTube channel you can connect to by just going to my bio on either Twitter or Instagram, up there in the top corner. And there's a direct link right to the channel and you can subscribe. Cost nothing.

And you can see the program in production. Okay, now, yesterday we talked to Dr. Tim Cook about his new book, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers, which is basically about the First World War. And today we're talking to Ted Barris about his new book, which is basically about the Second World War. Ted is a well-known author. He's published more than 20 non-fiction books. For 50 years, he's worked as a journalist contributing to national newspapers and periodicals. So the past of a few of his most recent books, which have done extremely well, Rush to Danger, Dam Busters, and The Great Escape. This one, though, Battle of the Atlantic, Gauntlet to Victory by Ted Barris. So let's bring

Ted in and have a chat with him about this new book, what it means about the Second World War, what it means about Canada, and what it means, in fact, about remembering. Here's Ted Barris. So, Ted, when a lot of people think of the Second World War, they think of the Army, and they think of D-Day and all that, and they think of the Air Force and the tremendous job that both those services did. Sadly, in a way, and correct me if I'm wrong

here, there's not as much attention paid to the Navy and the incredible role that the Navy and the Merchant Marine did in terms of feeding an island, Great Britain, across the North Atlantic. Your book, Battle of the Atlantic, Gauntlet to Victory, tries to correct that in many ways, right? And it was odd because you're absolutely right. And I don't know if I'm successful in correcting that,

but I'm trying to give some balance to the kind of work that I've done over 20 books. Most of my subjects have been slivers of the war. Juno was about D-Day. Vimy was about four days in April 1917. The Dam Busters was May 16th, 17th, 1943. But this battle, the Battle of the Atlantic, ran for 2,074 days, literally from the very first day Britain declared war against Germany on September the 3rd, 1939, when the Germans sank the Athenia off the coast of Ireland, right through to the very last days of the war when Karl Donitz, after Hitler had committed suicide, told the U-boats to surrender on May the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. And the war ended, of course, in Europe, ended Hitler had committed suicide, told the U-boats to surrender on May the 5th,

6th, 7th, and 8th. And the war ended, of course, in Europe, ended on VE Day, May the 8th, 1945, 2,074 days. And the tough part of telling the story is how do you get 2,074 days between the covers of one book? It's almost impossible. So I've gone to a tactic that I've used in most of my books, and that's to let the voices of the people who witnessed it tell the stories and give you a sense of what it was like. And that is a tremendous part of this book, and we'll get to that in a second. The longest battle of the Second World War, right? Yes.

Say that number of days, and you look at it as one battle. It's the longest battle of that war. When you're subtitled Gauntlet to Victory, what are you thinking there when you say that? Well, most people think of the Battle of the Atlantic of the convoys going from North America to Britain and back against the U-boats. And that was a gauntlet. And that was a gauntlet. And it was a gauntlet for a number of reasons, principally because the Germans for the most of that period, 2,074 days, had the upper hand,

else the battle would have been over sooner. The other thing was geographical. If you can imagine in your mind, over here is North America and over here is Britain, and then there's Iceland up there. And the air crews that were, and the air crews that were, the Allied air crews that were providing some air coverage for the convoys, and essentially what the aircraft would do is fly over the convoys and drive the U-boats down into crash dives to escape any bombing or depth charging from the air. But that coverage was limited by virtue of the nature of the aircraft. Our aircraft, the Royal Canadian Air Force,

had Hudson's twin engines, Canso's twin engines, PBI's, which was the American equivalent, the Sunderland's, which were twin engines, and they could only go out so far and cover so long before they had to retreat to their bases, their stations, which meant that there was this black pit in the center of the North Atlantic, across which the convoys and the escorts, as slim as they were and as ill-equipped as they were

and ill-trained initially as they were, had to run a gauntlet to get the convoys safely across. And in the first two to three years of the war, it was really nip and tuck. We just had not gained the capability to defend the convoys across that expanse of 2,300 miles of ocean. So it really was running the gauntlet. Call it a Bermuda Triangle. Call it a killing field. That's what it was. would gather the captains of the freighters and the tankers in Halifax, where most of the convoys began, or North Sydney. They told them the direction they would take, the passage where they would go,

the speed at which they would travel, roughly where the intelligence was telling them the U-boats were. What they didn't say was that anywhere from a quarter to a third of the ships, as many as 50 or 60 in a convoy, might not get there. That was my next question. What was the actual success rate in crossing? I guess, you know, in the worst moments of the Battle of the Atlantic, those wolf packs, when they crowd in, especially in that sort of Black Pit area, they were taking out, what, a third?

Could be. In the second chapter of the book, which I entitled Death of a Convoy, it's a convoy that left Halifax on September the 9th, 1940, HX-72, convoy from Halifax number 72. And there were approximately 50 ships that left on the 9th. And I was able to get, thanks to a friend of mine, David O'Brien, whose father was aboard one of the tankers that was sunk in that convoy. He interviewed five or six of the survivors and allowed me to have the tapes so that I could get the transcriptions and ultimately take you, the reader, into the death of that convoy. You get a strong sense of the strategy

of the U-boats at this stage. And Karl Donitz, who was the rear admiral of the U-boat Waffe, completely changed the tactics of the U-boats in the Second World War. He was actually a veteran of the submarines in the First War. But the tactics in the Second, instead of having lone wolf attacks of U-boats going out and expending their torpedoes on one convoy, they wouldn't fire a shot. They would shadow the convoy, call the other U-boats into play from hundreds of miles away, gather in numbers, and use the advantage of staying on the surface, which gave them greater speed and maneuverability. They also had the advantage that ASDIC, which was the Allies' primitive sonar, was great for spotting

pings off U-boats submerged, but not on the surface. And then Donitz used that final element of surprise, shadowing, gathering 30, 40, 50 at times number of U-boats attacking at night. And he called it Rudl-tactic, which was the Wolfpack attack. And as a result, on that convoy, 11 of the 47 ships were sunk in September 1940, which was, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's very high. And when those ships were sunk, rescue was difficult, to say the least. In the early part of the war war and virtually the standing rule was you stop for nobody if you're a merchant ship you don't stop to to bring your buddies up the the grappling uh nets or you know send a lifeboat out to retrieve these guys you keep going because

you'd be the next target and it was the same for the warships. Their job is to escort the traveling merchant ships, not the sinking ones. And so maybe about 1942, we started sending with the convoys rescue ships. Their job was to pick up wherever they could, the survivors. And often they were torpedoed. And so guys would be thrown into the ocean once off their tank or a freighter, and then might be a second time from the rescue ship. It was just horrendous. We almost lost the Battle of the Atlantic in late 1942 because the losses were so horrific. The Canadians were now responsible by December of 1942 for most of the North Atlantic. And in December of that year, we sustained 80% of the losses of the convoys in that period. That's because the Canadian Navy was facing half the U-boat fleet in the North Atlantic. And in its largest number, there were 830 U-boats.

So that's a lot of U-boats that the Canadians faced. You know, so many of your books, as you mentioned earlier, are dependent on the stories of the participants. That's getting harder and harder to do these days because most of these guys are gone. You mentioned earlier how you got some firsthand stories, but tell us more about how you got, because your book is filled once again with stories from participants.

So tell me about how you get them. It's a little bit of a serendipitous accidental history gathering and research. Peter, you know, you remember my dad, Alex Barris, who was a journalist, a columnist, a broadcaster, a great dad and a co-writer. He and I did two books together. When we were doing a book years ago called Days of Victory for 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, dad went east from Toronto and interviewed veterans in New Brunswick and PEI and St. John's and Newfoundland. And I went west because that was sort of territory where I had worked mostly. And the two of us got back together with arms full of tapes, but we were focused on the end of the war. It was called Days of Victory. So the Days of Victory were really at the end.

But in order to get the interviewer or the interviewee to the point of the victory, the end of the war, we had to get data of their experiences prior to that. Well, that stuff's been sitting on my shelf for 40 years. Most of it's never been used. And I suddenly sensed with the pandemic upon us, here was the opportunity for me to grab those voices and address this incredible battle with so many of the stories living there right on my shelf. I remember Roy Harbin, who was a neighbor in our community. And I grew up in a little place called Agincourt, which has now been gobbled up by Scarborough, East End, Toronto. And I remember Roy, big guy.

He was a torpedo man. And he never talked to anybody except the dad and me about his experiences. And Roy said he was, I think he was on the HMCS Montreal, which was a frigate near the end of the war. And the war was pretty much done by that time, but they were still involved in trying to track down the U-boats. And they catch up with one that had accidentally run into a shoal off the south coast of England. And he talks about how they scooped up these guys. And poor old Roy, he'd never handled a gun in his life. And there he was, a torpedo man. And they gave him a nine caliber pistol.

And they said, guard these guys that they fished out of the water. And Roy never held a gun in his life. And there he is guarding three or four U-boat submariners. And he looked at them and he said, he had a guy who spoke fluent German, a friend on the ship on the Montreal. And they started conversing. And he said, we could walk out in the street Montreal. And they started conversing and he said, we could walk out in the street together and they'd think we were all the same. There was nothing different between the average submariner and us.

And it was a tremendous realization that a lot of this stuff about people, not politicized Nazis or whatever. What surprised you writing this book? I mean, you know our stories, the Canadian stories of conflict in a number of wars. So you already kind of know it going in, but there must be things through the research and the study and the writing and the talking to people that surprised you. What surprised you in this? A couple of things, many, but a couple of things that come to mind.

The merchant sailors who have always been ignored by history and by their government. When the war began, the then Minister of Transport described the merchant sailors who participated in getting those ships from North America to Britain and back as the fourth arm of the fighting forces. After Army, Navy, and Air Force came the merchant navy. Well, who were the first people at the end of the war denied veteran status? The merchant sailors. So that story has always bothered me. The fact that they didn't get recognition as veterans for another 49 years, not until 1994. And the more I researched the merchant sailors, the more I found their story was compelling. When I was in Brantford, Ontario, one time, a woman came up to me and she said,

we've got a box, a Rubbermaid box in the basement of letters that my uncle, John Bernie Dougal, wrote to his mom, Rachel, when he left Cornwall to go to sea. And everyone in the family, she said, thinks they're worthless. Are you interested? I said, of course, don't do anything but hang on to them and pass them along. So I got this Rubbermaid box. There were a hundred letters that John Bernie Dougal had written to his mom back in Cornwall. And as an innocent 17-year-old going into the Merchant Navy, he talks about learning the trade of being at sea, dealing with the isolation, dealing with the war coming along in 1939, learning how to operate a gun on the deck,

coping with the loss because his family was in Scotland, his ancestors, and periodically he would get back to Scotland and realize what the horrible impact of rationing and the loss of commodities and basic staple foods and fuel and so on was like in Britain. So he had a strong sense of that. And yet he wanted dearly to move up the ladder in the merchant navy and become an officer. And he does. And the letters reflect his studying and preparing for the tests and getting that holy grail, that certificate of merit that comes to him in 1941. And his first job as a third officer on the SS Gretaval, he's in a convoy leaving North Sydney in 1941. And they run into

the biggest wolf pack of the war. The Commodore leading convoy tells the ships to disperse, run for your lives within a few days of their departing North Sydney. Greta Val doesn't make it and John Bernie Dougal is lost. That story, his face, those letters are just indelibly in my brain. And I had to tell his story as a representative of the men who were not good enough for the government or the military to describe as veterans at the end of the war. So that stuff. The other thing that I found really fascinating, if you'll allow me, is the incredible role that women played in the Merchant Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy, in particular the REMS, the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Service, the REMS.

My neighbor in Uxbridge, Ronnie E, was a REMS. Margaret Lose, who you probably met, her married name was Halliburton. She was always at those remembrance events in Toronto over the years. And she became what was known as a listener. One of the advantages that the Allies had in the early days of the war was something called Huff Duff, high frequency direction finding, which was a radio device that when a U-boat transmitted a message from the middle of the Atlantic, this radio or several of them could triangulate on where that U-boat was. And Margaret would hear

this on a Huff Duff radio. The Germans didn't know that we had this. And she'd take the quadrants or the triangulation, run down the hall in the base she was working at, HMCS Coverdale in Moncton, and send that information to Bletchley Park, which is where they were decoding Enigma. And she did this throughout the war. She was one of the listeners. Interestingly, I ran into a woman in 2006 named Nana Dare. She was a civilian who had been born in England, raised in Canada, goes back to Britain as the war breaks out, couldn't find any space for herself in the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force. She's told about an interview that she could take at a place called Milton Keynes, down the road from where she lives. She goes to this mansion, goes into this interview room. There's a guy named Alistair Denniston sitting there. And he says, we're looking for the cream of great minds. We call

ourselves the family. And Nan thinks, my God, I don't even have a university education. And Denniston says, that's okay. We'll assess you. And she says, what will I have to do? He says, you're going to have to work night shifts and day shifts and everything in between. And she says, what do I have to do? He says, you're going to have to work night shifts and day shifts and everything in between, and you're going to have to sign the Official Secrets Act. And he says, we'll give you some time to think about it. She says, that's nice. He says, you've got five minutes. Well, she joins all of those women whom Churchill referred to as the geese who never cackled. They were the women working at Bletchley, breaking the codes of enigma. And she was right there in the same

room with Alan Turing. So, civilian and Wren participating in really key roles in the Battle of the Atlantic and ultimately having a great influence, small cogs in a big picture, to turn the tide in 1942 so that they ultimately won the battle by 1945. Got a couple of questions and only a couple of minutes to deal with them. Here's the first one. We talk about the Black Pit and the borders, either side of it that stretch to either side of the Atlantic. But the Battle of the Atlantic had more than that, as you know, and you talk about in the book. It also had moments where those U-boats came right in close to Canada and, you know, and wreaked a little havoc very close to Canadian shores.

Give us one example of that. Well, um, those of us who are old enough to remember hockey night in Canada, when Murray Westgate used to be on tuition as wearing his Imperial oil uniform with a cap and everything saying happy motoring and all that stuff. Murray was in the Royal Canadian Navy. He was living in Regina when the royal canadian navy he was living in regina when the war broke out and he turned to the navy to get him the hell out of

regina and he figured he was off to war to become a hero they sent him to gas bay to another land based ship hmcs fort ramsay he was there essentially as a telegraphist uh keeping an eye on shipping in and out of the gulf St. Lawrence. Well, suddenly, in May of 1942, there are shipwrecked sailors washing ashore in Gaspe, and Murray is suddenly sitting in the front row seat of the war that's about to unfold in the Gulf, because a U-boat comes through the Cabot Strait, finds unescorted ships, and begins sinking them,

and these guys wash ashore. Well, the Canadian government has been saying, the Mackenzie King government has been saying all along, our eastern shorelines are defended by the Royal Canadian Navy. Well, no, they weren't, because there wasn't enough warship power in the Gulf. And so the U-boats marauded through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, right on our doorstep, all the way up to Rimouski in Quebec. From May of 1942, right through October, sinking 17 merchant ships, three U.S. Navy ships, two Royal Canadian warships, and worst probably of all, a ferry that ran from North Sydney to Port-au-Basque three times a week, the SS Caribou, because one of the U-boats thought it was a troop ship and thought that the minesweeper escorting her was a

destroyer. He fires a torpedo into SS Caribou on October the 14th, 1942, and she goes down in four minutes. And I got reports and accounts from those who survived. Of the 237 aboard, 137 died, including a nursing sister named Agnes Wilkie. And the account of her companion on board that ship is really compelling. So all of this was right there, well inside our territorial waters, almost up to Quebec City, and nobody knows about it. We don't know that the Battle of the Atlantic was within spitting distance of our back door.

And, you know, and it is, there's no excuse for us not knowing that. You know, that's a major part of our history of that time. And the fact that we don't know about it, or we're not, we don't spend the time to understand and inform ourselves about it uh you know it's unfortunate to to say the least here's the last question when we uh when canada entered the war we had what 13 ships warships correct something like correct and when

we came out of it we were the fourth largest Navy in the world. It's, you know, that's another part of our history that is often not told. But give us that story about the incredible work that must have gone on to build up a Navy of that size in a relatively short period of time. I mean, we can't order ships now. It takes 40 years to get them. And, you know, five times the original budget. That's right. Well, there were different times.

It was much more urgent. And we don't have today C.D. Howell. Right. The man who was the Minister of Supply and Services during the war, sometimes known as the minister of everything and he recognized the need for us to build uh our escorts to get those convoys across the black gap and it was the corvette navy and so over the course of the first through two to three years of the war we built nearly 350 courts many of which went to the royal navy but most stayed in canada and they became the backbone of the escort service delivering those convoys.

And they cost $530,000 each, which sounds like a lot of money. But next to a destroyer or an aircraft carrier or a battleship, they were small potatoes. Churchill called them the cheap and nasties. And they were sent out essentially to compete with the U-boats for speed and maneuverability and firepower. And a guy named, a commander of one of the corvettes, a guy named James Prent the convoys, but to be aggressors, to be chasing the U-boats and essentially changing sheepdogs into sub killers. And that whole transition of expanding the Navy so quickly with all those ships that C.D. Howe was calling for and expanding our volunteer service, populating all those ships with crews that are trained by guys like Prentice. He was amazing. He wore a monocle. He had served in the Royal Navy during the first war, so he had a little bit of Britain in him, but he was a rancher from BC, so they called him the monocled

cowboy. But this guy turned our strategy against the U-boats upside down and essentially was among the first to sink boats with this strategy. And that was what it was all about. It was Canadian know-how, stick-to-itiveness, perseverance, and defying the odds that ultimately made the difference in this incredible story, the Battle of the Atlantic. And because it was 2,074 days and not one or two or three, it's hard to get your hands around it or book covers around it, but I've tried. You have, and like in all your other work, your many other books, you bring to the forefront

and to Canadians a knowledge of their past that hasn't been shared enough. So listen, congratulations on this one. There are a few people I know in the book writing business who work as hard as you do at not just writing the books, but getting the information about them out to a public who need to read this stuff to understand our history, understand our past. It gives us a better sense of who we are and directions we're taking now. So Ted, listen, good luck with this. I'm sure you don't need it, but I wish it to you anyway. I'll take it.

Thanks, Peter. Pleasure. Ted Barris, author of Battle of the Atlantic, Gauntlet to Victory. And I tracked Ted down, I think it was in Edmonton, at his latest kind of book launch, meeting with the public and signing books. And he's traveled already all over the country. The book just came out, I think, about a month ago. But he's been all over the place. When I was on the East Coast in Halifax and Charlottetown about a month ago,

Ted was right behind me coming in with his book. So he loves traveling the country, loves meeting people, and obviously he loves talking about his book, Battle of the Atlantic, Conload to Victory by Ted Barris. You can find it in bookstores right across the country. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this day. Tomorrow, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, Bruce will be by, and we'll talk about what should be relatively clear by that time tomorrow.

That's the U.S. midterm elections. Now, midterm elections usually go in favor, not always, but usually go in favor of the party not in power. So this is expected to be a good day for Republicans. It's been up and down in the last few months with all the relative different stories that have surfaced about, mainly about Donald Trump, but others as well. We'll see whether that causes any damage to what is the normal process on in midterm elections, but there's some interesting races and we'll talk

about those if they're determined by then. There are those who feel this could go on for days. And of course, if the Republicans aren't doing well, they will deny that the election meant anything and that it was all a fraud because that's what they like to do. It's kind of a chaotic night for television networks at any time, elections, because everything's happening relatively quickly and there are all kinds of stories out there

that you're trying to track down. But I found this interesting. There was a piece in the New York Times the other day. CBS, they've been televising elections since 1948. That was the year I was born. But this is the first year that the network has felt obligated to install a dedicated democracy desk as a cornerstone of its live coverage. Seated a few feet from the co-anchors in the network's Times Square studio, election law experts and correspondents will report on fraud allegations and threats of violence at the polls. Mary Hager, CBS's executive editor of

politics, says, it's not traditional, but I'm not sure we'll ever have traditional again. Well, well, well. That from the New York Times. Okay, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again, of course

Oh, listen Thursday Random Ranter Day But it's mainly your turn Your opportunity to weigh in on the subjects You wish to discuss Here's what I would like the question of the week to be And this really is just

Kind of a one or two line answer. Remember your name and location you're writing from. But the question would be, what does Remembrance Day mean to you? What do you think of on Remembrance Day? It may be personal, it may be about a relative, or maybe more general. But Remembrance Day, what does it mean to you? Give me your answer to that question. I'd love to hear from as many new people as possible. Send your notes along to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

All right, we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.