The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Time To Remember

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

With Remembrance Day coming up this Friday The Bridge devotes some time this week to "remembering".  Beginning today with a feature interview with Tim Cook and the stories behind his terrific new First World War book, 'Life Savers and Body Snatchers".  And among our end bits today, what do you think the most common dog name in Canada is?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Got your poppy yet? It's Remembrance Day this Friday. So in a way, this is Remembrance Week. And welcome to a new week. This is always an important week on the Canadian calendar, Remembrance Day on Friday. We take some time to think about those who serve this country in far-flung places around the world. And we think of the toll that is taken on individuals and on families throughout the years. Most recently, most recently in Afghanistan. Before that, peacekeeping missions around the world, Bosnia in the 1990s, go back to the Korean War in the 1950s,

the Second World War in the 1940s, and of course the First World War in the 1910s, 1914 to 1918 to be specific. So there's a lot to remember, and you can go across this country from city to city, and to me, more importantly, from town to town, and see the cenotaphs that have been built or were built first after the First World War and then names added to those cenotaphs in the conflict since.

The important thing to remember about those, no matter how small those towns were, those communities were, the money was raised locally to build them, to put those cenotaphs in. And they're all across the country. And they're very revealing in so many communities. You look at those lists of the names on those memorials, and some are clearly from the same family. They may have been cousins. They may have been father, son. They may have been brothers. But they're all noted, and they're all remembered, we hope.

And that's why on November 11th each year, in the big cities, you'll see big gatherings around the Cenotaph. In the small towns and cities, you'll see smaller crowds, but you will see people gathered around the Cenotaph to remember. And that's a good thing, because it is a part of our past. Now, this Friday, Remembrance Day, the bridge comes on after the Remembrance Day ceremonies have taken place. So the notice we're going to take this week will be before Friday in a way to kind of help set you up.

Got a couple of books. There are authors who are with us to talk about their work and their special place. One on the First World War, one on the Second World War. And today we feature Tim Cook, who is perhaps Canada's most acknowledged war historian of this day. He's written many books.

His latest book is called Lifesavers and Body Snatchers. And we'll explain what's that about in a moment. But first, I want to tell you a little story that I saw in the Bradford Today online site. Bradford's a small community in Ontario. It's north of Toronto, sort of up towards Barrie. It's in the Holland Marsh area. And a lot of Dutch settled there after the Second World War. And you know the stories about the Netherlands and Canada and the Second World War and how Canadian troops liberated

huge chunks of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation. And so there's a connection there between the Dutch and Canada, very much so. Anyway, the story in the Bradford Today online site is written by the editor of Bradford Today. Her name's Natasha Philpott. And it's a great little story because it talks about community

and it talks about Remembrance Day. As Natasha writes, it's been a few years now since this idea began. It was an idea to simply put some signs in the windows of stores in Bradford. The sign's very simple. They just say, thank you. And there's a poppy with them.

They're handwritten thank yous. They're done by local business people in Bradford. And then they're circulated around the community. Now Bradford's not the only town in Canada that does things similar to this. But I love the story because it really captures the heart of that community. It captures the connection between Canada and the Netherlands. The first store they put it into this year was Dutch Treats, which was recently taken over by resident Marty Brooks.

And there truly is, as Natasha's piece says, there's something fitting about going to the Dutch store first because of the liberation of Holland in World War II. Anyway, hats off to those in Bradford who are behind this and who support it, and the stores who've got these hand-drawn signs in their windows. Great little moment, and just kind of that flash of our past, for one, and an encouragement to remember in our present about our past.

All right, let's get started with the first interview this week that's going to highlight, in a way, some of our military history. And once again, it's by Tim Cook, and if the name's familiar to you, it's because you've often seen him pop up on television networks, helping in the commentary. Because not only is he a very successful author, he's the chief historian and director of research of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

Tim and I have done a number of shows. He's been on the bridge before, about a year ago, as a matter of fact. But today he's on the bridge, and we welcome him back to talk about his new book. And, well, I'm not going to say any more. We'll let Tim explain it all. Tim Cook, the author of Lifesavers and Body Snatchers. Here's our discussion.

So, Tim, everyone knows that you are a prolific writer, and especially on the topic of Canada's military and Canada's past in various conflicts. So let me start with just a sense of what's the basis of that passion? Did you like grow up wanting to be a war historian, a military historian? How did it all start? Yeah, Peter, thanks for that. My grandfather served in the Second World War. He flew in Bomber Command, and I'd always had an interest in what he had experienced, just like 1.1 million Canadians who served in that war. So there's a family connection, as there is for so many Canadians,

as I know there is for you as well. And I think that was something that interested me. But really, it was at university where I began to encounter the writings of soldiers and airmen and nurses. First, the poetry of the First World War, and later the memoirs and the prose. And for me, I think it captured my imagination, the heroism and the horror, the triumph and the great loss. And, you know, I was a young guy at that point, probably 19, 20 years old. And, of course, there were many Canadians serving in the two world wars, which is my particular area of expertise, who were younger than that. 17-year-olds, 16-year-olds who have served. And you and I have talked about this in the past, and that was quite remarkable. And then

later on, visiting the battlefields, walking the Somme, going to Vimy Ridge, feeling the power there, the weight of history, as I have called it, seeing the headstones of 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds. And I'm, you and I have been together at Vimy. It's just, it's an incredible place. And I think that has propelled me forward. And, you know, I've been doing this now for over 25 years. My great pleasure to work at the Canadian War Museum, but I write my books on my own time. It is a passion.

It is something that I feel compelled to do. And ultimately, I guess it's to keep these stories alive for current Canadians and maybe future Canadians as well. One of the ways, and you just mentioned it a few moments ago, that you're able to keep these stories alive is by accessing the writings of some of the participants, whether they were the soldiers or, in this latest book, doctors and nurses. Before we get to the latest book, tell me about those letters.

And one assumes that Canada and families have done a good job in ensuring that these remain a part of the kind of record of our past. Yeah, the letters are so powerful. And I have read thousands, probably tens of thousands over the last 25 years. And I find them in archives at the Canadian War Museum, at our National Archives in downtown Ottawa, Library Archives Canada, but around the world. And since I've been writing my books, people have sent me letters and memoirs, and sometimes sheepishly. Sometimes like, well, you know, Dr. Cook, I read your book, and I wonder if you'd be interested in this 15-page memoir my great-grandpa wrote in 1934. And of course, it's golden. Every single one offers unique insight into the experience of war, how ordinary Canadians

coped and endured, how they dealt with the privations, if we think of the war in the trenches or in the Second World War, fighting through Normandy or being on a Corvette or in a Lancaster. These are the eyewitnesses to history. And I know in your own writings, Peter, in your own reporting, this is the stuff that brings history alive. I'm a historian. And so, I don't just line up, you know, a whole bunch of letters. I mean, you need to interpret them. We need to understand these Canadians. We need to understand the context and the times. I mean, you need to interpret them. We need to understand these Canadians. We need to understand the context and the times. And yet history without people is not anything anyone wants to read. It is those individual Canadians, for me, who have always been so,

have been my guides through the history. And in the latest book, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers, it's the doctors and the nurses, but also the soldiers. And one of the interesting things that I found in reading about medical history, and especially medical military history, is that it was often focused just on the nurses and the doctors. It was almost as if there was this terrible tragedy somewhere on the horizon, all these mangled and wounded bodies come in, and then the real story starts. But I'm a military historian. So no, in fact, for me, it needs to include the soldiers themselves, those young men fighting at Second Deep or on the Somme or just enduring trench warfare. what was the experience like for them? And so I try to meld those two together, their fear, their exhaustion, what the soldiers thought of the medical services,

because it was absolutely crucial for morale. I mean, if you're going into battle, many of these young guys understood they would be maimed or perhaps killed, and yet they found the courage to go forward. But they needed to know that if they took a bullet through the chest or had a leg ripped off, that they would be cared for. And so, the medical services are really interesting, I think, because they're part of the great fighting machine. And yet, of course, they were men and women of healing and desperate to save lives and ease the pain. And so there's a great tension there. You know, the title of the book you mentioned a moment ago, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers, is really kind of two stories in one, right?

So let me just dwell for a moment on the lifesaver aspect. You talked about the doctors and the nurses. You've read their letters. You've read letters about them in your research. Tell me, I mean, few things can surprise you, Tim Cook, anymore. You've done so much. You've written so many books about World Wars I and II, in reading these stories from the participants on the medical front, what surprised you this time around? What were you not prepared for?

It's a great question, Peter. And all books have their own history. And of course, they are shaped by the times in which we write. And I began writing this book in April of 2020. So the second month of COVID, really in lockdown, you know, scared for my family, scared for myself with this great pandemic. And one of the things that struck me was the pandemic of 1918 and 1919 that ravaged the world, some 50 million were killed, some 55,000 Canadians who died. And I began to think, why aren't we talking more about that as a historian? And so that was my first way into the book and thinking about how the doctors and nurses dealt with that, which largely struck the Canadians in September, October and November of 1918. So at the end of this very long war, and I look at that in the book, and the doctors and nurses really didn't have a lot they could do to save people at the time. But that got me into all kinds of other things like preventative medicine. And I hadn't really thought of that before, focused on the fighting forces.

There's a fascinating story I uncover in the book about vaccinations at the beginning of the war. The doctors say this will likely be a long war, a war of stalemate in the trenches. They understood that with the modern firepower of machine guns firing 500 bullets a minute and high explosive shells, that there likely wasn't going to be a war of open warfare. And so they demanded that there be vaccinations. And I thought, that isn't that interesting. We were living through that, debates over vaccinations, and those vaccinations saved lives. So that preventive medicine was really interesting, because throughout the war,

the doctors were treating soldiers, keeping disease at bay, and really reducing the losses in these wretched conditions. So that was something that quite surprised me. The evolution in care also, not something I had thought about before. These were surgeons and doctors who were dealing with unbelievable wounds. I mean, just things that people had never seen before. And at the start of the war, a gut wound, a wound to the stomach, likely killed a soldier. There's almost no survival there because this is before the age of antibiotics. But they learned to care for the soldiers. They have more forward care.

They have innovative surgical techniques. They are dealing with these awful infections. They use x-rays to find the metal in the bodies. The first time they're using x-rays in a large way. They introduce blood transfusions to save lives, of which Canadians were at the forefront of this, new surgical techniques, new tools to save lives, including splints and other things. And by the end of the war, they are saving soldiers who would have died in previous wars, soldiers with brain wounds and stomach wounds, even wounds to the leg. A broken femur in 1915 was likely a death sentence. By 1918, they're routinely saving these soldiers. So I thought, this is a fascinating story of how do you learn in a time of great crisis? And that, of course, I was thinking, I was living through that with COVID of how our medical system was under tremendous strain,

but also how those doctors and nurses were also learning during that terrible period. You know, it's one of the cruel ironies of war, if you will, that medical practice through conflict ends up saving millions of lives in peace. That's right. Because they learn how to deal with some of these situations still today, in conflicts today. Yeah, it's quite remarkable. And there's a contradiction there, a bit in the title of Lifesavers and Body Snatchers.

And in the book, contradictions between the medical services supporting the military machine, in effect, wanting when a wounded soldier comes out of the line to care for him, but in order to send him back into the fighting front. And some of the doctors wrote about that, the moral dilemma there saying, I don't feel good about this, caring for these young guys, and then realizing that when they were finally healed, well, they weren't going home for the most part. They were going back to fight the Germans.

So there is a great contradiction there, a contradiction in triage. As the waves of wounded flooded over the field ambulances and the casualty clearing stations, it's very clear from the doctors that they had to make awful decisions of who would live and who would die. So, here are these doctors and nurses who desperately want to save lives, but they can't save everyone, and some were put to the side, given morphine, to die quietly. And so, all of those contradictions are there in the book. But as you say, there is a tremendous legacy from this war. Half of all Canadian doctors served overseas. They almost all survived. They came back. There are legacies from

this that I write about in the book, including public health in the 1920s. They realized they need to do a better job in helping Canadians deal with disease. Vaccinations become more important. There's a new emphasis on maternal care and babies. We lost 66,000 soldiers killed during the war. And there's a deliberate use of language in the new babies who are born in the 20s saying, these will be the new soldiers of our country, and we need to ensure they survive. It goes on the use of x-rays to help tuberculosis victims, blood transfusions to help those with serious burns. The legacies are astounding, and you're exactly right. It comes back to that contradiction. In places of war and death

emerge new care. And struggling with that as a historian was a challenge. The second element, the body snatchers. A good part of this is about something that clearly not only surprised you, it shocked you to find out that we were involved in the harvesting of organs, of body parts. Talk about that. Yeah, Peter, I've been trying to run this story down for about 15 years. Years and years ago in researching, I had come across some evidence in the official records that there were autopsies behind the lines. I

thought, isn't that interesting? Slain Canadian soldiers in the hospitals, doctors after they lost their patients would autopsy them to see how they died. And of course, it was the dead who would be providing secrets to how to prolong life. Canadian doctors were involved, just for an example, in instigating and telling the high command they should bring in the steel helmet, which is not part of the soldier's kit at the beginning of the war, and it really only gets introduced in 1916, because there were so many head wounds. And yet I also saw on these autopsy records, some evidence that the doctors seem to be removing organs. And I thought, well, that just can't be. And I spent years researching, Peter, looking for this,

and the files were buried, and they were mislabeled, and I finally found them. And they indeed revealed that there was an official programming program, a British program, of which the Canadians were enthusiastically a part of, of harvesting slain soldiers' body parts. This would have been a brain with a bullet hole through it, lungs that had been burned out by mustard gas, shrapnel that had torn through a body and shattered a bone. And the Canadian doctors were instructed to remove these body parts to preserve them and to send them to a museum in London. And I just, I couldn't believe that. You know, Peter, you and I have talked about the sacred fallen remembrance day, thinking about those young men who served king and country, doctors have always used the dead to understand how to advance medicine. And yet these were men and women, well, men for the most part, who had left behind their

families to serve king and country, to liberate the oppressed. And I just couldn't believe that this had occurred. You know know you just mentioned men and women and it's one of the things that surprised me in the book is the number of women nurses who were basically at the front or just behind the front to provide help. Those numbers help those numbers were substantial they were peter about about 3 000 nurses served so and but that was a about a third of all canadian nurses serving uh during the war um within the sound of the guns at the casualty clearing station the nursing story is i think often neglected we don't think of the nurses for the, they often saw them as guardians, ministering angels. The nurses are absolutely crucial, just as they are today,

to medical care and the recovery of soldiers. And I have a section in the book on the emotional load. Again, tying into what we've seen in our medical system over the last two years, I couldn't help but reflect on some of the connections there of young soldiers, grievously wounded, nurses writing how they were holding their hands at night as some of them died, the last words these soldiers spoke of their mothers and the nurses then writing letters to the next of kin is very powerful stuff. And that emotional load must have weighed very heavily on those nurses. And I reflected on COVID and those patients who were dying alone in isolation, often only nurses and doctors bearing witness to them. Again, a connection from the past. The book is firmly about the First World War and the legacies. And yet there's no separating that from the time I was living in.

And those nurses came back to Canada as the doctors did, bringing new lessons. Nurses were involved in pain relief. They were involved in physiotherapy. Both of those professions emerging from the war, of which nurses were often leaders, and they became leaders in our medical system as well. My last question about something that's in the book is the whole way we the artillery were seen as almost cowards, and that's the way they were dealt with, to the point where here now, more than 100 years later, post-traumatic stress syndrome is a really important part of dealing with not only soldiers at the front line and medical and nursing staff,

but also journalists as well, recovering things. But back then, you write about how things changed slightly during that period of the four or five years of the First World War. Yeah, shell shock, as it was called, was really a new wound that both soldiers and caregivers had to confront. And as you say, shell shock was not well understood. And like so many of these wounds, doctors would never have encountered this in civilian practice before the war. But shell shock emerged from really the horror of the trenches, the unending bombardments, the threat of death, the shock of seeing friends and comrades torn apart. It was slowly wore down the soldiers. And this is a war that destroyed their bodies, but also scarred their minds. And these invisible wounds were very hard to treat.

The high command were terrified. The generals did not understand them. They saw their armies beginning to break down. And that was the great fear that the soldiers would no longer fight or be able to fight. And so, the medical services and the medical doctors were really interesting is that they were basically forced to confront this. And the high command wanted them to be the hammer. They wanted them to hammer the soldiers, get them back into the firing line. But the doctors were more often sympathetic, and they would pull soldiers from the front. They would engage in Freudian talk therapy and rest. And yet there was a lot of leeway here. And some doctors engaged in much more violent electric shock therapy. And so I do confront that and the legacy

of shell shock. As you say, Peter, we have a much better sense of post-traumatic stress disorder. But I imagine when you started your reporting career, you've had a long one, PTSD was not well known. It was not recognized as an official ailment or wound until about 1980. And so, it's really quite recently, you know, when we have begun to confront these invisible wounds. The Great War plays a part in this, and yet it was one of the areas i say in the book where doctors did not succeed and this isn't just a wicked story of the doctors always um uh you know coming out on on top because of what they were confronting was unimaginable wounds and new medical procedures and and just um they struggled and there was a constant struggle. And yet, for the most part, as I say in the book, if you reached a doctor with a wound, 90% of the time you survived.

And so that's a pretty astonishing statistic. Of course, what is hidden in that statistic is that so many soldiers died in no man's land. They died in a crater. They died on the way back as a stretcher bearer carried them out. They never made it to a doctor. And that is part of the horror of war that I try to confront in the book. You know, war is a brutal thing, no matter where it takes place or when it's taken place but it's hard to imagine that there was has ever been anything as as brutal uh as the first world war when and some of the harrowing stories you tell in this book and i've told in others uh let me close out with this um tim what what happens on remembrance day for dr tim. You spent so much of your life researching and writing about conflict.

And then we set aside one day, we should set aside a lot more, I think, but we set aside one day to think and remember. What do you do? Yeah, it's a day where, I think like so many Canadians, I reflect upon the past. I think about my grandpa who served in the Second World War, but I think about so many Canadians who served. I think about those young men and women who have gone off to war and never returned and what that meant to Canada and what that meant to our communities and what that meant

to their loved ones. I think it's a day where history is front and center. And there aren't many days like this. There aren't many days in Canadian, 365 days in Canada, where we actually think about our history. And for me, that's important. It's important to tell these stories. It's important to bear witness to the past. It's also important to think about the men and women who continue to serve. And those who we sometimes forget about. I think about wounded veterans coming back from Afghanistan, some who were so badly traumatized that they had to take their own lives. We don't often reflect on them on this day. I think it's a day which has broadened over the years, where we can make more space,

not just for the fallen and those serving, but for other Canadians. I think of the Silver Cross mother and just what a powerful symbol she is as she represents so many of those parents who lost loved ones. It's a complex day and it's one where I think it involves more than simply wearing a poppy or standing at your local cenotaph. You should think about the history of this country. You should think about what is required of those who have served and sacrificed and who continue to do so. And I don't think there are easy answers on this day, but it's important. It's important that we put in the time and the effort. You've given us some excellent guidance

on what we can be thinking about throughout this week and then on November 11th itself. Tim Cook, I love talking to you, I always have, and I've enjoyed this conversation as much as all the ones we've had. So please take care and we'll talk again soon. Thanks very much, Peter. Tim Cook and his thoughts on, well, on Remembrance Day

and on his new book, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers. That's available across the country in bookstores everywhere. And we thank Tim once again for being with us. We're going to take a quick break, and then we've got something completely different on the other side. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge for this Monday, kicking off another week on SiriusXM,

Channel 167, Canada Talks, and on your favorite podcast platform. And last week, we started on the Wednesday edition, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, and Friday's Good Talk, also offering up The Bridge on a YouTube channel, so you can actually watch us doing the program. Now this,

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All right, a couple of what we call end bits here at the bridge little snippets of information that you may or may not find interesting i find this one really interesting because i continually get this point mixed up so actually having it right there in black and white, helps me, guides me in discussions when we start talking about different generations. Which is which, okay? So here, I'm going to give it to you. It's buried deep in an article on aging. You know my kind of reading.

Anyway, here they are. Gen Zed. Okay, that's the most recent generation with a name. Gen Zedders. They're ages 18 to 25. You might want to write this down so you don't get challenged by your kids as to, hey, which generation do you think I am? Anyway, Gen Zed, ages 18 to 25.

Millennials. They're next up, ages 26 to 41. Gen Z, or sorry, excuse me, Gen X. Gen X are 41 to 57. And then the generation that started it all, right? We're the ones We did it We got out there first The baby boomers Ages 58 to 76

I don't know what you're called if you're over 76 Greatest generation? Maybe Some of you, for sure. Anyway, there it is. Quickly again. Gen Z, 18 to 25. Millennials, 26 to 41.

Gen X, 41 to 57. Baby boomers, 58 to 76. Now you're going to look like really pretty spiffy. The article, by the way, that this was buried deep in, I'm not going to go through it all, but the headline is, the average person believes they hit peak health at the age of 34,

and they began noticing signs of aging at 42 big study yet another study every day there's a new study on something well i noticed i was aging long before i was 42 it was that day i've talked about it before there was a day in the newsroom in Regina when I was 28, I think, and Sandra Lewis, another great reporter, came up behind me and said, Peter, you're balding. I'll never forgive Lewis for that. Okay, here's our other end bit for today.

I love this story. This is very funny. It's about, it's a story of a vet on another social media channel, Reddit. And what's he upset about? He's upset that so many people call their dogs Luna. He says, I'm urging dog owners to leave the dog name Luna in 2022. Leave it. Forget about it. Don't name your dog that.

Because he claims there's already too many out there, and it's driving him crazy. It's driving him crazy in the waiting room. As a vet, please, I'm begging you guys, stop naming your pets Luna. Which, of course, is difficult for me because I've had two dogs. First was named Luna. Second was named Bella. So I looked up in the Pawshake blog,

what are the top dog names in Canada? Just Canada. Number one, Charlie. Charlie, do you go to the dog park and you hear a lot of people saying, Charlie, come here, Charlie. Number two, Bella. Number three, Charlie. Number two, Bella. Number three, Luna.

I won't bore you with the rest of the list. But I found that interesting. The two of the three top names are my dogs. Top female dog names, my dogs were both female, Bella and Luna. Top male dog names, Charlie and Max. I think we do need to get more creative. There are food-inspired dog names, Baguette, Blueberry, Cheddar, Hot Pot. Top fictional character-inspired dog names in Canada, Alexis Rose, Batman, Elsa. And top funny dog names. This is the end bit to name all in bits

no I don't have that on there but the paw shake blog is where you can find all this stuff but anyway the fact that that vet is tired of hearing out in the waiting room Luna

Luna settle down stop barking Luna out in the waiting room. Luna! Luna, settle down. Stop barking, Luna. Alright. Very last end bit. We have time for one more. If I can find where I put it. I think it's right here. It's actually a kind of interesting story.

It's about a piece of artwork that hangs in New York right now. It's by a Dutch painter, kind of Dutch theme to the show today. Dutch painter by the name of Piet Mondrian. Now, I may be pronouncing that incorrectly, hopefully not, but Piet Mondrian. He did this painting in 1944,

or in the early 40s. 44 becomes important in a minute. Anyway, it's been hanging in a number of art galleries and museums in different parts of the world. It's, I guess, relatively famous. Now, here's what's interesting about it. It's been hanging upside down for decades and nobody realized it. And until Suzanne Meyer Buser,

who's a curator at one of the galleries, was doing a little digging in history about Piet Mondrain and found a picture in a book from 1944. And that picture was taken just a couple of days after the death of the artist. And it shows the picture on an easel in his studio. And it's in a different orientation than it's been hanging in the gallery ever since. Whoever brought it in said, which way is up on this? And the other guy says, well, I don't know.

You know, hang it any way you want. Which they did. And it's upside down. Go figure. And you know what? They're not going to put it right side up. Because they're concerned that it may be too fragile to move around and assume a new position. So it's going to stay upside down.

And I, you know, I think that'll become sort of kind of a something about it. Something that'll make it special. Hey, we have that painting that's upside down. Pretty good, eh? We're special. All right. Come on, Mansbridge, focus. And we'll focus tomorrow on Brian Stewart.

Brian comes by Tuesdays, as he's been doing almost all of this year, to tell us, in tomorrow's case, a little about the latest on Ukraine, but also a little bit from his perspective as a war correspondent, as a foreign correspondent, as a person who's traveled the world, studied the battlefields, you name it, he's done it. And get his perspective on Remembrance Day as we march towards the end of the week. And then on, well, maybe tomorrow. I haven't decided where to fit it in.

It'll either be tomorrow or Wednesday. Ted Barris will join us, another great author. Battle of the Atlantic, Gauntlet to Victory, his latest book, which is, in my view, a little discussed part of the Second World War. We often talk about the army, D-Day, the Normandy invasion, Italy, Hong Kong, marching through to Berlin. We talk about the Air Force.

The RCAF, the RAF, and the various missions of both fighters and bombers during the war. We don't often talk about the Navy, and especially the Battle of the Atlantic. Well, tomorrow or Wednesday, I'm not sure which, Ted Barris will join us with his latest book, his latest stories about things we can remember as we march towards Friday. All right, that's it for this day. Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth.

Bruce Anderson will join us. Thursday, your turn, Random Ranter. If you have letters, send them now. If you have thoughts, you want to write down, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, TheMansbridgePodcast at gmail.com. Friday, of course, Good Talk, Sean Talley Bear and Bruce Anderson. That's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours.