The Suicide Battalion

The men of the 46th Canadian Infantry Battalion were some of the most effective shock troops of the Allied forces in the Great War.

They drove back German forces wherever they met and refused ever to surrender.

Such tactics struck fear in their enemies, yet, it came at a tremendous cost.

Of the 5374 officers and men who passed through the unit, a total of 4917, or 91 per cent, were either killed or wounded.

J.L. McWilliams and R. James Steel chart the history of this battalion from when it was formed on 7th November 1914 through all of its major battles, including the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele, Amiens, the Hundred Days Offensive and breaking through the Hindenburg Line, to when it was finally disbanded at the end of the war.

Rather than focus simply on the grand strategies of generals, McWilliams and Steel use numerous personal accounts, both written at the time and afterwards, to depict what life was life for the regular soldier of the 46th Battalion during these treacherous years spent in muddy trenches in France and Belgium.

"a grim reminder of the atrocious conditions in which that war was fought, and a shocking realization of the futility of costly and pointless attacks ordered by generals blindly dedicated to the delusive doctrine of attrition." G. W. L. Nicholson, The Canadian Historical Review

"fascination derives from the depiction of ordinary soldiers from this hard-luck battalion from the Canadian prairies." A. M. J. Hyatt, Canadian Military History

The Suicide Battalion is an engrossing history of one remarkable battalion's journey through the First World War. These hardened, Canadian veterans became the shock troops Allied forces and were used time again to pierce the German frontline.