Varsity S Soldiers

Based on the rich fund of documents housed in the University of Toronto archives, Varsity's Soldiers offers the first full-length history of military training in Toronto.

The role of Canadian universities in selecting and training officers for the armed forces is an important yet overlooked chapter in the history of higher education in Canada. For more than fifty years, the University of Toronto supported the largest and most active contingent of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC), which sent thousands of officer candidates into the regular and reserve forces. Based on the rich fund of documents housed in the university archives, Varsity’s Soldiers offers the first full-length history of military training in Toronto. Beginning with the formation of a student rifle company in 1861, and focusing on the story of the COTC from 1914 to 1968, author Eric McGeer seeks to enlarge appreciation of the university’s remarkable contribution to the defence of Canada, the place of military education in an academic setting, and the experience of the students who embodied the ideal of service to alma mater and to country.

[Includes 26 maps and 92 illustrations] The American armies that absorbed the shock of the German counteroffensives in the Ardennes and Alsace in the winter of 1944-45 were the most powerful and professional that the United States had yet put in the field. That this was the case was abundantly demonstrated as the final campaign to reduce Nazi Germany to total defeat unfolded. The campaign was remarkably varied. As it gathered momentum in the snows of the Ardennes and the mud and pillboxes of the West Wall, the fighting was often as bitter as any that had gone before among the hedgerows of Normandy and the hills and forests of the German frontier. Yet the defense which the Germans were still able to muster following the futile expenditure of lives and means in the counteroffensives was brittle. The campaign soon evolved into massive sweeps by powerful Allied columns across the width and breadth of Germany. That the Germans could continue to resist for more than two months in the face of such overwhelming power was a testament to their pertinacity but it was a grim tragedy as well. To such an extent had they subjugated themselves to their Nazi leaders that they were incapable of surrender at a time when defeat was inevitable and surrender would have spared countless lives on both sides. It was a dramatic campaign: the sweep of four powerful U.S. armies to the Rhine; the exhilarating capture of a bridge at Remagen; assault crossings of the storied Rhine River, including a spectacular airborne assault; an ill-fated armored raid beyond Allied lines; the trapping of masses of Germans in a giant pocket in the Ruhr industrial region; the uncovering of incredible horror in German concentration camps; a dashing thrust to the Elbe River; juncture with the Russians; and a Wagnerian climax played to the accompaniment of Russian artillery fire in the Führerbunker in Berlin.

In v.1-8 the final number consists of the Commencement annual.