"The 'Fightin'est' Canadian General" Brigadier Christopher Vokes and his Approach to Military Command, June 1942 - August 1943 - by G. Christopher Case I found myself stuck 35,000ft over the Pacific with no reading material and no wi-fi or phone signal to generate anything to look at other than the back of a head-rest. Combing through old files, however, I discovered that I'd downloaded this M.A. thesis at a date unknown and never actually got around to reading it. I'm happy to report that although I don't rate the style too much (certainly M.A. quality, mind you) the content is very good (slightly too laudatory in places, but well-researched and sourced), and - crucially - the writer helps to make Vokes come alive from the page. It's a good combination of Vokes own calculated bluster and solid historical fact and I learnt a lot that I didn't know. The page is a slow-loader (it's large), but give it a minute and it'll pop up: https://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/28270/1/MR59904.PDF And here's a second piece by the same author - as yet unread by me: Trial by Fire: Major-General Christopher Vokes at the Battles of the Moro River and Ortona, December 1943 by G.C. Case http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1459&context=cmh
This is test as much as anything else, but I've uploaded an audio file of Vokes himself speaking of the fighting in Italy. It's interesting to hear his voice quite apart from the content: Vocaroo | Voice message
Fascinating! The voice matches the face quite well. The initial breaching of the Gothic Line by Bert Hoffmeister's Cdn 5th Armoured Div. is an interesting study into the maturation of the Allied units and the increasing fighting effectiveness of those formations.
