Ted Barris – författare

Noted military historian Ted Barris once asked his father, Alex, “What did you do in the war?” What the former US Army medic then told his son forms the thrust of Barris’s latest historic journey—an exploration of his father’s wartime experiences as a medic leading up to the Battle of the Bulge in 1944–45, along with stories of other medics in combat throughout history.   

Barris’s research reveals that this bloodiest of WWII battles was shouldered largely by military medics. Like his father, Alex, medics in combat evacuated the wounded on foot, scrounged medical supplies where there were seemed to be none, and dodged snipers and booby traps on the most frigid and desolate battlefields of Europe. While retracing his father’s wartime experience, the author weaves into his narrative stories about the life-and-death struggles of military medical personnel during a century of service.

In this unique front-line recounting of the experiences of stretcher bearers, medical corpsmen, nurses, surgeons, orderlies, dentists and ambulance drivers, Barris explores the evolution of battlefield medicine at such historic engagements as Fredericksburg, Batoche, the Ypres Salient, the Somme, Vimy, Singapore, Dieppe, Normandy, Falaise, Bastogne, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. Barris’s sources reveal—like never before—why men and women sporting the red cross on their helmets or sleeves didn’t flee to safety but chose instead to rush to assist.

National Bestseller

Foreword by Peter Mansbridge

“Barris tells the jaw-dropping story of a night that changed the war.” —The Globe and Mail

 It was a night that changed the Second World War. The secret air raid against the hydroelectric dams of Germany’s Ruhr River took years to plan, involved an untried bomb and included the best aircrewmen RAF Bomber Command could muster—many of them Canadian. The attack marked the first time the Allies tactically took the war inside Nazi Germany. It was a military operation that became legendary.

On May 16, 1943, nineteen Lancaster bombers carrying 133 airmen took off on a night sortie code-named Operation Chastise. Hand-picked and specially trained, the Lancaster crews flew at treetop level to the industrial heartland of the Third Reich and their targets—the Ruhr River dams, whose massive water reservoirs powered Nazi Germany’s military-industrial complex.

Each Lancaster carried an explosive, which when released just sixty feet over the reservoirs, bounced like a skipping stone to the dam, sank and exploded. The raiders breached two dams and damaged a third. The resulting torrent devastated enemy power plants, factories and infrastructure a hundred miles downstream.

Every airmen on the raid understood that the odds of survival were low. Of the nineteen outbound bombers, eight did not return. Operation Chastise cost the lives of fifty-three airmen, including fourteen Canadians. Of the sixteen RCAF men who survived, seven received military decorations.

Based on interviews, personal accounts, flight logs, maps and photographs of the Canadians involved, Dam Busters recounts the dramatic story of these young Commonwealth bomber crews tasked with a high-risk mission against an enemy prepared to defend the Fatherland to the death.

The Battle of the Atlantic, Canada’s longest continuous military engagement of the Second World War, lasted 2,074 days, claiming the lives of more than 4,000 men and women in the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian merchant navy

The years 2019 to 2025 mark the eightieth anniversary of the longest battle of the Second World War, the Battle of the Atlantic. It also proved to be the war’s most critical and dramatic battle of attrition. For five and a half years, German surface warships and submarines attempted to destroy Allied trans-Atlantic convoys, most of which were escorted by Royal Canadian destroyers and corvettes, as well as aircraft of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Throwing deadly U-boat “wolf packs” in the paths of the convoys, the German Kriegsmarine almost succeeded in cutting off this vital lifeline to a beleaguered Great Britain.

In 1939, the Royal Canadian Navy went to war with exactly thirteen warships and about 3,500 regular servicemen and reservists. During the desperate days and nights of the Battle of the Atlantic, the RCN grew to 400 fighting ships and over 100,000 men and women in uniform. By V-E Day in 1945, it had become the fourth largest navy in the world.

The story of Canada’s naval awakening from the dark, bloody winters of 1939–1942, to be “ready, aye, ready” to challenge the U-boats and drive them to defeat, is a Canadian wartime saga for the ages. While Canadians think of the Great War battle of Vimy Ridge as the country’s coming of age, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that proved Canada’s gauntlet to victory and a nation-building milestone.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

This ebook bundle contains five books that chronicle Canada’s participation in the conflict that gripped the Korean peninsula from 1950–53 and resulted in two very different nations that remain at odds today. This bloody and traumatic face-off between capitalist and communist ideologies highlighted the tensions of the Cold War that drew in nations from many parts of the world. Canadian soldiers did their part and many sacrificed their lives for the democratic cause. Those interested in the war and the Canadian role in it will find a wealth of information and analysis in this collection of works by leading historians.