Testaments of Honour: personal histories of Canada's war veterans by Blake HeathcoteThis is only the second non-fiction book I've reviewed on the blog (the first was Night by Elie Wiesel) and, like Night, it is comprised of first-person accounts of the Second World War.
Testaments of Honour is a book entirely made up of 24 Canadian veterans' stories and experiences from many different perspectives. For example, Joe Gelleny was a Special Operations officer and performed intelligence missions in Hungary and other countries behind Nazi lines. Famous local artist Alex Colville served as a war artist in Europe, John Stroud was a prisoner of war in Japan, Nora Cook was a nurse on the battlefields of Europe, and John Weir worked on the tunnels in a Nazi prison camp that became famous in the movie The Great Escape.
My background is in history (I got my Bachelor of Arts with a major in history) and I have always been a big fan of both military history and eyewitness accounts. Sure, strategic summaries about what battalion went where in specific battles are useful and relevant, but if you ask me nothing is more interesting than hearing about a person's first-hand experience. Not only that, but books like this are becoming far more important now that the war ended almost 62 years ago, and soon there won't be any more veterans alive to tell us their stories.
Far different than your usual history of war, Testaments of Honour gives you the perspective that Canadian veterans had - a perspective that isn't usually in history books, and a perspective that may soon be lost forever.
5 stars out of 5 for Testaments of Honour.
Testaments of Honour website (includes photo gallery and interview clips).
CBC Archives: Conflict and War (collections of audio and video clips on war-related topics).
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