The Life and Times of Hubert Brooks M.C. C.D.
A Canadian Hero
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One General Perspective on Canadians Behind Enemy Lines In the impersonal war that characterized the Second World War with mechanized forces in the air, on the ground and in the sea and with the ultimate impersonality being realized with the atomic bomb, extraordinary personal courage was more readily apparent in the activities of individuals working behind enemy lines. Fundamentally courage is an individual quality even when expressed in a small combat unit. In occupied countries, the enemy was everywhere, seldom more than a step, a house, a hill, or a river away, and betrayal was commonplace. The vast machine of the enemy was aligned against the individual who lived by his wits. The challenge of warfare as it applies to the individual evader turned guerilla fighter operating behind enemy lines is that sheer courage on a persistent day–to–day basis is required to beat the odds aligned against him. It was to fight the enemy by sometimes using the most unorthodox means and in the words of one of Churchill’s grand phrases was to set the enemy infrastructure ablaze – and attack from within (the occupied country) was a key aspect of this strategy. It was to make the local language and customs their costumes and to weave themselves into the fabric of the country while risking their lives assisting with sabotage, ambush missions or smuggling Allied soldiers out of occupied territories. A quiet hero of the war, this Canadian helped to make the brutal and relenting warfare of the partisans a potent weapon in the Allied arsenal. Adapted from: Canadians Behind Enemy Lines Ref: 3.18 , 1939–1945 by Roy MacLaren |
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The Life and Times of Hubert Brooks M.C. C.D.