Trafford Publishing: Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

Here is the full reference card for this book...

If you'd rather place an order by talking to one of our cheerful order desk clerks, please call 1-888-232-4444 (USA and Canada only) or 250-383-6864. From Europe, ring our UK order desk clerk at local rate number 0845 230 9601 (UK only) or 44 (0)1865 722 113.

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

by Neil J. Stewart

242 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0104; ISBN 1-55212-439-8; US$26.95, C$31.95, EUR22.50, £16.00

Steel my Soldier's Hearts is the story of a young Canadian soldier's mid-war entry into tank training and fighting, through D-Day to War's end, told from the viewpoint of an elisted man in the corps he greatly admired; the actions in which he fought and the men that made up his tank crews; of whom he became the sole survivor. Numerous accounts from former officers relate to the fighting in WWII but accounts from other ranks, who did the fighting, are scarce or missing altogether.

Read more!

about the book about the author excerpt catalogue info

About the Book

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts is the story, from D-Day to the armistice, of a Canadian tank man who fought the campaign in Northwest Europe at the sharp end - told from the fighting man's perspective. The armoured war involved the main battles for which WWII was famous: the Normandy landing; the battles to defend the beachhead; the fighting for Caen and Falaise; the pursuit across France and the Low Countries; the "Market Garden" exercise to capture the Rhine bridges at Arnhem; the Siegfried Line penetration and finally the Rhine crossing before the march deep into Germany. Stewart's personal war also involved the loss of three tanks and many gallant comrades. To accomplish their feats, the author and his colleagues had to "steel their hearts" indeed.
This book contains comments (in separate chapters) which could have been made by officers in their messes, postulated via the author's knowledge of the history of WWII. However, since the author was not an officer during the war, these chapters are pure fancy, and this is why the work is called a novel - not an autobiography. The stories are exactly as Stewart experienced them, and the names are of people, many still alive, that were with the author.

Review
from Canadian Military History Book Review Supplement, Autumn 2000.
In this most interesting memoir, Neil Stewart has some choice words to pass on about some senior Canadian commanders of the Second World War and their conduct of the campaign in north-west Europe. And there is no question that Stewart knows what he is talking about, for he had an eventful war. He lnded on D-Day with the Fort Garry Horse, and had his first Sherman shot out from underneath him during the battle for Carpiquet. Transferring to the Canadian Grenadier Guards, he got through Operation Totalize, only to be blown out of another Sherman in Operation Tractable. Then it was third time unlucky for Stewart, when his Sherman was destroyed in the Hochwald Forest. This time he was the only survivor, and he was quite understandably moved to question how long his luck would hold. It held for the rest of the war, and he survived to be demobolized in Calgary in 1946.
The book is slightly fictionalized. Stewart gives himself a nom de guerre (a few of the other names have been changed as well), and some of the dialogue has been invented, and consequently seems a little stilted. But it remains a fascinating record, one of the few first-hand accounts we have of Canadian tankers in action in north-west Europe.

About the Author

Neil J. Stewart, B.A., LLB, served as a tank crew member and later as a crew commander with the Canadian Army through the Northwestern European campaign. Travelling overseas in mid-war as a reinforcement after reaching military age, he was just in time for the training for the assault on Normandy. This story of Kenneth MacLean is based upon the author's experiences and recollections of the campaign. The nom de guèrre of the central figure of the story, Kenneth MacLean, is for personal reasons.
This story, from D-Day to the armistice, tells of the life of a Canadian tankman who saw the brutal campaign at the sharp end - from the fighting man's perspective. From that vantage point, they had to steel their hearts indeed.
Also by Neil J. Stewart:
Tales of a Tankman: Between the Battles

Excerpt

"My God! I've been seen," he muttered, awaiting the next shot lower down by a few inches, which would surely end his days forever. But the second shot never came. MacLean began to feel that perhaps the flack gunner had just fired a random shot, one that happened to streak across above his chest. After several anxious minutes of waiting patiently, MacLean again edged forward on the track he was following. Progressing ever so cautiously for perhaps a further 50 yards, his head met a pair of boots ahead of him in the same track. Easing himself past the motionless boots to see who was attached to them, he saw the lifeless body of Russell Scott, crumpled face down, in the narrow path through the grain. MacLean quickly realized the reason for the single shot which had so narrowly missed himself. Russell's unwillingness to crawl on his belly had indeed been his undoing, just as MacLean had foreseen.
No ordinary rifle bullet would do the kind of damage which MacLean was forced to study at close quarters. MacLean was certain it had been one of the flack gun's, 20 mm shells that hit Scott. It had almost torn his left leg off and then ripped open his lower back to the abdominal cavity. MacLean took extra care to avoid crawling through the pool of blood surrounding the body. Flies were already gathering, and thousands would follow. MacLean was anxious to get well away from the place, quickly if possible, but without attracting renewed attention from the same deadly gunner. Scott had died without uttering a sound, and MacLean did not want to make it a duet at the same spot.
The crawl continued towards the line of bushes behind them, a completely likely goal for men lying without shade or shelter in the punishing heat of an August afternoon in the Calvados fields. They had had nothing to drink, and no clear idea of where they should go, to escape the enemy ahead of them. Several of them were nursing wounds of varying levels of seriousness, some that needed medical attention soon. All of them wanted to gain the marginal security of a slit trench or even a ditch where they could get below ground level, out of the baking sun and out of the line-of-fire of bullets or shrapnel raking the ground around them.
The crawlers were still short of their goal by about 50 yards, when a 'moaning minnie' was fired from the woods ahead of them. A salvo of wailing, shrieking rockets, passed overhead with their characteristic 'wooshing' sounds, after they climbed aloft. Ken hugged the ground even closer upon hearing the unearthly and unnerving wail, wondering where its rockets would descend. The full salvo landed squarely on the fringe of bushes toward which they had been crawling, decimating every branch and trunk.
"Thank God we didn't crawl any faster," said Bill Brown with relief. "Nobody could live through that. I wonder if any of our gang were hiding in that thicket."
They soon learned from one of the other escapees that at least three men had crawled into these bushes for shelter. One of them was their tank driver, Leo Codal. Bill Brown looked morosely at Ken MacLean, shook his head and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"They wouldn't stand even a ghost of a chance there. The way those rockets explode, you get terrific blast and big chunks of shrapnel that would just cut a man to pieces. Look at the bushes there. All blasted to hell. Nobody survived that shower. And if I'm right, that just leaves the two of us still alive from our crew, Ken. And by God, we're not out of this mess yet either. Look over there. I don't like what I see there."
What Brown had seen was a trio of German soldiers carrying a white flag and wanting to talk to the handful of men huddled in a tiny hollow in the wheat field. The gist of their message, given in passable English, was that the Canadians should surrender to the encircling German forces by 5 o'clock, or they would be wiped out in an attack by all the Germans around them.
A burly corporal from No. 2 Squadron of the Grenadier Guards stood up to talk to the Germans. "You tell your commander that he's got it all screwed up. He can surrender to us by 5 o'clock if he wants, because he*s going to be surrounded; not us. We are sure as hell not surrendering while we can still fight."
The three Germans withdrew, talking among themselves, and the threatened attack never materialized.
Shortly afterward, a lieutenant in the 15th Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery edged into the small group. He had been riding in a Bren Gun Carrier that had been knocked out earlier in the afternoon. He noticed the presence of three or four men who appeared to be suffering from their wounds, and told MacLean and his associates that he thought he knew of a way to get them back to Allied lines. He mentioned a fitters' service vehicle, (a tank hull will the turret removed to provide room for the tools and equipment of the fitters) that had been stopped in a small valley in the field about 1,000 yards away. He promised to creep over to the vehicle and, if it could be started, he would have it pick up the wounded from among MacLean's group and make a run for it to get them back.

Catalogue Information