Ask the Author: Michael Howard Marshall
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Michael Howard Marshall
I’ve always been interested in odd corners of history and many years ago I was chatting with an editor who talked about the Canadian battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. I didn’t think many Canadians had gone to Spain, but he assured me that there was a Canadian battalion in the Brigades and he knew a man whose son was killed fighting in the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion. This fascinated me and I began to research the Mac-Paps with the notion of writing a book. After I got well under way, Copp Clark published Victor Hoar’s wonderful The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion a much better book than mine would have been. Another fine book on the Mac-Paps is The Gallant Cause, but Mark Zuehlke, Whitecap Books, Vancouver. Both are well worth reading. While doing my research I came across the story of “General Kléber,” Commander of the XI Thaelmann Brigade. “Kléber” claimed he was a Canadian and evidently had a Canadian passport. He said he had been posted to Murmansk with the Canadian artillery contingent of the Allied Intervention Force that went to North Russia in 1918, where he deserted, joined the Red Guards, fought in the Russian Civil War, was inducted into the Red Army. In 1937 he was a general and had “volunteered” to serve the Comintern in Spain. This sent me off on further research which took me to the Russo-Japanese conflict in Mongolia in 1939 at Khalkin Gol and on and on. Finally I made up the fictional story of a Canadian who had been in battle in Flanders, was wounded then released from hospital and sent to Russia with the Allied Intervention – itself another fascinating bit of history well documented in Canadians in Russia 1918-1919 by Roy MacLaren, Macmillan of Canada.
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