Valour Road

by John Nadler

The First World War lasted for four years and three months. And when it ended on November 11, 1918, the people of Pine Street, a sleepy avenue on the outskirts of Winnipeg, came to a startling realization. During the course of the conflict, young Leo Clarke, Robert Shankland, and Fred Hall, all from their street, had each received the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery at that time. Such a phenomenon has never been repeated anywhere in the former British empire.

Accessing original documents in his research—such as the wartime diary of Leo’s brother, Charlie, official war records, and general history—author John Nadler constructs a story of the three heroic soldiers, their families, and the enormous impact of WWI on a young Canada. This historic concurrence was so meaningful that a statue was erected in Winnipeg in tribute to these three ordinary soldiers, and their street was renamed Valour Road in their honour.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Canada, World War I

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 23, 2014

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valour Road is the name of a street here in Winnipeg, so named because three residents of the street (originally named Pine Street) were awarded the Victoria Cross in WWI. Mr Nadler has taken on the task of relating the stories of these three valorous men (see - I didn't use the H-word) and weaving their individual histories into this single very readable offering.

Nadler is thorough, at least insofar as the scope of his story is concerned. He starts at the start, so to speak, and covers the story right from before enlistment to repat. He gives a competent account of the horrors of fighting in the trenches and the soldiers' duties and fatigues when not actually in the front line. Few details of the whole WWI experience are left out.

In fact, I would have been prepared to say that this was almost a perfect WWI book, except Nadler didn't do his @#$%^& RESEARCH! He got me seething when he wrote on Page 39: The Pathfinder's magazine exploded, and the ship went down in minutes, the first vessel in history sunk by a submarine. Everyone who dabbles in military history knows that the USS Housatonic was the first ship sunk by a sub, way back in the US Civil War, having famously been sent to the bottom by the sub H.L. Hunley. Now if Mr Nadler had stipulated that Pathfinder was the first ship to be sunk by a torpedo fired from a submarine, he would have been on safer ground. So right off the hop, 39 pages in, he almost spoils a book I had been aching to read! This put me in a niggly nit-picking frame of mind, and I wondered what else I could find.

Nadler did not disappoint. On Page 197 I found this stroke of genius:

Leo now packed a Colt automatic revolver and three clips of ammunition...

Say what?! An automatic revolver? Where can I get one of these military marvels for my collection? Good grief man, it's either a revolver or an automatic; it can't be both. To prove that he is consistent in his ignorance, on Page 206 he provides:

...his Colt's hammer fell on an empty chamber. His clip of seven bullets was empty.

I know that in the cop shows on TV you can see models in high heels shooting it out with criminals and naturally, when they run out of ammo the slide locks back and the luckless criminal pulls the trigger with a couple of audible "clicks". In real life, this doesn't happen because the hammer is held back by the slide and consequently cannot fall on an empty chamber. A small point? Perhaps, but I think it's important for the credibility of the book to have someone read the darn thing over before going to press. If you are wrong on a couple of points, it makes me wonder just how much research you have messed up.

All that aside, and excepting Nadler's distracting journalistic trait of putting quotation marks around half of the words and phrases in the book, I found this to be a fitting tribute to three brave men of the CEF. Housatonic cost it the fifth star.

[Sheri-lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know a lot about historical world conflicts. When we were young and learning the basics of it in school at Remembrance Day services, a lot of the details were too gruesome to speak to children about. I also found that as I got older and asked people closer to the war, I was met with, "It was horrible. It is not something you really want to know about." Veterans tended to speak of their experiences in vague ways and were not proud but felt they were just doing their duty -- a necessary evil. So, I found this book informative in many ways about the general events leading up to the war and how it proceeded. It's not the most thorough and detailed information on WWI, but it definitely helped me to understand more about the events, especially those of the Western Front.

I chose to read this book exactly because of school Remembrance Day services. Valour Rd is in our current neighbourhood, and, really, all I knew was that 3 men (boys) who lived on what was once Pine Street received the Victoria Cross and the street name was changed to Valour Rd. My kids heard this story at school and wanted to know more about them and I really had nothing more to tell. "Did they all die?" "What did they do to receive the medal?" "How old were they?" etc. No other neighbourhood block in the British Empire has 3 people who have received the highest medal of valour the empire had to offer. It will be good to be able to speak to my kids about it.

The other interesting thing is that one of our back lane neighbours is Paul Clarke -- Charlie Clarke's grandson. Much of this book information is taken from Charlie Clarke's memoirs telling not only his amazing war story but that of his brother Leo, who died during WWI on the day he was conferred the Victoria Cross. Paul's father was named Leo after his uncle whom he never met. We don't know the Clarke family well, but enough to say 'hello'. This again reminds me how everyone has a story to tell, a story we don't always see or know from the surface.

[Norman Howe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent historical work. Three soldiers awarded the Victoria Cross during WWI all lived on Pine Street in Winnipeg, which was later renamed Valour Road. This book goes far beyond the lives of the three heroes, to depict the lives of men in the trenches during the Great War.

[Brad Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read. The author presented the story or stories of the soldiers so well, it was hard to put down. One of my favourite books I’ve read in a long time.

[Dennis Maione · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible story of courage but also of the horror that is war.