The following review of the book All Tigers No Donkeys, A Canadian Soldier in Croatia, was written by Chris Wattie and published in the National Post's Non-Fiction books section on Saturday 5 Nov 2005.
... One memoir that has received scant attention outside of military circles is All Tigers No Donkeys: A Canadian Soldier in Croatia by Kurt Grant, which is a shame, because a century from now historians will be treating the book like the treasure trove that it is.
Some future Pierrre Berton stumbling upon All Tigers, No Donkeys will discover a goldmine of anecdotes and slices of the day-to-day life of one of the hundreds of thousands of Canadian soldiers who have served on peacekeeping missions.
Grant, an army reserve soldier, spent eight months with the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, in Croatia. All Tigers is an exhaustive account of his tour of duty, from pre-deployment training to the long flight home.
The title is drawn from a speach given by a grizzled regimental sergeant-major to Grant and his comrades just before they left Canada. The speach reminded the soldiers of who they were and what was expected of them, and the officer that repeated it so often it had become famous in the ranks.
All Tigers is an anecdotal book drawn largely from the diary Grant kept during his tour and his letters home, which makes it something of a challenge to read from start to finish. Much of the daily grind in any military operation, be it peacekeeping or all-out war, is, frankly, pretty dull, and the detailed descriptions of everyday life iin a Canadian military camp overseas aren't always page-turning reading.
But the gems are well worth the effort. these include a passage describing a haunting Christmas Day patrol through a Croatian graveyard that is among the best short pieces of its kind ever written.
Grant is unflinchingly honest and revealing about his experiences in the former Yugoslavia, his reactions to what he saw and did during his tour and the impact on his family of his long absence. It is difficult to read his exhanges with his wife without feeling like a peeping Tom, but it makes for emotionally powerful reading nonetheless.
With thousands of Canadian troops being sent overseas every year, this book should be much more widely read. It is an eye-opening account of the daily effect of decades of underfunding and over-extending of our men and women in uniform, and Canadians owe it to them ot at least read about the front-line impact of decisions made by the polititians they elect.
cheers
Kurt
