The Valour and the Horror

"The Battle of Normandy, rightfully considered one the world's most decisive [battles], was over [by August 24, 1944]. It had cost the Canadian Army 18,444 casualties including over 5,021 dead. The 3rd Canadian Army Division also suffered greater losses than any other division within the 21st army Group. The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, though it did not arrive in France until July 7th, incurred the next highest. All told, battle casualties slightly exceeded 3,000 in June, 5,500 in July, and 7,400 for the period 1-23 August. Fighting in "Totalize" through "Tractable" up to 21 August accounted for 5,679 casualties. Significantly, the two British Divisions with the highest casualty rates, the 3rd and 51st (Highland), both landed on D-day.

The troublesome thing about these figures is that they cannot simply be explained away in nationalist terms of Canadian being assigned more difficult tactical tasks. As already mentioned, British engagements in the bocage to the west approached Great War proportions in their severity. Fighting in the "Epsom" offensive, for example, " reached a sustained intensity rare even in the Normandy campaign." One might have expected further, from the experience of the Great War, that an all volunteer army would have performed appreciably better than a conscripted one like the British."

Failure in High Command, John A. English, page 300

Valour and Horror, Second World War, Canadian history, World War II, W.W.II