Between occupation and liberation: Italian Somalia under British rule, 1941–1945

Abstract

Lieutenant Colonel H. F. Cotton and six other Canadian Army officers from Pacific Command were on a liaison visit in Queensland during the spring of 1944. They mentored the Canadians to a high level of efficiency and effectiveness, a task that would have been infinitely more difficult had they been required to graft themselves onto uniquely Canadian military organizations with uniquely Canadian staff procedures. Between 1914 and 1918, some 214 imperial officers augmented Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) formations to help with expansion, training and fighting. That system allowed British political and military authorities to get the most of what they wanted from Canada when the Canadian Government was ready to give it proportionately-large land forces that could be integrated into a larger British Army. During the Second World War, the Dominions put the equivalent of fifteen compatible divisions into the field at one time or other, despite having had limited contact with one another during the interwar years.