Riding Into Battle - by Ted Glenn (Paperback)

About the Book

Riding into Battle tells the untold story of how Canadian Cyclist troops came into their own during the Hundred Days campaign of the Great War.

Book Synopsis

The untold story of how Canadian Cyclists came into their own during the Hundred Days campaign of the Great War.

Canada's Cyclists spent most of the First World War digging trenches, patrolling roads, and delivering dispatches. But during the Hundred Days campaign at the end of the Great War, Canada's cycling troops finally came into their own.

At Amiens, Cambrai, and especially the Pursuit from the Sensée, the Cyclists made pioneering contributions to the development of the Canadian Corps's combined arms strategy and mobile warfare doctrine, all the while exhibiting the consummate professionalism the Corps became renowned for.

Review Quotes

A very good book on the largely forgotten role of Canadian cyclists in the Great War. Forgotten no longer, we can now understand that the cyclists played a big role in the Hundred Days [campaign] in helping develop the Canadian Corps' new concept of combined arms warfare.-- "J.L. Granatstein, author of The Greatest Victory: Canada's One Hundred Days, 1918"

An important foray into an under-explored aspect of the First World War. The bicycle was a ubiquitous piece of equipment in most armies of the period, and yet we often seem not to notice it. Hopefully the book will stimulate further inquiry into a key mode of early twentieth-century transportation in a military-historical context.-- "-- Andrew Iarocci, Professor in the Department of History at Western"

Even military history buffs may not be aware that five Canadian cyclist companies were created as part of Canada's contribution to the First World War ... This highly readable account of the Canadian Cyclists is supplemented with an extraordinary collection of period photographs.-- "Aldona Sendzikas, Associate Professor, Department of History, UWO, author of Stanley Barracks: Toronto's Military Legacy"

About the Author

Ted Glenn is a professor at Humber College and writes about Canadian government and military history at home and abroad. He lives and cycles in Toronto.