Brave Battalion

The Remarkable Saga of the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) in the First World War

By: Mark Zuehlke

Narrated by: Thomas Fawley

This is the story of the average Canadian who volunteered for the Canadian Expeditionary Force told through the lens of one battalion - the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division. This Highland Regiment fought in the Ypres Salient and in the Somme, at Vimy, Passchendaele, and Amiens. It suffered the first gas attack; its ranks were decimated as it fought at virtually every major battle in the European theatre.

From the declaration of war to the cessation of hostilities, Zuehlke follows the battalion from marshalling and training in Canada, across the Atlantic to England, and then landing in Europe. In graphic detail he takes the reader into the trenches and onto the shell-pocked battlefields, through assaults on ridges and wooded valleys. Brave Battalion is not a sweeping history of the conflict. It is rather the story of war on the ground as told through the accomplishments of a band of brothers - the Canadian Scottish - who came to represent the best of what Canada sent into battle.

©2008 Mark Zuehlke (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Good book, horrible narration.

I should have just read this one. I'm intensely disappointed in the quality of narration. He seemed to do no prep work before narrating, miss pronouncing so many place and peoples names, then insisted on using unbearable accents for quotes. I've read other works by Mark Zuehlke, I'll go back to the print.

Probably a good book but the presentation is baddd

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

While perusing the history section I came across this title which was in the very small Canadian enclave. As a military history buff I was interested enough to put my audible credit down and give it a try. I wish that I could actually give this book a good and fair review but I'm sorry to say that the performance was so distractingly bad that I'm probably not qualified to tell how good the book actually is. Honestly, probably 4 hours into it ( what can I say I'm a completionist ) and there are huge reams of this recording I could tell you nothing about because I had been so distracted by the presenters absolute lack of knowledge about how to pronounce the names of famous Canadians along with Canadian cities, provinces and prime ministers. Ok, now I know someone is going to say that, being Canadian, I'm overly touchy here but honestly, who is this book about Canadian Military history likely to be read by? Canadians right? So don't you think you should do a little research? If you don't know how to pronounce Aurelia thats one thing, but you can't pronounce Vancouver? You're killing me. And its Byng, as in "Bing", rhymes with ring, not any of the dozen ways it was pronounced here. Sooooooo many of these.

Ok ok, I'll cool down for a moment. Wait. What? He's doing what? No. You can't be serious. Yep. He's doing impressions, he is faking French, Scotch, English and German accents. I really didn't even know what to say at this point. I'm realitively new to audio books but outside of a children's book I've never heard anything like this.

I hate sounding like a total jerk, and if this had been something from Libravox or any free/volunteer based recording I would have just skipped it and moved on but when someone is charging for this I had to say something.

Sorry Thomas Fawley, this was just not your finest hour.

How could the performance have been better?

See above.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

I could only assume it would be a comedy and I'm more of the drama type.

Any additional comments?

Please audible, have someone else record this book! You are charging money for this !

Great story, sub-standard narration.

The story is great, and well worth the buy. However, the narrator makes so many pronunciation errors, one suspects that the narrator has never lived in Canada. Not knowing how to pronounce Canadian cities is off-putting, but overall, the story is great. Do order it!

Interesting and well written history

Well written and well narrated book. Only thing I was missing were maps of battles but with audio book they are nor so easy to show :)

Recommended.

Worth it though a bit uneven

I'm a history buff and with the recent 100th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge, I was looking for a book about the Canadian experience in WWI. This was a great book, and I learned much about our wonderful Canadian military.
The performance left me wanting more, however. The pronunciation of French place names and words was generally very poor (I'm a native French speaker and often could not tell what town or village the reader was talking about). In addition, two very Canadian names stood out as being incorrectly pronounced repeatedly: PM Wilfred Laurier was called "Looriay" instead of "Lawriay" (in an approximation of phonetics); and the city is called VanCOUver, not VANcouver... this gets very annoying to a Canadian, after a while.
The story is fascinating- some sections can be a bit dry, but overall I do recommend this to those who want to learn more about Canada's valiant men who fought in WWI.