Rogue Tory

by Denis Smith

  From then on the invalided officer’s trail appears only intermittently for several months. The Grampian docked in Saint John, New Brunswick, on February 28, and Diefenbaker received a rail pass, apparently home to Saskatoon. Ten days later the officer commanding the Regina military district replied to Diefenbaker’s inquiry from Toronto, advising him that he should apply for home service in the 105th Saskatchewan Fusiliers “until such time as you are again fit for overseas. One company of the Battalion will be for overseas service, and if agreeable to you you might be transferred to it.” Diefenbaker remained on active service until the end of June. During that time he provided the army with at least one medical certificate from a Saskatoon surgeon, who noted that he had been “invalided from France” but was now healthy and capable of return to the front, where he wished to be. The advice was rejected, however, and in late October Lieutenant Diefenbaker was formally “struck off strength” of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and posted to the CEF Reserve of Officers in order to “maintain your claim of Seniority in the C.E.F.” At the same time Diefenbaker applied for appointment to the Royal Flying Corps, but was refused “on account of the Medical History Sheet submitted to them.”96

  The military story ends on a minor key in 1918. In April the Canadian Board of Pension Commissioners informed Diefenbaker: “Owing to the fact that you are suffering from no disability which was due to or was incurred during your military service it has been decided that you are not entitled to pension.” Six weeks later he received a War Service Badge for “Service in England.”97

  Diefenbaker’s version of the story and his own diary and documentary record are thus marked by inconsistencies, the most important of which can only be clarified by a review of the army’s medical files on Lieutenant Diefenbaker. Above all, the diaries contain no mention of an accident and no report of any internal bleeding until weeks after he was found unfit for continued service. There is no diary entry, as Diefenbaker claimed in the memoirs, that reads “Bleeding today from the mouth.” The diary does not make clear what was the basis for the medical board’s decision, but says only that his first stay in hospital was “to have eyes tested” because his eyesight had been found “defective.” Then came the medical board’s decision. After that, Diefenbaker seemed active and fit until two days in December, when he “spat blood … and at night became very feverish.” Thereafter he spent several vigorous days on leave over Christmas. Although he spent some weeks in hospital in January 1917, his diary does not give the impression that he was being treated for any serious complaint, though his presence in hospital could indicate a regime of rest and diet. Almost the only certainty on which the two records coincide is that Lieutenant Diefenbaker was invalided home.

  Once he was back in Canada the story remains confusing. A civilian physician certifies that the young officer is well enough to return to overseas service and he requests it, but the Canadian Army denies the appeal. After this history of rejection, there is a final, vain application for transfer to the Royal Flying Corps. The Pension Board rejects a pension claim on the ground that Diefenbaker suffers from no disability “due to or incurred during … military service.” Yet Diefenbaker himself insists sixty years later that he refused to consider a pension and that his injury caused him repeated illness and surgery in the years after the war.

  Why would John Diefenbaker obscure the record? There may be good reasons. Posting to the front, in late 1916, meant almost certain death, as Diefenbaker himself recalled. Without the medical disqualification, he said in 1969, “I wouldn’t be here, no possibility; the possibility is so remote. We went overseas with 184 lieutenants and twelve weeks later there were 33 living. Utter slaughter. Young officers going over the top … went down and everyone in the ranks of the 196th Battalion, or practically everyone, was … wiped out, that’s all.” In that atmosphere of impending death, human reactions varied. But depression and psychosomatic symptoms were natural responses – even sane ones, as can now be admitted – and they were widespread in the First World War as in the Second. The army code of duty and valour, however, regarded them as signs of weakness or cowardice. In battle, they could be grounds for humiliation, court martial, or execution. Behind the lines they were treated as signs of instability unacceptable in an officer who was expected to lead his men by example.98 The Canadian Militia, like the British Army, sought as far as possible to weed out potentially unreliable officers before testing them in combat.

  If the young officer was ruled unfit because of some mild complaint with a physical origin or a psychosomatic condition – either of which might be beyond his conscious control – or because he had consciously chosen illness as a means of avoiding assignment to the trenches in France, he would undoubtedly have felt shame, embarrassment, and a desire to disguise the nature of his illness. A trenching injury could have provided the necessary cover story, for both his private self-respect and his public reputation. With time, it would be understandable if he came to believe it himself.

  What does the official medical record reveal? Before his departure overseas in the officers’ draft of August 1916, Lieutenant Diefenbaker was medically examined and pronounced fit for service.99 In the decisive medical case sheet of late November 1916, however, the examining physician noted that “this officer suffered a great deal from symptoms of weakness and partial loss of compensation before enlistment. Immediately after enlistment he was given ten days leave owing to heart trouble.”100 This comment is not based on any previous record in the file and apparently repeats Diefenbaker’s own testimony. The reference to “ten days leave” may explain his return to Saskatoon from Regina with his mother on August 31, although there is no indication of any further medical examination before his second departure on September 4.

  The medical history confirms that Diefenbaker was treated in hospital for defective vision in mid-November.101 On November 26, 1916, he was examined by a medical board, which diagnosed “cardiac disease” involving shortness of breath on exertion and general physical weakness that precluded physical training.102 The medical case sheet for this date is not accompanied in the army files, as was normal, by a formal report and recommendation, but the recommendation is recorded elsewhere as “permanently unfit” on the basis of cardiac disease or “D.A.H.” DAH, or “Disordered Action of the Heart,” is medical shorthand for “a condition in which symptoms occur, such as palpitations and shortness of breath, which are attributed by the patient to disorder of the heart. There is no evidence, however, of heart disease, and psychological factors are thought to be of importance.”103 As in the diary, there is no mention in the case sheet of any accident or injury preceding the medical hearing.

  Following his return to Canada, Diefenbaker was ordered to appear before an army medical board in Saskatoon so that a full report on his condition could be made to the Board of Pension Commissioners. The board was convened on April 27, 1917, and confirmed the previous opinion: Diefenbaker was unfit for service, suffering from “shortness of breath upon exertion, pain in pre-cordial region.” The incapacity was described as “permanent but will no doubt improve under treatment,” with 100 percent disability “for three months.”104 He was subsequently reported to be under outpatient treatment in the Saskatoon military hospital, where he was “receiving general tonics and rest.”105

  In August 1917, once again, Diefenbaker was summoned to a medical board hearing in Saskatoon. The board’s report describes his original disability as “Mitral Incompentincy” (sic) caused by “Overwork. Entrenching while in England.” The description offers a case history provided by Diefenbaker and recorded in clipped medical style:

  Was examined Nov. 1, 1916 for transfer to Reserve Battalion and was found Physically fit. Classified A1. At this time was taking instruction at Canadian Military School, was digging trenches which continued for 10 days, 7 hours each day which strenuous work he was not accustomed to, at end of this time began spitting blood which lasted 2 days, was admitted to Hospital was there for 10 days, s
ent to A.D.M.S. at Crowborough, examined and found Physically unfit. Suffering from present condition Mitral Incompentincy [sic], given light duty for 2 weeks, then put back on duty through orders of Colonel of school not A.D.M.S. Gradually became worse examined again and re-admitted to Hospital. He remained for 8 weeks then sent back to Canada.106

  Besides confusing the chronology and exaggerating the length of his stay in hospital, Diefenbaker for the first time put on the official record his claim to have spat blood.

  The medical examiners described his heart condition as permanent, but said that his “general weakness” was expected to disappear within two months. A treatment of “tonic with rest” was prescribed, with a recommendation for a further medical board hearing after two months.107

  On October 10, 1917, Diefenbaker appeared before the same medical board in Saskatoon. His disability was identified in the board’s report as “V.D.H.” or valvular disease of the heart, and a previously unstated cause was described: “Hit in back with pick axe.”108 In the opinion of the board, the patient was now fully recovered, required no more treatment, and was described as fit for general service. But he was also recommended for discharge, as the commanding officer explained, “there being no vacancy in this District whereby his services could be utilized at present.”109 On October 25 Diefenbaker was struck off strength of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.110 A short time later the army confirmed that his request for enrolment in the Royal Flying Corps could not be entertained.

  The official record thus confirms that Lieutenant Diefenbaker was judged unfit for active service under a series of commonly used medical euphemisms: cardiac disease, general weakness, disorder affecting the heart, and valvular disease of the heart. These descriptions justified an officer’s honourable discharge, while suggesting discreetly that a basic physical disability had not necessarily been demonstrated. In particular, the diagnoses did not appear to be linked to Diefenbaker’s own claims to have coughed up blood or to have been injured in the back with a pick axe. Those suggestions, which Diefenbaker later emphasized as evidence of a serious physical injury, appeared on the record from his personal testimony months after the original medical ruling. The two events might have occurred, but the most plausible conclusion is that as explanations for his disability they were rationalizations, or comforting fictions, rather than the truth as army medical officers would have described it.

  The symptoms John Diefenbaker spoke of during the 1920s suggested a gastric complaint consistent with a psychosomatic diagnosis in 1916. That was one common illness of soldiering in the wars of the twentieth century, although the recognition that it could be genuine and disabling came slowly even to the psychiatric medical services. The main object of the exercise, after all, was no more than to get men upright into battle where they could bravely live or bravely die – or to get them home if they could not be trusted to do so. In the First World War there was no question of treatment, little official desire for understanding, and hesitation to recognize what was later called battle exhaustion as a legitimate ground for a disability pension. Diefenbaker’s actual desire for a pension based on recognition of a physical injury, and his subsequent denial of any desire for one when it could not be based on that recognition, suggest, in the circumstances, that he and the medical boards considered his complaints to be psychosomatic, or believed that was a possibility. His renewed willingness to enter battle perhaps indicated a desire to cleanse the record of any lingering blemish, to prove that he could do it after all.

  For the twenty-one-year-old, this experience must have been a profoundly disturbing affair, best suppressed and forgotten. It was his first great test as a man, and, according to all the conventional standards of the time, he had failed. The evenings on the town in London would hardly compensate for the embarrassment and emotional turmoil. But at least he was alive, and able to renew his political quest once the experience was firmly behind him. By extraordinary coincidence, Diefenbaker’s chief political rival as prime minister after the passage of forty years, Lester B. Pearson, was invalided home in similar circumstances just one year later. His story too was confused; but Pearson, in his maturity, came closer than Diefenbaker to an open admission of what had happened.111

  There is another slight twist to the story. One result of the disaster on the Somme was the collapse of the Asquith government and the accession of David Lloyd George as prime minister of the United Kingdom on the evening of December 7, 1916, after a week of intrigue. He was, as AJ.P. Taylor described him, “the first son of the people to reach supreme power.”112 John Diefenbaker recalled that on the day before Lloyd George’s first appearance in the House as prime minister, he went to the Canadian High Commission to claim the favour offered in September by Lady Perley. “Out came Sir George. He welcomed me and ushered me into his office and asked what he could do for me. I told him that I wanted a ticket for the gallery at Westminster the next day. He replied: ‘If you came to me and wanted a promotion to the rank of Major, it would be so easy, but this can’t be done.’ I said to him, ‘Now, you heard Lady Perley’s promise.’ I got my ticket and was one of a half-dozen Canadians to hear Lloyd George on that memorable day. He raised the horizons of the British people from the frightful slaughter on the Somme to the hope of ultimate victory.”113

  Lloyd George became prime minister, but did not speak in the House on December 8, when Lieutenant Diefenbaker was in Crowborough under reprimand for his previous absence from parade; on that day he recorded his first “escort duty” in the diary. The diary does mention a visit to the House of Commons one week before, on November 30. But the leadership crisis had not yet erupted, Asquith was still prime minister, and Lloyd George did not speak. His first appearance in the House as prime minister occurred on December 20, when Diefenbaker was still in camp. There is no further mention of Westminster in the diary until February 10, 1917, when Diefenbaker recorded a visit to the “Hses of Parlt etc.” The Perley incident seems too specific to be imaginary, but its timing remains obscure. Diefenbaker said that after the war Perley “used to laugh about it and Lady Perley … often spoke of it.” Apparently Diefenbaker did not hear Lloyd George’s rallying speech on the war as he had claimed, but this was a good story – if slightly embellished – for the demobilized lieutenant to bring back from England.114

  In April 1918 the young man returned to Russell Hartney’s Saskatoon law office as an articling student. In June he shifted to another firm, Ferguson and MacDermid, but that lasted just three months. One of the partners later said, “We didn’t get along too well. Any student I had, I wanted him in the office looking after business but he was always running around, into politics. So, we soon parted ways.” The student found another haven in the firm of Lynd and Yule, where he completed his articles in the spring of 1919. The routine was boring and his record indifferent.115

  There are only traces of Diefenbaker’s life in the immediate aftermath of his brief military career. One of them, written in his distinctive flowing hand, is a ten-page tribute to the poet Robert W. Service, prepared for reading at a social evening – perhaps at the First Baptist Church in Saskatoon. Diefenbaker sees Service himself as the “dreamer of dreams … player of parts” who narrates his novel, The Trail of ’98, as “a little shy mannered lad … with healthy bright cheeks and a soul wrapped up in dreams.” Service’s poetry, of Yukon sourdoughs and First World War Tommies in the trenches, “which at first glance appears to be merely a conglomeration of vulgarity and blasphemy,” is more than that for Diefenbaker. Rather, it is the product of rough circumstance transmuted into popular romance. “He has no real artistic finesse,” writes the young man, “but he drives home eternal and dramatic truths with sledge hammer blows.”

  This is the law of the Yukon

  and ever she makes it plain

  Send not your foolish and feeble

  send me your strong and sane.

  Strong for the red rage of battle;

  sane for I harry them sore

&
nbsp; Send me men girt for the combat,

  men who are great to the core.

  Diefenbaker reads Service’s works “as a biography” and judges him to be “kind, good-natured, fond of bravado and the companionship of all classes, possessed of great determination and will power together with a fervid love for his native land.” What took Service into the Red Cross ambulance corps at the front, Diefenbaker insists, was a simple belief not in British power, not in the triumph of force, but in British “civilization.”

  For those who read Service’s doggerel and doubt his religious faith, Diefenbaker responds that, despite its lack of piety, the verse is permeated with “the spirit of Christian charity.” The poetry will last in Canada, Diefenbaker suggests, because “he depicts in a remarkably true manner the customs and tenets of the classes and peoples amongst whom he has lived.” Service’s simple, rugged, populist sentimentality suited the ex-serviceman.

  The entire program was offered as a dramatic performance, with readings of illustrative verse by three young ladies – including the fifteen-year-old Olive Freeman, who would become the second Mrs Diefenbaker thirty-five years later. For his audience, the handsome war veteran with the penetrating eyes and the rolling voice must himself have seemed that dreamer of dreams and player of parts.116

  Like other universities, the University of Saskatchewan gave academic credit for war service, allowing veterans to telescope their degree programs. Diefenbaker gained credit in the law school for his undergraduate courses in law, plus one year’s credit as a soldier, and thus was eligible for graduation in the spring of 1919. The university opened late in the autumn term of 1918 because of the influenza epidemic, and Diefenbaker attended few classes during the year; but in April 1919 he wrote and passed his finals. He was evidently more mature and self-confident than in his undergraduate days. The Sheaf commented on his active extracurricular year, as vice president of law, associate editor of The Sheaf, alumni representative on the students’ council, and a participant in debating and moot trials: “He has occupied a place which will be difficult to fill, and hereafter all transgressors of the Students’ Code will breathe more freely when he relinquishes his position as custodian of justice.”117