HAMILTON — If you’re looking to learn more about war history this Remembrance Day, you might consider starting with a map.
McMaster University’s library has a collection of hundreds of thousands of maps ranging from historical Hamilton fire-insurance maps to Soviet-era maps of the USSR. It also has thousands of military maps, which, according to two mapping experts, can teach you about wartime history in a way texts can’t.
TVO.org asked Gord Beck, retired map specialist at the McMaster University Library, and Saman Goudarzi, current cartographic-resources librarian, to share the stories behind some of the lesser-known wartime maps in the university’s collection.
A WWI-era map of Vimy, France showing the locations of trenches. (Courtesy of McMaster University)
TVO.org: What can wartime maps teach us about history that we can’t learn elsewhere?
Gord Beck: They can teach us the scope and the scale of things. Quite often, when we think about things like World War One, we imagine these two opposing lines of trenches stretching for hundreds of kilometres. But what we don’t realize is that there was a secondary set for support and a third set for reserves, and all these interconnecting trenches.
So, when you look at the trench maps, you see that they went east and west pretty much as far as they went north and south — just a massive scale.
We often also think of the topography maps showing all the military tactical information, but a whole series of thematic maps (which simply means maps that show a theme) had to be produced for every branch of the military. For example, the medical corps wanted maps showing where all the field-dressing stations and major hospitals were. There were route maps for ambulances. There are pages and pages of different types of maps produced for pretty much any type of need that you can think of: water-supply maps, telephone cables, wireless stations.
Saman Goudarzi: Gord loves military maps, and the strength of this collection and the beauty of this collection are a testament to his passion and how long he’s been working here. And then you have me on this other end. I had virtually no interest in military maps, and I’m learning to appreciate them. My military knowledge, I think, just goes back to Grade 10. I think the war happened. I think the Germans were in it. But I don’t have the expertise that Gord does. Someone can come to me and say D-Day happened near Caen, in France — I would forget that in five seconds. But it stuck with me when I had the actual map in front of me, and I could see: this is where they landed; this is the geology of the space. That adds this beautiful element of spatiality to it and helps folks engage with history in a way that a written text might not be able to. I’m starting to appreciate this history because of the maps, because I wasn’t really able to get that from books.
A 1942 map of northern France, reprinted by the British from an 1839 map, colour-coded to show the geology of the region. (Courtesy of McMaster University)
TVO.org: It’s interesting that you mentioned high-school history, because I remember that my high-school history teacher always used to say you can’t understand history without properly understanding geography. She made us learn all sorts of maps, and I wasn’t great at remembering them, but they definitely did add a different perspective.
Beck: They’re intertwined. In a time period when there’s so much emphasis on STEM subjects — which I think is good — people are studying history less and less. We have to start rethinking what history is. History is the hard drive of our computer. It’s our memory. And it’s a planning tool. We have to look at the past to predict what’s going to happen in the future or at least make our best plan going forward.
I sent you a geology map of Caen. The reason I did that: I try to appeal to people who are maybe only interested in science and think they don’t need to know history. Well, sometimes you need to know the history and the way things evolved. It’s a great problem-solving tool. When you run into a problem in cartography in the future, it could be the same thing that they ran into in World War One or World War Two — because, you name it, they ran into every potential problem.
With the planning for D-Day, geology was one of the most important reasons they landed where they did. The shortest distance across the channel would have been to the Pas-de-Calais, but that was the most heavily defended area by the Germans because they knew that and they were expecting the landings to come there. Instead, the Allies landed further to the west. It was a farther distance across the channel, which was more dangerous, but they did it for some major reasons. The first was that, once they landed, the guys there — if they were lucky enough that they got a foothold and were able to hold on — were going to have to supply them. The way to supply the troops, once they got there, was through a whole network of airfields. For that, you need a certain type of terrain; you need well-drained soil. The best base for that is limestone. If you look at that Caen map, the yellow areas are limestone. Geology is what tipped the balance for the Normandy area and that area around Caen.
I’m starting to appreciate this history because of the maps, because I wasn’t really able to get that from books.
You wouldn’t believe all the research they had to do to figure out that geology. That particular map was produced by the French in the 1800s, and then it was reproduced by the British for the war for that purpose. But they also questioned every businessman and engineer who had been on the Continent doing work in France. The BBC ran a phony contest asking everybody to send in their holiday pictures of when they were in France, because they wanted pictures of the beaches to assess them. They sent commando parties at night who would go on the beaches and get core samples to see what the geology was like there and whether it was going to be firm enough. And probably the most dangerous thing was sending airplanes over to get air photos that were flying them as low as 30 feet off the ground to get close up shots. It was extremely complex and brought to bear almost every aspect of science into it.
This is what I mean about problem-solving skills. Somebody learns about this, and, in a future time, it just sparks that idea. They’re going to use modern equipment, modern technology, but the ideas of how to get around a problem are still very, very useful for students today.
A 1916 map showing an area of east Africa near modern day Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, marked to note the locations of water and tsetse flies. (Courtesy of McMaster University Library)
TVO.org: Let’s look at some other maps now. One WWI map you told me about is a rare one in the McMaster collection showing the locations of water sources and an area free of tsetse flies in east Africa. What does it tell us about fighting in that part of the world?
Beck: So that was a really interesting one. When we were digitizing it, I was actually organizing the World War One collection to begin with. I really didn’t know what to make of it. I wasn’t very impressed with it at first. It looks very skeletal. It’s not really an interesting map for most people, and it wasn’t until I looked closer, and I saw that double-dotted no-fly zone area, that it intrigued me. It took me a long time to figure out the history on this. I finally found a book on World War One in Africa. It was the only reference I ever came across to one of these bug maps, but apparently this was the war for the soldiers in Africa. It wasn’t trenches. It wasn’t machine-gun kill boxes and creeping barrages. It was going on your sabotage route to wipe out someone else’s railway network and knowing where all the freshwater supplies were and where all the dangerous insects were to keep away from.
Gord Beck is a retired map specialist at the McMaster University Library. (Courtesy McMaster University)
TVO.org: Does the physical map tell us anything different than something that was in a journal or a record somewhere?
Beck: Well, a picture sometimes tells the story very quickly and draws your attention to the focal points. Because this map is so bland, the water features stand out prominently, and the fly zone stands out fairly prominently. So it can be mentioned in text, but you do grasp maybe the distance that they had to go between these places where they could get fresh water, the actual area of the fly zone and how huge that was. As Saman would know, having taken geographic-information systems, too, you see all those spatial relationships right away.
Goudarzi: That’s where you can start picking out patterns, try to figure out: Why are they all located here? What makes it that they’re not located in the north? You can start making those environmental assessments if you’d like to. There’s a lot of power with that, too. You can overlay this on a map of climate areas to figure out what climates allow for the tsetse flies to be active in that region. There’s a lot of power with the spatiality that, as Gord said, you wouldn’t have with just a list of the locations.
Beck: If you look at this and you compare it to the Vimy map that I sent you a link to, it’s just a completely different war. You can just tell a glance, with the types of maps, what information was important in each of those different theatres. This war in Africa is really something that will be studied by a lot of our students who are interested in colonialism and so forth, because it was quite horrific. A lot of the Indigenous people were drawn into the battle and forced to fight way more than the white Europeans.
An escape map printed on man-made fabric in 1943 depicting northern Italy. (Courtesy McMaster University Library)
TVO.org: Let’s look at an escape map. Can you tell me a little bit more about these? I thought this was interesting, in the sense that it wasn’t just the map, but also the way it was printed that tells a story.
Beck: The idea was to print a bunch of maps that could be folded up or scrunched up really small and hidden in the lining of jackets or pockets or any wide variety of things. And so that’s where the material comes in. We often refer to them as silk maps, and they could be printed on silk. Rayon and nylon were new manmade fabrics that had just come into existence, so a large number of these were printed on rayon.
Escape maps were printed on fabric to be easily concealed. (Saman Goudarzi)
Goudarzi: We recently acquired a couple of silk maps through donation. They’re part of the Keith Patrick archive. He was a Canadian air man; they were provided with silk maps. They were scrunched up and hidden. They also provided protection: he would put them in his jacket just to provide an extra level of heat. They’re harder to tear, so if there was water damage, if he’s flying and things are moving around, they’re harder to damage. His plane was shot down in France, so that was the map that was given to him prior to flying over France.
TVO.org: A map like this one, of Italy — it’s so big. I’m wondering, would this be something issued to someone who’s generally going out in the area, because I’m trying to imagine if I crash landed (I mean, I would be screwed anyway) and I was trying to figure out where I was with a candle and this silk map, I don’t even know how I would read it at this scale.
Beck: I know it’s a big area, but they had to make their way out of the country, so most of the escape maps are at the country level or a large area level. They’re really trying to gather the major roads and railways and things like that. There isn’t going to be any information showing where enemy barracks are or police stations or anything that they have to avoid. It’s basically like a roadmap.
Goudarzi: Gord, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is part of a larger strategy to facilitate escape.
Beck: Yeah, in World War One, it was maybe considered ungentlemanly at least for the officers to try to escape, because they were given sort of freedom to move around in the camp if they gave their word they wouldn’t try to escape. By World War Two, basically, it was their mission to try to escape, because they wanted to tie down as many enemy forces, having them out search for them, as opposed to having them doing their regular job. It was another way of trying to get their men back, but also trying to cause as much chaos and havoc behind enemy lines as possible.
An escape map from the Keith Patrick Archive. (Saman Goudarzi)
Several maps owned by Canadian air man Keith Patrick, who served in WWII. (Saman Goudarzi)
TVO.org: Let’s look at this air map.
Beck: This is an army air map, which means that it was a map that was produced to be used both by the air force and the ground army at the same time. So that means that they had to compromise on a lot of things. Usually, the ground forces like to see a small area but a lot of detail. They’re used to using maps at maybe 1:10,000, 1:20,000, or one to 1:25,000 scale, which means a centimetre to 100 metres or a centimetre to 200 metres. Whereas the air force, they want to see a larger area because they’re travelling at a higher speed. And they don’t need to see as much detail. The compromise was this series of maps for all different countries during the war at 1:250,000 scale. So, one centimetre is 2.5 kilometres.
A 1943 army air map showing the northern coast of France. It was created by the war office in Great Britain. (Courtesy McMaster University Library)
What makes this visually distinctive from the regular topographical maps is the colours that are used and the types of lines on the map. The first thing you see is that very distinctive blue verge along the water edge. The reason for that was that the planes flying at night had to use amber lighting within the cockpit. This was to help with their night vision, so that they could look at the instrument panel and then also be glancing out the window at the same time, and one wouldn’t affect their vision of the other, so they could see both. When you’re viewing a regular map under those amber lights, the typical red roads that were used on the maps would disappear. They had to use this kind of sepia-colour lines for the roads; they also changed the thickness of the roads and the railways and the rivers, just so that the thickness of the line could be spotted more easily. The green for the forested areas was a brighter green than they would normally use on a topo map so that they would stand out, because the shapes of forests and rivers were often navigational aids as well.
Saman Goudarzi is a cartographic-resources librarian at McMaster University. (Nicole Lipari)
TVO.org: And it’s another case where the map itself and what it’s showing tell the story, but then so does its form.
Gord Beck: And this particular one happens to show along the northern coast where the D-Day landing beaches were. And you can see Caen a little bit down to the lower right. Pretty much right north of that was where Sword and Juno Beach were. And it was actually the Canadians and the British that were given the job of capturing Caen.
Another thing you see very visually from this map right away that would take you a long time to learn about going through text: if you look at Caen, what do you see there with the red and black lines all radiating out? You see a hub, a transportation and communication network. Caen was very important because that’s where the Germans were moving all their troops up to and then directing them out toward the landing beaches to push the Allies back. That was a main distribution hub for the Germans, and the Canadians and British were supposed to take that within 24 hours of landing on the beaches.
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TVO.org: I saw you in a trailer for a documentary, Gord, and, in it, WWI is described as “the greatest map renaissance in history.” What made it a renaissance?
Beck: It was the birth of our modern way of mapping. Before that time, everybody surveyed on the ground. A lot of maps were hand drawn, and plates were made and so forth. It was a very laborious process. When the war broke out, there was a huge need for mapping that people didn’t foresee. People didn’t foresee that World War One was going to turn into an artillery war. The problem comes in how you target that artillery if you can’t see anything, if your guns are also hidden behind the hills or in woods, so that it won’t be spotted and blown out. In order to do that, you needed very, very precise maps.
The airplane, which was a new invention in 1903 and really didn’t get off the ground, so to speak (bad pun), that was the eyes in the sky. You couldn’t survey on the ground anymore, so aerial photography was born. They started taking photos from the air and had to take very accurate vertical photos so that it could get accurate measurements from which to create the maps. The air photos collected the data, and then the maps were drawn from the measurements taken from these mosaics where they piece together all the air flows into basically a photo. Basically, that information got drawn onto maps, and then they printed up tons of the topographic maps back in the Ordnance Survey on Southampton, and they shipped them to the front lines, where they had forward printing-press stations, where they could overprint the trench and tactical information.
They had a supply of base maps, and then anytime the tactical information changed, they could just make a change to that layer and then print it overtop of more topo maps and release a new revised edition. Britain and its allies ended up printing about 30 million maps in World War One. By the last year or the war, they were able to make those adjustments to layer printouts and send them out by couriers to the front lines; within half an hour, they could get a new edition of a map out to the front lines. It was a very, very fast and modern process, and it continued after the war. Of course, things improved with better planes and better cameras. Now we have radar and Lidar and all these other ways of acquiring information from above, which we call remote sensing, but it’s basically the same processes — just new equipment and better technology.
This trailer for a documentary about WWI mapmaking features now-retired McMaster University map expert Gord Beck.
TVO.org: How accurate were the World War One maps compared to the more technologically advanced maps in Korea or Vietnam?
Beck: They were very accurate. It was a big area from the English Channel to Switzerland, but it was just that area. And even though that’s hundreds of kilometres, it’s not as much area as they had to map in World War Two. And even in World War Two, they were mapping very precisely, but these World War One maps, the main scales were 1:10,000, 1:20,000 and 1:40,000; 1:10,000 means that one centimetre on the map represents 100 metres on the ground. So that’s fairly accurate, and that’s what the infantry wanted. The artillery usually used the 1:20,000. So one centimetre equals 200 metres. That’s pretty darn accurate. Our standard mapping in Canada, 1:50,000 for the federal government, is the most detailed layer that we produce. One centimetre is half a kilometre or 500 metres. These were a lot more detailed than what our standard map is today.
TVO.org: How much of a driver has conflict been in developing mapping technology?
Beck: Huge for the whole history of the world. It’s usually either for military purpose or for the exploitation of resource services.
Goudarzi: We have a wonderful early Canadiana collection as well, and most of those are from beaver traders. So, again, in search of resources. And those are all the result of intense mapping that was being done for exploitation or the capture of natural resources.
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Beck: One thing that gets studied a lot by our classes is colonialism and things of that nature. With all early Canadian maps, all the places get changed from Indigenous names to French names or imported names from Europe. It’s another way of appropriation or aggregation of territory by placing your names and wiping out the previous history.
Goudarzi: And drawing up of territories as well. The biggest example leading up to the great wars was the Scramble for Africa, where European powers literally brought a map of Africa, took a ruler, and just divvied up this entire continent with complete disregard for the Indigenous folks there, their territories, and how they traditionally would mediate geographical space. The trend you can see is that maps have always been used as tools by those in power. But they’re also used as tools for resistance. There are lots of folks doing critical mapping and counter mapping as well to reclaim and retake what they see as theirs and trying to fight those in power.
Beck: I would say military maps are not necessarily done with that purpose. That’s why a lot of them after wars are released to the public, because they’re accurate, and they can be used by the public after for a wide variety things. As long as they didn’t have any secretive information on them, after the war, they distributed them to universities across North America — at least the US Army map service did — to be used as topographic map sets.
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TVO.org: When we’re thinking about the conflicts of our time and the conflicts of the future, is mapping still going to be as important as it has been?
Beck: It’s different in that a lot of soldiers in the field now will be looking at a digital version. And a lot of them are even using their phones.
Goudarzi: And I think the trend we’re seeing here, I would maybe even call it the democratization of mapmaking. We’re seeing everyday folks take part in crowdsourcing movements. Those are really special because we have folks who are trying to achieve a goal with the map that perhaps is separate from what a military department would want to achieve with that map — maybe mapping first-aid resources for folks that are within a war zone. We see that happening with women trying to navigate spaces of sexual harassment, where folks would provide where they feel unsafe, and women can avoid that area in warzones. That will also provide more perspectives and experiences of folks in a military or war situation.
Beck: Yeah, I see mapping in the future as being less the roadmap and topographic map of getting from here to there. What we’re finding is a surge in these thematic maps and people using maps to show where all the cancer patients are, what the election results were. Maps now can be used to be a visual tool for any area. This is something that occurred during World War One. After the war and the use of thematic mapping, maps started to become more of a tool to visualize information for any part of human life. That’s what I see growing. A lot of people say, “Now that we have GPS and we have phones, we don’t need roadmaps anymore.” But it’s the thematic maps that are growing. As Saman was saying, you’re getting people at every level now being able to produce maps — all kinds of amateurs are able to do it. They may not necessarily be the best maps, and you always have to make sure they’re doing things correctly and showing their data in the proper light, but that is the one growing area that won’t go away. It’ll just get bigger.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
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