It must be a little frustrating being a senior military officer in peacetime. Sure there's always lots to do - training, updating equipment, political and budget wrangling. But as they pull up the covers and lie down to sleep at night, do they dream of tanks crossing borders, of boots on foreign ground? To scratch this itch, they make plans for fake invasions and give them cool code names.
This is why, for many years, the United States was guarded from the maple menace to the north with War Plan Red, a full plan for the invasion of Canada.
It technically wasn't about Canada, much. War Plan Red was drawn up in the late 1920s through the mid-1930s in the event of a war with the then-mighty British Empire. The United States generals actually felt they would have to fight a defensive war, and they planned to grab the nearest piece of relatively unguarded "British" territory they could. They would snatch up the port at Halifax, grab Niagara's power plants, and take over the nickel reserves at Sudbury. Such an invasion would have made for a very interesting Sudbury Saturday night indeed.
For variety, they were going to grab the then-colonies in the Caribbean, as well, including Jamaica and Barbados. Try to imagine the grins on the faces of the soldiers chosen to invade tropical islands instead of being sent to occupy Edmonton in February.
They weren't going to give us back after the war, either. The plan's appendix suggested turning all territory gained, from the Yukon to Bermuda, into new American states and territories.
Lest you fear that we would have had our keesters kicked, there was a Canadian answer to this - in fact, Canada came up with its plan first! James "Buster" Brown, a hard-line British Imperial supporter, had served as an officer during the First World War. In 1921, then a lieutenant-colonel, he was appointed director of military operations and intelligence. Suspicious of the Americans, he drew up Defense Scheme No. 1, in the event of a U.S. invasion.
His plan for the good defence? A good offence, of course.
Brown wanted to see Canadian soldiers immediately launch raids in the United States, seizing towns in upstate New York, the Dakotas, and on the coast, Seattle and Portland. No doubt this would be popular among shoppers who could drive straight down to get deals without having to go through the pesky border.
While Brown may have over-estimated the strength of Canadian forces, he was under no illusions that Canada, with one tenth the population of the States, could hold out for long.
His plan was to raid quickly, then withdraw while blowing up bridges and rail lines, tying up American troops, and keeping as much destruction outside of Canada as possible. Eventually, he was sure, the Brits would come and save us. (They probably wouldn't have.) None of this means that either the Canadian or American governments ever seriously contemplated an invasion. Militaries make plans like this all the time, partly to keep their strategic muscles in shape. The United States series of coloured plans included Red for Britain, Green for Mexico, and even Indigo for that military powerhouse, Iceland. (They actually sort of used that one.) All of these plans were scrapped between the 1930s and the Second World War, and they went public in the 1960s or '70s. But I have no doubt that somewhere in the Pentagon today, some officers are staring at maps, and saying, "What's the best way to invade Moose Jaw?" Matthew Claxton is a reporter for the Langley Advance.
