The Valour and the Horror
| The Valour and the Horror | |
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| Created by | Brian McKenna |
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| Directed by | Brian McKenna |
| Narrated by | Terence McKenna |
| Country of origin | Canada |
| No. of episodes | 3 |
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| Running time | 312 minutes |
| Distributor | National Film Board of Canada |
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| Original network | CBC Television |
| Original release | January 12 – January 26, 1992 |
The Valour and the Horror was a Canadian television documentary miniseries, which aired on CBC Television in 1992. The series investigated three significant Canadian battles from the Second World War and was a co-production between the CBC, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Galafilm Inc. The films were also broadcast by Radio-Canada, the French network of the CBC. The series was written by Brian and his brother, Terence McKenna, and was directed by Brian McKenna, an award-winning journalist and founding producer of The Fifth Estate.
The series consisted of three two-hour films: Savage Christmas: Hong Kong 1941, Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command and In Desperate Battle: Normandy 1944, and was broadcast to critical acclaim. Almost three million people, in English and French, viewed each prime time broadcast.
The central theme of this program was that the force of soldiers sent to fight in the Battle of Hong Kong was "knowingly sent into a war zone without adequate training." The episode first aired on 12 January 1992. This episode was the least controversial:
The central themes of the second program in the series are that RAF Bomber Command "deliberately hid the truth" about RAF bomber crew survival rates, concealed plans about deliberately annihilating civilians, and betrayed the trust of Canadian military airmen. The episode first aired on January 19, 1992.
The central theme of the third and final presentation in the series concern the training and leadership of the Canadian Army in the Battle of Normandy, alleging that "The true story of those battles has never really been told." The show first aired on 26 January 1992.
Canadian veterans' groups and some prominent historians attacked the films for allegedly presenting a biased and inaccurate portrait of Canadian military actions. In Desperate Battle, the allegation that there was significant incompetence on the part of Canadian military command, and claims that Canadian soldiers had committed significant, but un-prosecuted, war crimes against German soldiers, was challenged. Death by Moonlight alleged that Bomber Command, unable to hit military targets with any precision, ultimately turned their attention to German cities and killed more than 600,000 German civilians, mostly old men, women and children, using high explosives and incendiary bombs. They died not as a result of collateral damage, but as part of a deliberate campaign. The producers claimed that the directives remained top secret throughout the war. The films also claimed that bomber crews, flying at night, were, for the most part, kept in the dark about their true mission. As noted in the CBC Ombudsman’s report, many of these assertions were not adequately supported by documentary evidence.
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