As a gunner you will spend alot of time outside, rain or shine all day an all night, you will be getting very little sleep, it all depends on what the mission calls for. For the most part your bread an butter is sending rounds down range, large fire missions can be physically demanding on loaders, an vigilance on everyones part to ensure correct elevations/bearings an fuze settings are applied before you fire. On moves you usually get your chance to get some shut eye, while others stay at the ready in case of ambush. You may have to do clearing patrols an recce protection force every time you go to new positions, which almost constantly if you are on the offensive, depends on who the gun det commander wants to send. At the position there is constant sentry/listening posts, an you can expect to do alot of work coming into an out of action, cam nets are a bit%h. The benefit of being in the artillery is we are an all purpose soldier, we know/do alot of infantry, nothing above platoon for the most part, an we don't shy away from picking a rifle up an defending our guns :gunner: EDIT: We are also heavily armed, each gun det carries personal rifles, C6, C9, grenades, an each BTY has at least an 84mm an 50cal. You can do many jobs as you progress,artillery is one of the only trades that has everything they need an does not need to rely on other units, things like communcation, recce/cp tech, driver, ammo, an even medic(we have are on medics at the unit I'm currently with that came from the bty). Oh an coming in/out of action is highly competitive with the other guns, an you WILL be hurting after a week of 12+ moves a day, unpacking repacking tons of ammo an gear, knee an back injuries are fairly frequent compared to other trades. An your job is dangerous when you think about what could go wrong, things like ammunition on fire, gun falling on you(don't laugh I've had a spade crush my foot but that's another story..) a new guy doing a make safe an opening the breech, casing falls out an good bye number 1,2,3(cordite burns so hot you can feel the heat of burning charge bags from 100meters away), fatigue an over exertion happens.
First off, I'm not an officer, so I don't really know in full detail what their job is besides the ones I come into contact with as a gunner. As an officer things are a little different, peace time you start off with jobs like Safety officer, basicly your job is to ensure rounds don't land in the ricochet zones of the training area an fly off an hit the highway in Gagetown
, you can be in the CP, Recce, in charge of local defense of the gun position, an the big one that all officers in artillery want to be
a FOO(forward observation officer) up with the infantry calling down artillery. You are under alot of stress at pretty much all times as an officer managing your troops an ensuring things like defense of the gun postion are being taken care of, you may also be leading the clearing patrols out to ensure enemy does not have eyes on your bty an do recces of enemy positions to your front.
Career progression is good from Gunner to Master Bombardier, I imagine it's pretty much like that across all the combat arms, not many people stay in it till Sergeant, an even till Warrant, but being a Sergeant in the combat arms means you probably have 8+ years in the regs 5+ in the reserves, all this depends on how much leadership potential you show.
Officer a little different, but after your phase courses 2LT to Captain probably pretty good, depends how many officers are going that trade. If you are going RMC an have previous reserve experience an do the phase courses, all that stuff I bet you may come out with Captain right away, I don't know how that works. Just remember your pay never goes down, we had a bomber go officer for are unit, he did the phase courses an never had to take the pay cut of 2LT.
Artillery see deployment for peacekeeping, but more as infanteers then gunners. There was a Bty in Bosnia an Afghanistan(they are cutting that back as it is no longer needed). Most of this is just a show of force to deter warlords in those countries, show them we mean bussiness. It's not that often in peacekeeping you need the firepower of artillery. You can be deployed as drivers or incharge of QMs an stuff like that, an cross training with Britsh an American forces is common. If you are in eastern Canada you can be sent on tasking alot for W Bty(in the reserves for 3 years an in that time I spent 2 years total working with W Bty, so I decided why not just go regs) an the other schools, as part of Range control(which there is alot of artillery for some reason, maybe we are more reliable
).
In all I've been happy with my career choice, an never regret choosing another combat arm, I've been all over Canada an done salutes in a number of cities I would never have gone to on my own. I'm hoping to switch to one of the regiments in the future, instead of working with them once an awhile.
