Unification

[Jungle]

This is largely the reason we went through the unification process.
For 21-year old Paul Theodore Hellyer the conscription was a time of frustration and revelation. It helped shape convictions which in the 1960s led him, as minister of national defence, to launch a program to unify the three Armed Forces.
From "The search for identity", by Blair Fraser.
... Hellyer originally enlisted in March 1944 in the RCAF. He went through the basic training that was essentially the same for all three services, then passed the examination that would let him start learning to be a pilot.
By that time, there were not enough aircraft in the whole commonwealth for the stream of young men pouring out from the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
Meanwhile, defense minister Ralston and air minister Power were confering on the problem of transferring to the Army some 4500 young men the RCAF did not need. It was impossible. The only way to make a soldier out of an airman, they found, was to give the airman a discharge and let him re enlist, as a civilian, in the Army. Hellyer was one of the 4500 who did.
It was explained to the young would-be pilots how urgently they were needed in the Infantry, how imperative the duty to switch. But those patriotic appeals were not borne out by what happened.
First, the young Army recruits were put through basic training - the same basic training they had just completed in the RCAF, but that made no difference. The book said basic training comes first, so basic training came first.
Then young Hellyer‘s academic record showed he was above average in mathematics. The book said recruits with an above-average for mathematics should go to the Artillery. In 1944 the Artillery did not need men, at least not acutely, and the Infantry‘s need was desperate, but that made no difference. Hellyer was sent to the Artillery. He never did get overseas.
When Lance-Bombardier Paul Hellyer finally was discharged in April 1946, he took away a vivid impression of military organization and military thinking. According to his personal experience, it was not merely stupid, it was imbecile...

 

[fortuncookie5084]

Interesting. HIs experience sounds like mine while trying to transfer to the reg force. After my militia unit sent my file to CFRC with explicit instructions to tranfer to inf officer, they immediately went into sales pitch mode for the navy. I protested but it fell on deaf ears. At the end of it they said they‘d process it. What they failed to tell me until I asked (months later, after enquiring as to the status of my file) was that inf officer is closed. Their response "That‘s normal. When it opens maybe next year or the year after we‘ll put you on the waiting list" One to two years to go on the WAITING LIST!! Nuts!! Nuts!! They say they need people and then they pull stuff like this. Had I agreed I‘d start training sometime around 2008 I think!

 

[Michael Dorosh]

It may be trite to say it, but we are all products of our environments.

Jungle, am I detecting some sympathy for the Right Hononourable Mr. Hellyer? I don‘t mean that as an accusation. Most people here would point to Unification as a failed policy. I wonder though, do you think it could have been worked had it been carried out differently? If the uniforms had not been so godawful ugly?

I think maybe Vietnam was the reason our own Forces deteriorated, and Unification was just a coincidence. But I really don‘t know one way or another.

What is your opinion, though?

 

[Jungle]

I do also think it is a failed policy. Not because it was an impossible undertaking, but because the military did not really want it, and for that reason didn‘t go all the way. The initial plan was to make the CF look a lot like the USMC (not in role, but in organisation). To achieve that, we would have had to can the regt‘l system, and that was strongly opposed (as I am sure it still is).
Maybe it would have been simpler to make basic training common, in a common school for the 3 services, and unify the upper echelons of the CofC (for example: have 1 minister for Nat‘l Def, instead of 1 per service). The rest didn‘t need to change that much.
It should be noted that the reason HMCS Bonaventure, Canada‘s last aircraft carrier, was sold (to India) in 1970 was because the Navy could not man it after unification‘s personnel cuts. To illustrate these cuts, the RegF in 1963 had 123 694 pers and was reduced to 84 339 in 1970. During the same period, the ResF went from 40 000 to 20 000.
Unification was supposed to save money by the elimination of those positions. This money was to be directed toward the purchase of new eqpt, spending 25% of DND‘s budget instead of the previous 13%. But unpredictably high inflation rates prevented this to happen.
Finally, was unification a good thing ? nobody knows, as up to this day the CF did not have to fight a war with the current organisation.

 

[Jungle]

fortuncookie5084, why not apply as NCM in the Infantry and apply for a commission later ? You would be starting within months.