Abstract
Building the Army's Backbone is a comprehensive account of how the Canadian Army, from a nearly standing start in 1939, recruited and trained some 110,000 non-commissioned officers (NCOs) during the Second World War. The book has much of interest beyond the Canadian experience. The author, a lieutenant colonel who began his military career as a non-commissioned member, brings his own professional insight in explaining the multiple roles and responsibilities of NCOs, and the increasing demands placed on them as the war progressed. The burden on NCOs was not only to learn, but to grasp new hardware and concepts fully in order to teach fellow NCOs and the rank and file, and to execute in the confusion of battle as a model to the junior ranks and as an essential support to officers.
Many of the problems in mobilising and sustaining large expeditionary forces discussed in the book were common to the Anglo-American armies, but not in the extreme form that faced the Canadian Army. The British and US armed forces laboured under austerity budgets in the 1920s–30s, but the Canadian forces were barely on life support. In Canada, as in Britain and the US, the heavy loss of life in ground forces during the First World War encouraged governments to give priority to air and naval forces, and to authorise the raising of large expeditionary land forces late and reluctantly—1939 in Britain and only after the fall of France in 1940 in the case of Canada. The Canadian Army faced especially strong political headwinds, notably the adamant rejection, by the large French-speaking part of the population, of conscription for service overseas in what they saw as a war mainly to defend Britain. In a compromise measure, the government approved conscription for home defence only, in effect creating two armies: the volunteer First Canadian Army of five divisions overseas, and a largely conscript home army of three divisions. A further challenge was the need to implement French language training, especially to qualify French-speaking officers and NCOs to stimulate recruitment in French Canada.
The author has drawn on two main archives. One is the personnel files of 388 infantry NCOs who served in the divisions that fought in Italy and North-West Europe; the sample is drawn from the files of people who were killed or died on active service and thus have been opened to researchers by the Government of Canada. The second is the voluminous training records of the army, from which the author has built a detailed account of the development of the training system, with special attention paid to the evolving syllabi of courses, at home and overseas.
Senior commanders in Ottawa and overseas always recognised the vital importance of selecting and training capable NCOs, and impressed that need at all levels. The training programs that resulted were flexible and innovative, with no standard path for promotion: ‘the army's approach … was fundamentally about imparting skills, not gaining formal qualifications.’ (p. 210) There was no other choice: in 1939 the regulars (permanent force) numbered only 4,000 all ranks, with about 600 NCOs, while the reserves (non-permanent active militia), some 50,000 (7,600 NCOs) who had only a few days paid training each year. From this small beginning the army expanded to a peak strength of 495,000 personnel in March 1944 (about half in the North American theatre and half overseas). Analysis of the files of infantry NCOs reveals the enormous debt the country owed to the few who soldiered on during the interwar years. Fully four per cent had previous service in the permanent force, and 32 per cent in the militia.
Initially, promotions and training were entirely delegated to units. Then in 1940 and 1941 National Defence Headquarters established a network of training centres across the country that developed programs for everything from recruit to advanced training, including courses to qualify NCOs and, as the war progressed, a growing number of specialist courses for NCOs. Similarly, the Canadian Army Overseas in the UK ran centralised courses into which candidates rotated from the field and reinforcement units. Yet production through the courses in Canada and the UK never met more than a fraction of demand, and much of the responsibility remained with the units. When the army entered sustained operations, in Italy in 1943 and North-West Europe in 1944–5, brigades and divisions assisted by running a variety of refresher and specialist courses in the field to bring men—often newly promoted to replace casualties—up to speed. The high command endeavoured to close the ‘lessons-learned’ loop by rotating experienced NCOs from the front line to training establishments in Canada and the UK, a worthy effort that inevitably caused tension as unit commanders resisted losing good people to the training stream.
The ultimate test for the Canadian Army was its commitment to intense combat in Italy and North-West Europe. The sample of infantry NCO personnel files reveals some striking statistics. Seven per cent of these men achieved accelerated promotion because of outstanding performance in battle, including some who had previously been rated as poor soldiers. Sixty-one per cent of the sample returned to combat after recovering from injuries or illness, some more than one time—the brutal cost of sustaining the front-line units with experienced people.