Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
There were a lot of good aspects to the unification of the army, navy and Airforce in limits. If it had just been about merging the logistics arms of the military to create one services corp it would have worked well and probably been efficient. However the concept of merging uniforms, rank structures and making generic unit descriptors destroyed a lot of the moral fabric of the Military.
On top of training a military lives and dies on tradition, moral and passing the torch. The American's and Russians are the king of that. When your part of a Guards unit that name and division number means everything, every private and Sergeant in that unit knows that they're part of a unit that defended Stalingrad, or drove on Berlin.
In the States you know that your unit fought in specific battles.
When Hellyar stripped that identity away he stripped away the esprit de corp from the military and tried to make it a faceless mob. He had a good logistics concept but he didn't understand anything about the importance of unit pride and moral and history.
He wanted to take it a step forward and thank god he didn't. His vision was generalized training so a army mechanic that fixed tanks could be assigned to a destroyer to fix engines. Or a rifle man would also be trained on ship board operations to man turrets. It was clumsy and dumb.
On top of that the combined uniforms were crushing, not only were the dark greens incredibly ugly, but they didn't discern army from navy from airforce. It stripped service pride.
I like the changes. As a solider when you went out, you not only fought for town and country and queen so to speak. But you fought for the guys next to you. You also fought to maintain the equal of the ghosts of the unit past.
As a side note I love the fact that Western Land Group is being renamed the 3rd Division. The 3rd Canadian Division included such formations as the Highlanders, the Winnipeg Rifles, The Queens own, the Scottish Regiment and more. They stormed the beach at Juno, they and fought in the battle of Normandy. The 3rd battalion fought in the battle of Vimy and other major WW1 engagements.
Bringing back the unit tags and insignias is a great source of pride to soldiers and ex soldiers alive.
I love the fact that they're bringing back the WW2 Canadian Army badge as a secondary badge.
I think this is a great thing.
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The combination to "Armed Forces" was garbage. I can't recall exactly when, I am sure you can, they seperated the services. I think it happened before I join (89).
These changes are really above the unit level. Trust me the units know their history (I know you know this). I know my unit history, I know the Highlanders (10th Battalion) stood when nearly everyone else ran on April 22 1915. I know that we stood up and walked across a little strip on land in Holland on Oct 31 1944. I know that the Patricias stood when everyone else ran away at Kapyong. I know that we stood in the face of agression in 1993.
The units (for the most part, sadly some are lost forever) maintain their names and/or already honour their predecessors.
I just don't see the point I guess.