maxx441 said:
Hello, I would like to know if there is a lot of you who are in the reserve and who did the course of 10 months to go in Afghanistan. I would like to have more information about this course. Thanks.
Sorry for my English, i am a french person i did my best.
There isn't exactly a 'course' - at least not the way I think of it. Anyway, I noticed you're infantry, so I'll describe what's happened to reserve infantry on Task Force 3-08.
Here in Ontario for the August deployment we had three groups of soldiers arrive- streams , 2/3, and stream 4.
Stream 1 joined 3RCR last spring, around May/June. There are all, to the best of my knowledge, with the battle group- mostly with rifle companies. They're getting about 16 months of training, and they are part and parcel of the battlegroup- treated like reg force infantry all the way.
Streams 2 and 3 arrived at the same time in September, the only difference between the two streams being whether personnel were on course that summer before they arrived. I'm on stream 2. We were sent all over the place... A lucky few got into battlegroup, though many of them had some sort of qualification like LAV driver and such. The rest of us filled in the various reserve or mixed reserve/reg positions... Force protection for convoys, defense and security for KAF, police OMLT for the Afghan National Police, provincial reconstruction team force protection, stuff like that. We're getting a full year of training before we deploy, and fill the bulk of the non-regforce positions.
Finally, stream 4 is 'others'. They fill in the reservist part of the replacement pool, some guys are drivers for various groups, many are cimic, some are specialized personnel who've been training already but who have just joind the task force (psyops, etc), and so on and so forth. I only know a few stream 4 guys, so there may be more jobs they filled in that I'm not aware of.
I'm not sure how you guys are doing it for your tour, but I do have a buddy from the CGG who is with the battlegroup now and has been there for quite some time. With the Quebec tour leaving in a year, I don't know if you can still get on the tour or not- or at least, in any of the 'better' positions. That said, your unit OPS cell should be able to tell you more. Your area probably has some differences from ours in how it's handled.
With the mission having extended til 2011, however, I'm sure Quebec will be up for another one soon enough.
