Another example of how to destory young officers...
Canadian Army Officer Training in War
By: Brigadier General C.L. Kirkby (Ret’d) ca. 1980
1. After an upbringing in The Permanent Force, service in World War II and during the Korean War (minus combat experience, which is an acknowledged factor), and a normal career in the regular army, I am left with the paraphrased impression that the average Canadian officer carries a sergeant-major’s pacestick in his knapsack; as I consider it an officer’s duty to look up and ahead, rather than down and backwards, this strikes me as a Bad Thing.
2. I have no doubt that the colonial mind lingers, hopefully not inextinguishably, in Canada and particularly in the defence establishment and this plays it part, but in war and peace Canadian officer training somehow fails all along the line to teach that the thin end of the telescope goes to the eye and that officers of every rank are paid to Think Big (or at least comprehensively), not small.
3. Let just one continuing lacuna in operational thinking and training suffice as an example: never or hardly ever has a clear, precise, governing context provided the kind of authoritative envelope within which that essential but rare characteristic – disciplined initiative – can develop and operate.
4. To base a training system two ranks up, as is a necessity in any army with a clear, dispassionate view of war requirements, a primary factor is confidence: the confidence of superiors in their own competence; the confidence of superiors in the capacity of their students. Maybe the first is too much to expect in war, but it shouldn’t be in peace; and the second can to a large extent be imposed by the system, which can also, to a very large degree, ensure its foundations. On reflection it was probably the lack of this kind of confidence which made the Canadian officer training system so defective in wartime, at least in my experience of it.
5. After a few weeks in the Horse Palace on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto and two months of quite conscientious basic training in Orillia, I was sent on a brilliantly conducted and administered assistant instructor’s course in Brockville, a tour de force as far as I could see, on the warrant officer, promoted to Major, who ran it. He was a mercenary soldier in his element, passing on the knowledge and skill of a lifetime with dedication, precision and complete success.
6. But what was I, on graduation two or three months later, in the middle of a long was, doing training officers? Where were the experienced regimental NCOs who should have been there, whether or not they had combat experience at that point? What I was doing was exemplifying the deliberate degradation of candidates which formed the official attitude of the place. “I’ll break your ‘earts before you break mine” was the reiterated ultimate of the commander’s communication with the assembled cadets. “Treat cadets like dirt”, I was ordered regularly: I didn’t, nor did many of the other assistant instructors, but we were in defiance of the party line.
7. The contract between the assistant instructor’s course and the officer training course probably sprang from the fact that the promoted warrant officers who commanded both were confident in teaching NCOs and not teaching officers. Officers and NCOs function at different levels: to deliberately place the training and initial orientation of wartime officers in the hands of mercenary NCOs, whatever rank was thrust upon them, was a fundamental mistake, a psychological blunder which still echoes in the Army and in the most sympathetic public perception of it.
8. Quite suddenly and most fortunately I found myself in the British officer training system. Whatever I must then have been, however callow, however unpromising, however foreign, I was, to every element of that system, automatically a gentleman, a potential officer to be given every skill time allowed but above all to be made confidant and, subtly, an immediate colleague in the officer corps. Misdemeanors, while bringing swift punishment, were made to seem a source of disappointment than of vindictive contempt; incomprehension and minor errors were made to seem a failure to use one’s capacity rather than inherent stupidity. NCOs did NCOs’ work and were obviously amongst the best available: they knew their place, did their work thoroughly and well while remaining in it and, by doing so, taught cadets the rudiments of their relative positions. Officers were experienced, comradely and sympathetic, fellows in an honourable estate, encouraging cadets to enter it rather than eyeing them as suspicious and unworthy interlopers. After nine months in such an environment, I was ready and eager to command soldiers in action: a thoroughly well considered and carefully conducted system made me so.
9. What would have been my attitude as a graduate of the Canadian system? I can’t say and I would offer many good officers insult if I said “awful”, but I can only think it was despite the system that they were good. On my first morning back as a “Sandhurst Officer”, (a Canadian term at the time), I was sat down in the commandant’s office, given coffee, congratulated, welcomed and assured of the earliest posting to a unit in action. When I and three companions were shown out by the Adjutant, a large platoon of “Canadian officers”, (another term in use), was brought to attention, acknowledged by the commandant and marched back to the mess. Our relationship can be imagined. They loathed the army, were bored stiff by it, couldn’t wait for the war to end so they could escape it and showed no sign of any desire to command. The system had insulted them: having seen it in action at Brockville, I wasn’t surprised.
10. What has periodically bothered me since is that I still hear echoes of that military failure. While having no connection with RMC and many reservations concerning it, it does seem to provide to the cadets an officer’s environment. But what they seem to find in the schools in the summer – when they get to soldiering, not academics, is something like my memories of Brockville.
11. Now when I hear someone actually considering the training of officers in a new, long war, my experience suddenly bothers me again. If this hasty and partial paper does nothing else but alert responsible people to the fact that not everything in the Canadian war performance was good and to be perpetuated, it will be useful. If it can indicate that in the rapid expansion of an officer corps, it is the proper ethos which must be inculcated before all else, I will be delighted, and, of course, if it implies clearly that officer ethos is an essential element of success in war, to be understood, cultivated and sustained, what more could I expect?
