There is a certain level of rivalry that exists between the active and reserve Marines, however pretty much all that rivalry has subsided with the current war in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as operations elsewhere. Reserve Marines stand alongside their regular brethren, doing the same jobs. You've also got to realize that all Marines go through the same recruit training and MOS schools in mixed platoons. Additionally, a much higher percentage of reserve Marines are former active duty than compared to the Canadian reserves.
I'll be the first to admit that if you take a reservist just mobilized and his regular counterpart, the reservist will have a rusty skillset, however during pre-deployment work up training those cobwebs are shaken off. Additionally, where the regulars have strengths in doing their job day in and day out and mastering 'the little things', reservists often bring a wealth of non-traditional skillsets along with them. You may have a reservist that in civilian life is a carpenter and as such is an excellent resource for pioneer or reconstruction type projects and requires little training in this area, or you may have others that work as civilian paramedics and as such will see more trauma cases than their regular counterparts, or you may have another that is a law-enforcement officer and is indispensable in constabulary type urban patrolling situations, etc. A great example of this was a Sgt. in my platoon in Iraq. In civilian life he was a civil engineer and owned his own engineering firm. While overseas his billet was a recce. section leader and he excelled at it in that his engineering background gave him the experience to do some of the most detailed recce. reporting that 1st Marine Division had ever seen, to the point that he was given a formal award by our battalion commander upon recommendation from Division HQ. Additionally, while we were stationed at the Al Kut airbase in eastern Iraq, a US Navy Construction Battalion (Sea Bees) stationed beside our company lines sought his assistance to plan a reconstruction project that was rebuilding a bridge over the Tigris river near the town of Al Aziziya. Another example was our platoon's Navy Corpsman (medic). In civilian life he works as a paramedic with the Fire Department of New York and has seen more gunshot wounds and other trauma cases than most active duty Navy Corpsmen. Through his efforts and skillset he helped save the life of one of my platoon mates that was severely wounded by an RPG during an ambush in August of 2003 in the southern outskirts of Baghdad, the same AO that the Black Watch were deployed to in 2004 that is known as the 'Triangle of Death'.
The fact is that presently the Canadian Forces are understaffed, underequipped and overtasked. To ignore the resource that the reserves provide to help alleviate some of the manpower shortages is just plain dumb.
