Old Sweat said:
I have been quietly steaming here, recalling what the CF did to itself in trying to create a common basic recruit course starting in the late 60s. The first version was only six weeks or so long, and based on eliminating material that was not applicable to all three (or at least two) former services did not include weapons training and replaced combat first aid with the St John's Ambulance course. The rationale for this was that we were never going to fight again, so the greatest likelihood of injury was in an industrial setting, so teach civilian first aid.
Over time it added a week or two, and after the FLQ Crisis, the rifle returned. Still, there was very little in the nature of field craft and basic tactics. In time it improved, but the official CF position was that FMC should have its own programme to teach army stuff. It was all very logical and briefed well for the little green people who were running the individual training system.
The basic officer course paralleled this philosophy, and all sorts of people seemed to have held their collective nose over the whole thing to conform to the spirit of unification and the elimination of unnecessary training.
Discussions on the utility of this could be counted upon to liven up happy hours.
In time it got fixed, but it was a frustrating mess for more than a few years. It was so screwed up, that hopefully it could never be replicated, or could it?
There was
some logic in the 1960s proposals ... I think even you and I might agree that our basic training (25
ish weeks, as I recall, followed by basic (Group 1) infantry or artillery or signals, etc) skills traiing which could be another 25
ish weeks for some skills) was expensive and, arguably, amounted to 'over-training.' We were, I think you will agree, the best trained soldiers in the West: better than our British confreres and massively superior in every single respect to the US Army. I think the same could be said for the Navy and the RCAF.
The notion was explained, at a Mess lunch table as I recall, of a common to all, short (eight week) recruit phase after which sailor, soldiers and airmen would all go their separate ways for short (2 weeks for the RCAF, six weeks, each for the RCN and CA(R)) special to service recruit courses followed by extended Group 1 courses. We would still be the best trained troops in NATO but sailors, soldiers and airmen would reach ships, units and flight-lines in something like eight months rather than a year after joining.
Of course, as you and I both know, it all fell victim to a '
machine' that put
integration ahead of everything else including sensible military standards.
My, very personal, opinion is that common,
integrated training is a waste until CWO's course/senior staff college. It would, I suspect, be better and maybe even cheaper to let the RCN, CA and RCAF design and conduct their own recruit courses to meet their own needs. I doubt that in today's fiscal/resource climate we would see very much over-training.
(I, very personally, again, would
love to see ALL of St Jean, including CMR, given away to the province of Quebec to provide education and training for immigrants. Do language training in Ottawa/Gatineau, ALL officers pass through RMC (Kingston) (even CFRs and those doing degrees at CivvyU) and recruits are trained in individual service schools, etc.)
A few months ago I stopped by a military display here in Ottawa and chatted with some soldiers from Petawawa. I was impressed with their bearing, knowledge, powers of expression and so on ... I think we have good, well trained people, today ... at least as good and you and i were in our day, even though they have had less formal training than we had 60 years ago. I believe it is possible for training to be efficient
and effective, but it doesn't have to be
integrated, at all.
