The Canadian reserve infantry regiment in which I first served (1967-1971) in NATO's reserves for rapid deployment (in the events the Soviets made a run for the Rhine - abetted by tactical nuclear artillery) had already been the regiment of generations of men who had served with great distinction and with honours in two great European wars and the Korean conflict: it is now designated a "Royal" regiment.
What is most troubling to me personally is to read that on D-Day as the remains of the Regiment's companies came up into Normandy from their losses on the beaches, they defeated their first identified German force - reported as defeated with no enemy survivors. That force was an SS boys' regiment.
Also troubling to me personally was the recent devotion to another regiment by the then Anglican Governor-General of Canada who seemed unaware that there were any questions about the conduct of her favoured infantry regiments in Korea in the matter of the interrogation of prisoners taken on intelligence-gathering sorties - although she is, herself, ethnically a Chinese Canadian.
The Canadians in the First War had often found themselves thrown in under English officers and, occasionally, some men had shown reluctance to climb out of trenches into machine-gun fire under a foreign - a British, i.e., English, officer.
Canada was not yet a nation even when I was born and was ruled at home under an act and the seal of Westminster. Even as a boy, I started school on the prairies under the Union Jack with British royalty on the classroom walls: the day began with God Save The Queen and public school prayers with a short Bible passage. We learned to draw the Union Jack in the first grades, but I do not recall learning to draw the old "Red Ensign". As a boy scout, I learned not to fly the Union Jack upside-down. As I had a maternal English grandfather (whom I did not then know, but who was born in Ireland where his father served in the English Army) and a paternal English grandmother from near Blackpool, what could seem strange?
Desertion: what remains unclear to me are the numbers. What explains that so few deserted singly or mutinied in numbers? Ignore the later Soviet example at Stalingrad and elsewhere in face of the Wehrmacht - treat it as an utter perversion of military justice in the face of national if not ethnic annihilation.
In the The Great War we had the cousin of the British King, The Kaiser, as our Canadian enemy - a Canada itself populated by a great number of ethnic Germans, as was America. Set demographics aside. Why so few desertions?
To my limited knowledge, we have a poem by Herbert Read, a monument in England and little else for the Anglo side which sheds any light on those deserters. On the German side of the Western Front, the account of Ernest Juenger was not of much help. By late in the war, the French story is somewhat nasty, but not known to me in detail (but the sequelæ of 1871 were still in living memory in Paris.)
In some cases, it may be that the manner in which Canadian reserve regiments and battalions were thrown together or torn apart for mustering reinforcements, combined with the large numbers of losses in geographically-based companies and regiments (for example, as concerns Newfoundland troops) may have prevented the spread of agitation which might have risen to the level of mutiny. The numbers of casualties may have limited disaffection reaching a tipping point or a point of catastrophic "slump". In the case of troops from the Indian subcontinent, huge losses may have been combined with utter demoralization.
What is striking is that given the number of military war dead in WWI, the number of desertions by Canadians were such a relative rarity in reports and records (some deserters or slackers may have been disposed of extra-judicially on the spot.)
On the German side, the previous war with France, in 1870-71, had served to produce a unified German force to face a diverse collection of armies. In the case of the French, the German troops fought a familiar enemy and were armed with military lore and the confidence of recent victory (and would soon return to cross the Marne - some officers serving in both great world wars with mottoes and slogans accumulated.)
If you are aware of research on the military practice of reducing the risk of mutiny by rotating frontline troops to the rear, please add a note. It would appear to be a topic in both the social psychology of men in close combat and the psychiatry of combat readiness and fitness. The common euphemisms appear to be "deadly conflict", "combat", perhaps "hand-to-hand fighting" but seldom "killing" and more seldom, "murder under military sanction" or "murder in the guise of military action".
In my experience, former combatants still in infantry service in the late 1960's used the offensive term "big Gooks" to designate taller non-Korean (Mongolian?) captives who were deliberately selected to be taken "prisoner" on scouting sorties, whereas along the Western Front, "Kraut" covered the Germans in general with the preference being to capture someone of rank or otherwise with dispatches or maps in hand.
The lore of practical warfare - for combat survival and as well as offense and defense - and particularlya s relates to intelligence gathering - as passed down among non-commissioned ranks may well differ significantly from the officers' lore of warfare as passed down in military colleges. I do recall that the injunction not to fall behind in hillside attacks (post-Korean tactics) was related to a reported risk to those commanding the attack. There seems to be a paucity of information about what may have been - in the Vietnam-era term - "fragging" folklore and legend. The accounts of torture and murder may have been bragging at its worst (but passed on by those who had chosen to stay in military service for almost twenty years at that time.)
I believe that deserters are usually lumped with cowards and/or traitors, unlike objectors who were subjected to some term of prison or service. Whether a soldier under conscription serving in a foreign war can be considered a traitor to his or her nation would seem less that obvious. Is mutiny not resulting in murder and strategic loss judged as would be catastrophic mutiny in time of war e.g., not the bridge-too-far, not the strategic bridgehead? Similar considerations would seem to apply to surrender: what are the terms and circumstances under which soldiers serving in, say, a United Nations force in a foreign conflict, may surrender in good conscience and yet be accounted an honourable discharge when hostilities cease?
Actively seeking to promote desertion is now a strategy in Afghanistan while media such as BBC and CNN report that "foreign fighters" are those least likely to surrender. The Soviet authorities in the Great Patriotic War conflated desertion with treason, with capture, with serving the enemy, with illegal or unauthorized surrender. Summary execution and mass executions of Soviet troops by Soviet authorities are well documented. We are now presented with desertion, not surrender, as a political option which we favor and seek to promote through dialog with the Taliban and others at all levels. It may be only a tactic, but it is now publicly avowed as key to our strategy to end armed conflict.
The conditions under which troops not defending civilians or critical war resources may be permitted to even discuss surrender is not clear to me: cases in point may be those deployed too far in advance (error) or those disabled by so-called "friendly fire". Cases of Canadians who fell victim to American fire in WWII are documented, but I am unaware of directives from senior officers on how to handle the redeployment or subsequent deployment of these stricken forces with specific regard to morale.
If you are aware of resources readily available in English, French or German, please add a note.
Canadians prior to deployment in the Horn of Africa seemed immunized by journalistic tradition against any knowledge of Canadian wartime atrocities - whereas there was some awareness of the need for Canadian Forces to be perceived as under Canadian command (among many other issues as relate, e.g., to French-Canadian regiments from Quebec.)
Note: my extended Canadian family includes a current army General and a former regimental sergeant-major (served in Korea under-age) both descended from a 19th Century Métis scout and translator for British English Canadian forces sometimes referred to as a traitor to the Métis cause in the Riel Rebellion and as having committed a battlefield murder in the killing of Isidore Dumont (that rebellion divided the Métis along ethnic lines: Scots and French although I find that blame for that ethnic cleavage is not commonly laid on the heros, Riel and Dumont.) My wife's grandfather served in the trenches and his son survived ditching in the sea in WWII. I do not think of myself as an unconditional pacifist, but rather a liberal anti-militarist in matters of command and hierarchy in research (historical, technical or scientific), business, labour, party politics, community administration and organized religion - but neither a libertarian nor an anarchist - with an enduring interest in the inter-relations of the abuse of language with the abuse of power.
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