Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray
Colonel,
You can preserve that in the Museum also.
The ethos, the traditions, the camaraderie cannot be replicated.
...
Imagine transferring a first rate unit into the second line of defence!
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Sir,
Thank you for your explanation and I hope my reply can enlighten what I mean by military culture. For the longest time in Canada, the militia is the army. At times before and between the World Wars, our regular force numbered at 2000. And we immediately reduced our regular army back into the militia after WWII.
So, from my Point of View (and it is now obvious that it does not apply to our parent regiments), shifting the regforce into the res is a perfectly natural thing to do. In fact, before 11 Sept, that was what was planned. We no longer were able to field artillery and armoured regiments while keeping up the peacekeeping tempo. The plan was to shift those regts into the reserves so that we can increased the infantry and engineer regiments.
Of course, 11 Sept changed all those plans and we are the better for it but culturally, I see no shame in serving in the reserve regiments. Our demands on them are just as tough if not tougher. They're expected to field quality people that we will strip for deployment purposes at half the regforce budget.
But I now see that the Canadian solution is not applicable here.