This, full dress and feathers is a silly argument, but I am impressed, perhaps depressed is a better word, by the lack of attention displayed, in this and other threads, to our history â “ especially our military history - and the symbolism which attaches to it.
There are five main 'threads' in the strands of our history: Aboriginal, French, British (as opposed to English), American and Modern/Multicultural. Each is different in both duration and impact; the aboriginal people were here longest but their (historical or cultural) 'step' was light â “ they left too few records and historians are having difficulty giving it its full and proper 'place' (due, in part to a combination of fragmentary evidence, cultural politics (which is common to all cultures, by the way)and honest, essential academic disagreement). The modern/multi-cultural thread is shortest but its immediate impact is bright and loud and all pervasive, on everything but the military â “ so far, but, to quote generations of sergeants on thousands of parade squares: â Å“Wait for it!â ? The French were the major factor in 'modern' Canada for 250 years â “ they explored, settled and farmed but failed to exploit; their gaze was always back, over their shoulders, to France. For the next 250 years the influences in Canada were British and (Anglo) American, in about equal strength. They cannot be separated too much â “ they were concurrent influences, one feeding off the other. It is a common, but serious error to try to keep them apart. Victorian and 20th century Canada was and remains far less 'British' than, say, distant New Zealand â “ the French fact is irrelevant â “ the difference is the friendly, familiar, neighbourly and overwhelming influence of our American cousins.
The important differences for modern Canada between the British and Loyalist North Americans, on the one hand, and the French, on the other, were many and deep but they began with the idea of a new place with new, local institutions â “ tied but not bound to Europe.
Our Canadian military culture owes little to the aboriginals, the French or the modern, multicultural communities: it is, overwhelmingly, British-American, as it has been since the arrival of the Loyalists in the 18th century and, especially, the Scots migrations (forced and voluntary) of the early 19th century. (Some (I'm not sure of the number â “ more than two or three, less than a dozen, I think) regiments were raised in Scotland for service in India followed by settlement in Canada â “ with a decade of imprisonment and starvation for families until soldiers and family survivors were reunited, on regimental land grants, in Canada. You can still find the traces in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, the St Lawrence and Ottawa valleys and e.g. Wellington and Dufferin counties in Ontario â “ I spent several weeks perusing parish records in those areas about 40 years ago.)
Military history is not static and military customs and traditions are a reflection of social rather than political history. Thus, over the 250 years of British-American dominance of Canadian military history, many things have changed. We have forgotten, or relegated local heroes like de Salaberry and Tecumseh and replaced them with (estimable, to be sure) people more familiar to the dominant, British-American, culture of the day. At the turn of the 21st century Roméo Dallaire and Lewis MacKenzie have, in their turns, replaced Sir Arthur Currie, Bert Hoffmeister and Cec Merritt in the Canadian military pantheon â “ as happens everywhere, all the time. Ditto for regiments and the attendant buttons and bows issues. (It may be interesting for some to note that many of the customs and traditions, including the 'ceremonial' uniforms worn by some regiments, which are most popular with many Canadians on the fringes of our military, are very 'un-Canadian'. They date from the Cardwells's much needed reforms of the post-Crimean British Army. Some of these reforms persisted well into the 20th century and people of my age can remember regular ration stock-takings to ensure that the CO did not end up with a pay deduction at fiscal year end because he had gone too far over his battalion's ration entitlement â “ a holdover from the clean up of the corruption which was rife in the British commissariat system and which led to charges of theft being levelled (but not, often, proved) against several British commanders of 'good' blood. Others, like Guy Simmonds' 'creation' of a Regiment of Canadian Guards are self-inflicted wounds, a result of our own, sometimes excessive, Anglophilia.)
All that to say that 35 year old 'DEUs' â “ all gussied up with bright gee-gaws to replace the traditional, in 20th century wars, subdued rank badges and simple div patches â “ are no more traditional than high collared, drab wool tunics or bright scarlet ones with different coloured piping and facings. There is nothing especially Canadian or un-Canadian about our uniforms â “ they look remarkably similar to those worn by the Chinese People's Liberation Army and, indeed, by Idi Amin â “ neither, in my view, making a case for their form, fit and function.
I agree that uniforms reflect the civilian dress of the day, with, almost inevitably, modifications for good, military reasons: most Romans wore a short tunic and so did Roman soldiers, a good wool tunic, augmented by a good wool blanket/cloak, and with a breastplate, helmet, shield and sometimes a leather kilt and woollen or leather trousers, too, and so on. Ditto the army that took Québec â “ cutaway coats with waistcoats and knee breeches with stockings were the 'norm' for gentlemen and even for common men, for Sunday wear, in the 1760s. They were issued to, and adapted for soldiers, too. But, big BUT, the fact that soldiers dressed in a manner which was 'normal' for society at large does not, by any stretch of the imagination, translate into a requirement for the soldiers to have a uniform that â ?mimics Business Casual and Business dressâ ? â “ that is a huge red herring.
In the 19th century the British and German armies noted that bright red, white and blue did not aid camouflage and concealment and, first, rifle green jackets with subdued facings and buttons, and, later, khaki and feldgrau (field grey) appeared on the battlefield, thus, irrevocably, separating military from civilian attire. The khaki battle dress or field service dress was, inevitably, 'dressed up' as Michael Dorosh notes, on his web site â “ especially for British officers. The utilitarian leather belts and straps, including the famous Sam Browne belt, (worn, on active service, with scarlet tunics, by the RCD and The RCR) became increasing, then wholly decorative. The visible distinctions between officers, senior NCOs and the rank and file became greater and greater, reinforcing concomitant but outmoded social divisions. In the '60s and then, again, in the '80s the British Army upgraded soldiers' uniforms to a style and quality which aimed to reduced those distinctions. The initial Canadian jolly green jumper was designed to remove them entirely â “ polyester and plastic for one and all. Very soon we saw â “ I think it is now quite common â “ that officers spent their own money to get a better cut or fit and, often, better cloth, too. Some (many?) naval officers have real (American or British) gold on their sleeves â “ even on the slip-ons they wear on sweaters, etc. On balance I favoured, and still do, the British approach (better kit for the soldiers) to the Canadian one (lower quality for all}.
It is noted that not all Canadian regiments had ceremonial dress uniforms â “ neither did all British regiments. Until the late 19th century soldiers in most armies had one 'style' of uniform â “ the one they fought in. Ditto, on the basis of the photographic evidence on their web site: the Calgary Highlanders in the 1920s and The RCR in the 1950s. The soldiers' tropical worsted uniform was an attempt to give Canadian soldiers and airmen a summer weight 'walking out' uniform, such as their British colleagues had for tropical service. In the '50s a form of garrison dress had already evolved: bush pants and dress shirts, sleeves rolled up, in the summer, and bush pants or battle dress trousers, shirt and high-neck sweater in the winter with either a jump smock or a nylon parka (no liner in spring and fall) as outerwear. Neither full, garrison duty, pressed and gussied up woollen battledress or TWs were popular â “ soldiers wanted to wear something practical, comfortable and easy to care for, while still looking 'smart.' In the '50s and '60s most Canadian officers wore service dress, highly polished leather Sam Browne and all, when 'on parade' but they, too â “ even the CO and the brigadier - wore the informal garrison dress on normal 'working days.'
That still seems to be the case in Petawawa â “ or it was when members of our regimental association last visited: I don't think I noticed a full (jacket and tie) DEU in wear and I think I would have noticed because it would have stood out. I did see a few â “ a very few â “ green trousers with open neck shirts and sweaters but mostly I saw CADPAT battle dress, including the CO and the brigade commander. I observed this, again, when I visited a British base a few years ago â “ I don't think I saw an officer or NCO and certainly not a private, in anything but a disruptive pattern uniform â “ and that included the brigadier in his office. My impression (and it has been a decade plus since I last set foot on an American base) is that the US is the same.
I see many mixes of dress when I stop by the Army Officers' Mess in Ottawa â “ most of the military bureaucrats wear sweaters/trousers or their CADPAT uniforms; a few (some colonels and most generals) wear a tunic and tie. If NDHQ is to be the standard then there is a need, there, for something other than battle dress and a ceremonial uniform. But, really, is what General Howsyourfather is going to wear when he meets a lobbyist for lunch really the 'standard' for issue of uniforms in the entire Canadian Army?
Whatever uniforms we are going to issue to Canadian soldiers â “ and I do not agree that they should buy their own â “ should reflect our unique Canadian military traditions. For 250 years the predominant Canadian military traditions have been local (North American) adaptations of British customs, traditions, organizations and equipment. Sometimes â “ e.g. Rangers/Rifles/Light Infantry â “ we, British North Americans, have led the way but mostly we have adapted British ways and means to meet our needs. We still do â “ to the extent that we retain the ever flexible and ever changing regimental system Ignoring those traditions is to try to rewrite Canadian history â “ dishonest in the extreme.
This, full dress and feathers, is still a silly argument â “ we have better things to do with scarce dollars but ... as I have mentioned before, morale and pride (self esteem) and self confidence are all mixed together and all can be damaged if there is a sense that soldiers, NCOs and officers are, somehow, less 'worthy' than other Canadians.
With all possible respect to today's soldiers, traditions matter, too â “ we need to focus our soldiers more on Alexander Dunn, Richard Rowland Thompson, Milton Gregg and Cec Merritt and less on Lester B Pearson and Roméo Dallaire. The indisputable geopolitical fact is that we had a 40 year 'rest' from large scale combat (a long time in our history) while our armed forces kept the peace, the only peace that really, ever, needed to be kept, through intensive training for war and hair trigger alertness. The bits of other overseas service we saw â “ so called Pearsonian peacekeeping was nothing more than military busy-work, designed to help preserve the fragile, but peaceful, balance of power. Keeping the 'real' peace â “ the peace that mattered â “ required tough, superbly disciplined, well trained and adequately equipped troops.
Getting that 'mix' (toughness, discipline, training) right required something I would call, for lack of a better term, an agenda of respect for soldiers and soldiering â “ we had it under St. Laurent, it began to slip, a bit, under Pearson and Diefenbaker, and it collapsed, totally and completely, in 1968 when Trudeau and Head gave practical, political effect to their anti-military views. I do not believe it, the agenda of respect, ever recovered ... certainly not after 1993. I remember the debilitating effects of the original jolly green jumper and the universally despised 'work dress' â “ the soft drink deliverymen's uniform. Soldiers wondered if anyone in Ottawa gave a hoot about them. So, uniforms can matter ...
There is a lot more to do than fiddle with uniforms, but if those uniforms are not supportive of our most valuable traditions, if polyester and plastic and fierce brigade patches do no good, then they may be part of the problem.
I apologize for the length; I adopt Churchill's defence: I didn't have time to write a short one ... actually I'm just too lazy to revise and edit.
