Hey, I said c'mon!

The Canadian Forces needs thousands of new recruits to survive. Too bad the great causes (and great posters) of the past seem to be gone forever

James Cudmore
National Post

Any day now, the Canadian Forces will unveil its latest recruiting campaign in a bid to flesh out the ranks in the face of skyrocketing attrition and plummeting morale.

The problem, apparently, is a diminished desire among Canada's spiky-haired youth to heed the call to service. Indeed, the Canadian Forces' insufficient ability to attract and retain new recruits has already begun to have an effect on operations.

In December, the perennially cash-strapped Canadian navy announced it was forced to take the proud ship HMCS Huron off sea duty due to a pressing lack of sailors to crew her.
At the time, Lieutenant-Commander Chris Henderson, a navy spokesman, said the move was the result of lacklustre recruiting efforts that have left the Pacific fleet with 267 fewer sailors than it requires.

"It's something we have to do," he said. "We don't have enough people to sail the other ships in our fleet and you end up moving people from ship to ship just to keep the fleet going."

The problem is not limited to the navy: Last year, the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry lost 90 of its 650 soldiers to attrition. Lieutenant-Colonel Marv Makulowich, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, said he is expecting that number to swell to as many as 200 soldiers in the coming year.

In an effort to stave off these defections, the Canadian Forces over the last two years has launched a series of initiatives designed to improve the quality of life for our overworked, underpaid troops and staunch the outward flow of its highly trained soldiers.

It's a far cry from the old days, when Canadians took the Queen's shilling without a second thought to quality of life -- choosing to serve the nation come what may.
During the Second World War, Canada had more than a million men under arms, and that number was even greater during the First. Today, we have fewer than 60,000.

Obviously, recruits are more likely to sign up when there's a well-defined bogeyman (Hitler, Communism) threatening us good guys. The trick is to attract recruits now, in 2001. And so it was with fanfare that the Canadian Forces announced a campaign this year to recruit as many as 7,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen -- a program the Forces admits is critical to its survival.

But in the age of sporting gear advertisements that shout "No fear" and "Just do it," it's hard to believe that such slogans as "Working together to build our team" or "Diversity: Your pride, your future, your move" will prove to be the rallying cry our youth will heed.

Gone, it seems, from the recruiting sergeant's vocabulary are the military action words that at turns enticed and shamed two generations of young men to risk their lives on the killing fields of Fortress Europe. Gone, too, are the striking images that fired a nation to rally 'round its flag and offer her sons in its defence.

The historical Canadian recruiting posters shown here stand in stark contrast to the modern crop of recruitment ads. In a current poster (see the bottom right corner of the opposite page), two officers peer through binoculars from the bridge of their ship as an empty sea stretches out behind them. The poster claims there is "Adventure, challenge, career ... as an officer." Another officer is depicted climbing into the cockpit of his CF-18 Hornet jet fighter, as another peers squint-eyed through a sextant.

They are military images, as the streaking, artistically rendered war planes atop the poster attest, but they have nothing on the recruiting posters of wars gone by.

The most striking image on this page -- the one that most caught my eye -- is that of a Second World War soldier rearing on his motor bike as he races up a hill. He is headed, we know, into battle, racing two others on their mechanized steeds to be the first to the punch.
In shadowy background, this soldier's military forbearer struggles to control his own rearing mount -- a muscled white war horse -- helm upon his head, shield and lance under one arm, charging forward to join the battle. "Notre Arm�e: A besoin de bons Canadiens," the poster screams: "Our Army: In need of good Canadians."

must be a slow news day....

Soldier of Fortune

Attracting soldiers defeats Red Army
Exemptions to the Russian draft have slashed the list of eligible conscripts, writes Craig Nelson in Moscow.

As triumphant placards are hoisted throughout Moscow in preparation for celebrations this week marking the anniversary of the allied victory in Europe in World War II, the once-vaunted Red Army is clamouring for men to fill its ranks.

President Vladimir Putin and his Defence Minister, Mr Sergei Ivanov, have vowed to shrink the military and create an all-professional army. Still, the dreaded draft continues and military officials are complaining publicly for the first time that they do not have enough men.

"Today we cannot call up as many people as the armed forces need ... Soon there will be no-one we can call up," Mr Vladislav Putilin, the deputy army chief of staff, recently complained.

It is an almost unheard of sentiment in a country that lost an estimated 25 million people in World War II and rates its glorious military past and ferocious display of patriotism against Nazi invaders as its chief national virtues.

The manpower crunch comes as the Kremlin bludgeons ahead with its anti-separatist war in the southern republic of Chechnya and girds friendly governments in Central Asia against alleged threats from radical Islamic rebels.

In Tajikistan, Moscow is establishing a military base and stationing 12,000 Russian troops to patrol the border with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, which it claims funds the insurgents.

The prospect of assignment to either perilous backwater preyed on the minds of 19-year-old Mr Valentin Ivanov and his family and friends as they gathered in a scruffy working-class district in south-eastern Moscow to bid him goodbye on a recent early Thursday morning. They suppressed their fears with revelry until the last of many parting toasts.

"To your health," they chanted, clinking their beer bottles in salute to the red-eyed Mr Ivanov. "To your return," they chanted and clinked again. Then a pause and a single utterance: "To your return alive."

Within minutes, a bus carrying Mr Ivanov and a mere four other conscripts pulled out of a driveway adjacent to a 500-seat football pitch and merged into the morning rush-hour traffic, bound for a central processing centre in central Moscow. During Soviet rule, up to 3,000 men from the same Lyublino district entered the armed forces each year.

All Russian men between 18 and 27 are eligible for the draft and are required to serve at least two years, but liberal student exemptions in response to widespread loathing of military service, along with claims of disabilities, have reduced the pool of eligible conscripts, who make up 70 per cent of Russia's 1.2 million-man armed forces.

Mr Putin has ordered the call-up of 189,995 conscripts in this spring's draft, sharply down from the 350,00 to 400,000 of recent drafts. Military officials worry that even that goal will not be met.

The divide separating Mr Ivanov from the throngs of eligible draft-age men avoiding military service is not health or education. It is money.

Mr Ivanov's mother, Galina, applauded those parents who could bribe doctors or draft officials for exemptions, but she said her family lived on a combined pension of $173 a month and could not afford it for Valentin, the last of her four sons who has been drafted.

Mrs Ivanov put the going rate for an exemption at $580. Ms Natalya Shvol, of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, says the cost runs as high as $9,600.

Bribery is common even after induction. Valya, a 41-year-old maid, said she turned over her savings of nearly $2,000 to a local draft official two years ago in exchange for the promise her son would be stationed in Moscow instead of Chechnya. The pledge was met.

For parents who can afford the pay-offs, avoiding military service is worth any price, for on a hierarchy of the downtrodden, no-one would have possibly greater claim to the top rung than the Russian conscript.

Equipment was pitiable and hunger routine, former soldier Mr Maxim Sakhalov said. And although it is regarded as an honoured tradition by many soldiers such as Mr Sakhalov, bastardisation is a "terrible scourge", said Ms Vorobyova Fyodorovna of the mothers' committee, citing the recent case of a conscript who twice required surgery following a beating by a junior officer.

According to Ms Fyodorovna, the army's official report said the young man had fallen out of a second-floor window.

If any further discouragement to service in Chechnya were needed besides the estimated 3,000 troops who have been killed and 5,000 wounded there since war resumed in August 1999, it came in May, when the daily allowance for conscripts was reduced from $54 to less than $4 and reductions in their length of military service for fighting in the republic were eliminated.

From the Boer War in South Africa to peacekeeping duties in Yugoslavia, the 48th Highlanders have participated in every Canadian military campaign with exception of the Gulf War.

And tomorrow, in recognition of the reserve unit's 110th anniversary, 400 current and former members will celebrate with full Scottish Highland pageantry, including the skirl of bagpipes.

``It should be a wonderful day,'' said Capt. Steve Tibbetts, of the Highlanders. ``The unit has a definite spot in Toronto and Canadian history.''

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`The unit has a spot in Toronto and Canadian history'
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The public will be treated to a short parade that starts at 10 a.m. at the Moss Park Armoury and proceeds west along Queen St. to Nathan Phillips Square where, at 11 a.m., the unit will be given the freedom of the city by Councillor Chris Korwin-Kuczynski and other dignitaries.

At noon, the parade will return to the armoury along the same route. Members of the regiment past and present and friends will gather for a reception at the St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, where they will meet a delegation from Apeldoorn, Holland.

``The Highlanders helped liberate the town in the Second World War,'' said Tibbetts.

``It's a very significant point in the regiment's history.''

Capt. John Hill, 33, a Toronto businessman, said he's proud to be a Highlander and he's looking forward to the celebration.

``We're part of the past, the present and we'll be busy in the future,'' he said. ``We're an important fixture in the city.''

Master Cpl. Sean Westrop said the regiment has proven itself in battle as well as peacetime.

The Highlanders' men and women were happy to help dig the city out of the snow three winters ago, he said.

Master Cpl. Peter Stibbard said there aren't many jobs that allow you to rappel out of helicopters, so the Highlanders is the ``right spot'' to be.

Highlander Ashley Doyle said the regiment will travel anywhere in Canada where it's needed and said he's proud the unit was able to help during the Manitoba floods a few years back.

Formed in Toronto in 1891, the regiment adopted the Davidson tartan and the falcon head as its crest.

The first action for the 48th Highlanders, whose home station is at Moss Park, took place in South Africa during the Boer War when the regiment sent more than 116 soldiers to augment the Royal Canadian Regiment in 1899.

They were mobilized again for World War I, and departed for England in September, 1914, as the 15th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. During the war, the regiment was involved in every major action including Ypres, the Somme, Vimy and Passchendaele, but paid heavily with the death of 1,473 men.

During World War II, the regiment was mobilized again and sent to England as part of the first contingent that left Canada in 1939. It later won battle honours in Italy and liberated Apeldoorn in its last action of the war.

The Highlanders were on active duty in Korea and also served on peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, the Middle East, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.

Closer to home, the regiment is known for its pipe and drum marching band, which has played all over Canada and in international competitions.

The band is a regular feature of Toronto's annual Santa Claus parade and for years christened every hockey season by marching out on the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens, a tradition that has continued at the Air Canada Centre.

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A.R.G.

On this topic, I came across a quote I liked:

He will win who has the military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign. -Sun Tzu-

Well it's Tommy this, and Tommy that,
And chuck 'im out the brute,
But it's saviour of the country,
When the guns begin to shoot.
-Kipling-

Recceguy: You must know every peom that mentions the "Brute".

A.R.G.