The Insubordinate and the Noncompliant
Edited by: Howard G. Coombs

Published by Canadian Defence Academy Press
Kingston, ON, 2007

When I was first asked to review this series of articles contained in this book I was most pleased to accept the task. I had a motive. During my Senior Year at Simon Fraser University I did extensive research into both the Conscription Crisis and the so-called “riots” as part of my major paper for the History program. I was eager to see what advances had been made in the intervening years.

Sadly, I found that we seem to have made little progress and, in some cases, appear to have even taken a step or two backwards. We are only interested in seeing the tip of the iceberg. We forget that Discipline, as a component of morale, is a two edged sword. Our obvious preoccupation with nice and tidy administrative details often crowds out the real causes of the problems. Life in this administrative cocoon seldom prepares an NCO or Officer for the arduous task of managing either the professional serviceman or the citizen soldiers. Adherence to idiotic peacetime rules, non-productive tasks and plain mistreatment lead inevitably to a drop in discipline and morale in anybody’s army that is made up from, in the main, citizen soldiers and ultimately to serious disciplinary problems. It is perhaps why some of the most exceptional leaders of soldiers, sailors and airmen came from the Militia and Reserve units in every conflict outshone their Regular Force counterparts.  

Sadly, with the exception of three articles, I found that we have taken no cognizance of these lessons and examples. Instead, we seem to have slipped back to a more acceptable historical interpretation of the events that were classified as being disciplinary where failings can be attributed to the miscreants and not to the failings of policy, leadership or government policy. In short, this book was a classical re-use of many of the same “official” reports and the investigations carried out by senior officers after the fact and various Boards of Inquiry that did not take account of any other possible failings lest we destroy personal or service reputations. There was very little that was new or interesting in the research presented.

During my year long study of this area of historiography, I was fortunate to meet with many of the key players who were still alive, albeit very elderly, who were eager to recount to me the events that they were involved in. Senator T.A Crerar spoke to me at length about the McKenzie-King government and recounted his conduct in the cabinet meetings.  His jaundiced view of all things military could be explained in the famous line of poetry: “He [McKenzie-King] never did by halves what he could do by quarters.” The same state of affairs existed for the senior military leadership. They felt that they had no alternative but to resign because they had lost the confidence of the Government. Major General Pearkes who had inspected his division [Six Division] on a regular basis felt that the problems were, in the main, to do with the drop in morale caused by the constant harassment to obtain volunteers and the constant training of the Conscripts as a means of compelling the men to volunteer as the major sources of irritation and the problems. The Conscripts or NRMA men felt that they were having their terms of service changed without their consent when their mandate was clearly to defend Canada. 

However, the media’s continual sensational exaggeration of the events seems to have frightened the Government and its Civil Servants in to thinking that a massive military mutiny was in the offing.  There was not a Military insurrection as King later intimated to writer Ralph Allen that forced him to take action and there was no justification for his somewhat irrational statement that had he not taken the action when he did there “would have been tanks in the streets of Ottawa.” What occurred was a Group of Canadian Senior Military Officers that offered their resignations because they felt that they had lost the Government’s confidence.

With regard to many of the so-called incidents such as 6 Group’s turn-back rate, there were other reasons such as the fatigue of aircrew and ground crew. Initially 6 Group was faced with old, ex-RAF equipment, a poor standard of living and the poor leadership of RAF Station personnel that contributed to the problem. When the group finally received their new aircraft, as opposed to used up hand me downs from the RAF, the rate of turn-backs declined significantly. The leadership of the group was also improved by the introduction of experienced RCAF officers and the removal of the RAF personnel from Canadian Stations. Improved messing, quarters and the improved treatment of RCAF personnel also paid handsome dividends.  Similar circumstances existed as well for the Canadian Army and Navy personnel who faced, later in the war, even more hazardous duty than Aircrew.

In short, what is missing from most of these articles is the full context and the focal point for the events described in the articles. Simply referring to carefully written and edited reports without delving behind the “official” story is to obscure the real events. It appears that the task of truly telling the story behind these events still remains to be left to others. 
       
Book Review by Major (ret) Robert Day