What the Thunder Said. John Conrad
the warrior the less wear and tear on the war horse. The underappreciated truck could withstand all these organic ails. D.J. Goodspeed succinctly voiced the need for mechanization to realize the full potential of combat logistics first grasped in the fledgling motor transport units of the First World War:
This problem of maintaining the momentum of an attack was never entirely solved in the First World War, for the technological difficulties were too great. The key to its solution, of course, was the internal combustion engine, which made possible the mechanization of transport and support services.40
During the Second World War, support units grew into full maturity in the respect that the truck for the most part eclipsed the horse as the primary logistics engine. Mechanization of the army was here to stay. The permanent logistics units of the Canadian Army post–First World War were not able to work on large formation (brigade and division level) training but they were able to address the technology gap. It has been said that the U.S. Civil War was the first railway war; the first major conflict where armies could be moved in huge volume over long distances with the assistance of the great iron beast. The most obvious limitation to rail of course is that it lies where it lies. Moving men and matériel is dictated by where the rail lines run. The truck had served notice of an even greater possibility in the First World War. It had demonstrated an ability to unshackle large armies from the inflexibility of fixed rail lines,41 a very good thing for us in Kandahar. In all of Afghanistan there are only 24 kilometres of rail and they are not in southern Afghanistan where the Canadians are. Without dedicated Canadian aviation, we too were forced to rely on the truck as our grandfathers had in the Second World War. As discussed in the previous chapter, the Canadian Corps in the First World War had far more mechanical truck units than other British corps. Unfortunately at the end of the war, only our soldiers came home. Most of the major equipment was left in France, and the small amount of major equipment that did make its way back to Canada was either worn out or obsolete by the early 1930s.
Lieutenant-Colonel Pat Hennessey, a Royal Canadian Army Service Corps officer (the transport corps of the army), had served extensively in and around the thunder of the First World War. He was the dominant army thinker who grasped that supporting units had to have the same level of mobility as the fighting units as well as the greatest possible speed to underwrite offensive flexibility. Hennessey proved to be a driving force for the mechanization of Canadian logistics units. Pat Hennessey is a shadowy figure in Canadian military history, a logistics leader who led from the front and held the confidence of his peers across the various combat arms of the army. Hennessey, from what remnants remain of him in our history, seemed to have been that rare blend of leadership, bravery, and intellectual acumen. He played a prominent role in the reorganization and modernization of the replenishment system between the wars.42 There is no doubt that he would have served Canadian logistics greatly after the Second World War if he had not been killed early in the war during the fall of Hong Kong. There have not been many Canadian logistics leaders like him since his death in 1941. Canada’s meagre defence budget could neither afford nor justify the purchase of mechanical logistics vehicles, however, this did not deter Hennessey. Like a watchful home owner keeping an eye on a neighbour’s expensive home renovation, he watched support developments in the United Kingdom. In this fashion Hennessey was able to harvest ideas that would enable Canadian logistics units to transition to machinery with less friction. He ensured that the technological strides being made in the British Army Service Corps were embedded in the Canadian counterpart (the Canadian Army Service Corps).43 It is not always about how little money you have, imagination is a powerful aspect in remaining relevant. Creativity and imagination are Lieutenant-Colonel Hennessey’s great lessons and they are just as applicable today as they were during the Great Depression.
After years of observation, the Second World War provided the financial impetus to complete the mechanization of combat service support units in Canada’s army. The mechanization of the army led to the advent of new logistics corps. Up until 1944, mechanical repairs and recovery were handled inside the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps, a matériel supply organization with roots in the ancient Royal Army Ordnance Corps of the British army. Believe it or not, the Royal Army Ordnance Corps was organized in the twelfth century to produce articles such as battering rams, slings, and catapults.44 By 1944, the increased mechanical nature of fighting equipment made it necessary to create a dedicated group to specialize in the upkeep of this machinery. The Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RCEME) have been with the Canadian Forces ever since performing a miracle a day in places like Juno, Korea, and Kandahar. They are the soldiers who can fix anything from torn canvas and metal through to the repair and battlefield recovery of every vehicle in the Canadian Forces.
Far removed from its complete reliance on imperial support in the Boer War, the Canadian Army in the Second World War once again fielded logistics units up to and including the corps level. It still took approximately 9,000 British support troops to furnish the army-level support for each of the five Canadian divisions fighting overseas. Unlike the birth of maintainers, the practice of replenishment remained more or less the same in terms of design. Aside from mechanization, the Canadian tactical replenishment systems and structures of the Second World War looked a great deal like those of 1918 and they performed magnificently both in the Italian and northwest European theatres. The Second World War in my mind lies at the summit of the brute logistics era — the days of piling the stocks and equipment high for operations. It marked a summit of sorts for Canadian logistics as well, as the conflict marked the last time, Canada would field such large logistics organizations.
The Korean War began on 25 June 1950.45 The first United Nations (U.N.) collective effort resulted in a determined “police action” to restore South Korean sovereignty. Five years after the Second World War, the Canadian Army was at low ebb having only one brigade under arms.46 The government’s immediate reaction was to announce the recruitment of a special brigade to be used overseas.47 This contribution to the U.N. forces in Korea was the Canadian Army Special Force, which eventually consisted of the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade and a commensurate dollop of combat service support elements. These logistic assets were: 54 Transport Company, Royal Canadian Army Service Corps (RCASC); 25 Infantry Brigade Ordnance Company, Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps (RCOC); and 191 Infantry Workshop, RCEME. The logistics units sustained Canadian elements operating independently in Korea until the stand up of the Commonwealth Division in July 1951. Once the Commonwealth Division became a reality, 54 Transport Company became part of the Commonwealth Divisional Column along with two Royal Army Service Corps companies, 25 Brigade Ordnance Company was welded to its British counterparts to become the 1st Commonwealth Division Ordnance Field Park and 191 Infantry Workshop became integral to the 1st Commonwealth Division Recovery Company. In this capacity, the Canadian units provided splendid support.
Korea fascinates the logistician in me as it hinted at the shape of things to come. The Canadian Army was fresh out of the Second World War, an era of brute logistics where we had lots of Canadian soldiers under arms and tons of Canadian matériel. Support in Korea was fashioned out of a potluck “pooling” of the logistics resources of a number of different nations into a coalition or Commonwealth Division. Coalition operations inside a multinational division are dramatically different from operating inside a homogeneous Canadian one. Equipment and weapon compatibilities vary even between close allies, different ration preferences, different repair parts all pose challenges that make the job of sustaining the combat soldiers more difficult. It takes more time, patience, and more people to achieve the same tasks that a formation from the same country could achieve. More acutely, the unusual logistics requirements of different combat forces inside a coalition can be difficult to orchestrate. I can only imagine that the challenges that were tackled in working inside the Commonwealth Division were no different from the many we faced in Kandahar working as a Multinational Brigade inside an American-led division in Bagram. At the end of the day do we really want these headaches that coalition operations cause? Absolutely.
The farther the army marched from Korea, the rustier became its logistics doctrine. After 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade’s operations inside the Commonwealth Division in the Korean War, the Canadian Army moved permanently away from the division as a fundamental structure.48 The Canadian Army polarized around the brigade group concept — an overbuilt brigade that