Side-Steppers and Original-Firsts: The Overseas Chevron Controversy and Canadian Identity in the Great War

Badges of rank, qualification, and achievement can play significant, it not always explicit, roles in military culture. In late 1917 the British War Office instituted a new award, overseas service chevrons, to recognize service abroad for all ranks and branches of the Empire’s expeditionary forces. This article considers evolving Canadian attitudes toward the chevrons throughout 1918 and in the postwar years. Rather than boost the morale of rank and file soldiers in the Canadian Corps, the chevrons appear to have caused much resentment. Some front liners believed that the award should somehow be distinguish between combat and non-combat service. After the war, however, veterans who had once rejected the chevrons reclaimed them as unique symbols of their long years on the Western front

Close Fire Support: Sexton Self-Propelled Guns of the 23rd Field Regiment, 1942–1945

On the battlefields of the First World War, initially successful attacks all too often ended in failure because artillery weapons could not be moved up quickly enough to support assault infantry at the sharp end of the fight. As the first tanks appeared on the battlefields in late 1916, British designers tabled ideas for self-propelled gun carriages capable of negotiating difficult terrain, carrying their own loads of ammunition and providing some degree of protection for their crews. One design that never made it off the drawing board was the ED3 Emplacement Destroyer, a 27,000-pound vehicle mounting a 4.5-inch howitzer.1 Surviving sketches of this unrealized concept bear a striking similarity to a series of self-propelled guns employed during the Second World War. One of these was the Canadian-designed and manufactured Sexton 25-pounder

Equipment of the Canadian Infantrymen, 1939–1982: A Material/Historical Assessment

The history of Canada’s soldiers in the twentieth century tends to incorporate a few recurrent themes. One of these is the changing nature of the soldier’s experience of war, from the Boer War through to the Second World War and beyond. Another is the gradual transition of Canadian military forces from British to American spheres of influence, a theme that has become particularly relevant since 1939. This article will explore these two themes from a material history perspective, an approach that is generally absent from the broader historiography. The focus will be the transformations in the Canadian infantry soldier’s personal field equipment and kit from the Second World War through to the 1980s. The evidence from this period points to two conclusions: first, that the experience of war and the growing professionalism of the Canadian infantryman has been reflected in his equipment; and second, that there has been an American influence on the equipment of the Canadian soldier since the outbreak of the Second World War