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Authors: Romeo Dallaire
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position.
Eighteen months into the posting, my eldest son, Willem, was born, and for a while at least, all the back-biting took a back seat to my family. My father was over the moon. For someone who had grown up without any family to speak of, seeing that third generation was important to him. I never saw him so full of love and pride as he was when he first held Willem in his arms. He died suddenly a few months after Willem was born, having suffered a stroke.
I was posted back to Valcartier in 1978 to assume command of a batteryâ120 gunners. I was in my element. I noticed that my battery, and for that matter the entire regiment, was not working to potential during exercises because many of the signallers were unilingual French Canadians, and the fire discipline orders were always given in a special jargon that required mastery of military English. French-speaking gunners simply couldnât cope. I pushed for some reforms, chiefly the ability to give the orders in French. Almost eleven years after the Offical Languages Act had passed, we were still fighting these stupid language restrictions, and as a result, we were not reaching our potential as an operational artillery regiment.
Luckily, the commanding officer was a reasonable, open-minded man named Tim Sparling, who gave me the go-ahead to try out French commands in the field. I ran a conversion course, translating all the technical stuff into French; it worked like a charm, and our effectiveness increased dramatically. The signallers were ecstatic because they finally understood what they were saying. Over the years there had been much muttering about me being a French-Canadian nationalist, but nobody could argue with the result. When the troops were able to fight in their own language, there was a positive surge in morale and effectiveness.
I was soon given the opportunity to attend the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Virginia. It was a great year, although it took my family and me a while to adjust to the culture. Our sponsorswere Major Bob List and his wife, Marty. List was an A-6 Intruder fighter bomber pilot who flew off aircraft carriers during his two long tours in Vietnam. He and his wife got a bit of a surprise when their young daughter, listening to Willem speak French, cried out, âHe doesnât speak English!â To which I responded, immediately and without thinking, âHe doesnât speak American either.â Things went uphill from there.
At the staff college in Virginia, I saw first-hand the terrible price exacted by Vietnam. There wasnât one of my instructors and fellow officers whose body had not been horribly scarred in battle. The mental toll was equally apparent, revealing itself in bitter invectives against the U.S. generals and higher command who had either screwed up in the field or stayed comfortably at home. I wondered whether I wouldnât have been equally suspicious of politicians, grand strategists and pencil pushers from NDHQ if I had lost 63 per cent of my classmates in combat.
I put my nose to the grindstone and managed to reasonably distinguish myself academically, producing a research paper on circumpolar threats and the nature of Arctic warfare, which was later used by National Defence Headquarters when it was seriously considering setting up a permanent garrison of army, navy and air force personnel along the Northwest Passage.
Immediately upon returning to Canada I was appointed executive assistant to the deputy commander of the army, Major General Doug Baker, a privileged position. He was known to everybody as âTwo Gunâ Baker because of his straight-shooting style of command. As the armyâs senior serving gunner, he was the godfather of the artillery. The war in the Falklands was on, and we seemed to be constantly zipping around the country or back and forth to Britain and the United States, with the general munching on chocolate bars, immersed in one of the several
Eighteen months into the posting, my eldest son, Willem, was born, and for a while at least, all the back-biting took a back seat to my family. My father was over the moon. For someone who had grown up without any family to speak of, seeing that third generation was important to him. I never saw him so full of love and pride as he was when he first held Willem in his arms. He died suddenly a few months after Willem was born, having suffered a stroke.
I was posted back to Valcartier in 1978 to assume command of a batteryâ120 gunners. I was in my element. I noticed that my battery, and for that matter the entire regiment, was not working to potential during exercises because many of the signallers were unilingual French Canadians, and the fire discipline orders were always given in a special jargon that required mastery of military English. French-speaking gunners simply couldnât cope. I pushed for some reforms, chiefly the ability to give the orders in French. Almost eleven years after the Offical Languages Act had passed, we were still fighting these stupid language restrictions, and as a result, we were not reaching our potential as an operational artillery regiment.
Luckily, the commanding officer was a reasonable, open-minded man named Tim Sparling, who gave me the go-ahead to try out French commands in the field. I ran a conversion course, translating all the technical stuff into French; it worked like a charm, and our effectiveness increased dramatically. The signallers were ecstatic because they finally understood what they were saying. Over the years there had been much muttering about me being a French-Canadian nationalist, but nobody could argue with the result. When the troops were able to fight in their own language, there was a positive surge in morale and effectiveness.
I was soon given the opportunity to attend the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Virginia. It was a great year, although it took my family and me a while to adjust to the culture. Our sponsorswere Major Bob List and his wife, Marty. List was an A-6 Intruder fighter bomber pilot who flew off aircraft carriers during his two long tours in Vietnam. He and his wife got a bit of a surprise when their young daughter, listening to Willem speak French, cried out, âHe doesnât speak English!â To which I responded, immediately and without thinking, âHe doesnât speak American either.â Things went uphill from there.
At the staff college in Virginia, I saw first-hand the terrible price exacted by Vietnam. There wasnât one of my instructors and fellow officers whose body had not been horribly scarred in battle. The mental toll was equally apparent, revealing itself in bitter invectives against the U.S. generals and higher command who had either screwed up in the field or stayed comfortably at home. I wondered whether I wouldnât have been equally suspicious of politicians, grand strategists and pencil pushers from NDHQ if I had lost 63 per cent of my classmates in combat.
I put my nose to the grindstone and managed to reasonably distinguish myself academically, producing a research paper on circumpolar threats and the nature of Arctic warfare, which was later used by National Defence Headquarters when it was seriously considering setting up a permanent garrison of army, navy and air force personnel along the Northwest Passage.
Immediately upon returning to Canada I was appointed executive assistant to the deputy commander of the army, Major General Doug Baker, a privileged position. He was known to everybody as âTwo Gunâ Baker because of his straight-shooting style of command. As the armyâs senior serving gunner, he was the godfather of the artillery. The war in the Falklands was on, and we seemed to be constantly zipping around the country or back and forth to Britain and the United States, with the general munching on chocolate bars, immersed in one of the several
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