Talk:The Combat Arms

Assuming we will follow precedence in such postings, what do we do with the artillery? The RCHA takes precedence over the Armd branch, who in turn take precedence over the RCA.

We should try to ensure a common standard. Dapaterson

• As Engineers have precedence over Infantry.....

• Then comes the question of who are Cbt Arms, CS and CSS.....In some circles Cbt Arms are only Armour and Infantry, with Arty and Engr, being CS, and all the rest falling into CSS.

George 11:40 EDT 25 May 2006

I would propose to add sometghing like this:

"Until the mid ‘60s the Canadian Army was divided into: Arms and Services. The division mattered in some areas, especially individual training (largely in leadership training) for officers and non-commissioned officers, and promotion examinations and staff college selection for officers.

The arms were: armour; artillery, engineers, signals and infantry.

All the remainder were services. Within some services - medical, dental, chaplains, legal and general list officers (such as psychologist/personnel selection) - officers were ‘specialists’ and were selected, trained, promoted, paid and employed according to rules agreed with their professional governing bodies.

A ‘combat arms’ group was created in the early ‘60s when the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps School and the Royal Canadian School of Infantry (both in Camp Borden, Ontario) were merged into the Combat Arms School – which, soon after, moved to Camp Gagetown. This coincided with the reintroduction of mechanized infantry into the Canadian Army and the increased importance of e.g. tank/infantry cooperation. Amongst the first innovations of the Combat Arms School was to merge the RCAC’s squadron commander’s course and the RCIC’s company commander’s course into a combat team commander’s course.

After the creation of the Canadian Forces and the reordering of branches in the mid/late ‘60s the engineers and signals (now communications) groups struggled with their roles and were dropped from the list of arms.

In the ‘90s the current structure was created: the combat arms were expanded to include the army’s engineers (who ‘won’ their battle with professional standards and their role in the army much earlier than their signals confreres); army signals (not the whole communications branch) were welcomed back as a combat support arm and the army portion of the military police and intelligence branches were ‘promoted’ to combat support arm status, too. The services were re-designated as combat service support arms."