Building the Army’s Backbone

OCTOBER 2021

272 pages, 6 x 9 in., 13 b&w photos, 26 tables, 2 diagrams/charts 978-0-7748-6696-5 HC $89.95 USD / £59.00 GBP also available as an e-book

MILITARY HISTORY / CANADIAN HISTORY

SERIES: Studies in Canadian Military History

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ANDREW L. BROWN is an assistant professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada.

Canadian Non-Commissioned Officers in the Second World War

Andrew L. Brown

In September 1939, the Canadian army, a tiny force of around 55,000 regulars and reservists, began a remarkable expansion. No army can function without a backbone of skilled non-commissioned officers (NCOs) – corporals, sergeants, and warrant officers – and the army needed to create one out of raw civilian material. Building the Army’s Backbone tells the story of how senior leadership created a corps of NCOs that helped the burgeoning force train, fight, and win. This innovative book uncovers the army’s two-track NCO-production system: locally organized training programs were run by units and formations, while centralized programs were overseen by the army. Meanwhile, to bring coherence to the two-track approach, the army circulated its best-trained NCOs between operational forces, the reinforcement pool, and the training system. The result was a corps of NCOs that collectively possessed the essential skills in leadership, tactics, and instruction to help the army succeed in battle.

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