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COPYRIGHT 2006 Ontario Historical Society
Abstract
The Second World War activities of the University of Western Ontario Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC) provide an ideal case study that examines the influence of military demands on academic requirements, explores the experiences of part-time student soldiers, illuminates officer training and selection, and questions the effectiveness of the COTC at the most crucial stage in its history. The focus on Western highlights southern Ontario history, as the training unit encompassed Western's main campus, the medical school, smaller London institutions like Huron College, and the Windsor (Assumption) and Waterloo affiliate colleges. These findings can also be compared and contrasted with the experiences of other post-secondary institutions.
Resume: Si l'on veut se rendre compte de l'influence des besoins et exigences militaires sur les cursus academiques, etudier les modalites particulieres de l'education de soldats qui sont aussi etudiants, analyser les procedures de selection et de formation des officiers, ou juger de l'efficacite du Programme de Formation des Officiers canadiens a un des moments les plus cruciaux de son histoire, il n'y a pas de meilleur exemple et de sujet d'etude que le Programme de Formation des Officiers canadiens de l'Universite de Western Ontario pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. Le choix de Western permet en fait d'explorer toute l'histoire de ce programme dans le sud-est de l'Ontario, puisqu'il etait offert non seulement sur le campus principal de Western, mais aussi a l'ecole de medecine, ainsi que dans plusieurs plus petites institutions d'enseignement de London, comme le College Huron, et aux colleges affilies de Windsor (Assumption) et Waterloo. Les resultats de cette etude peuvent aussi etre compares a des expreriences similaires dans d'autres institutions d'enseignement post secondaire.
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When Canada declared war against Germany on 10 September 1939, it did so with a military severely deficient in troop strength, weapons, and equipment. Yet by the end of the conflict, nearly one million people had served in the Canadian forces. University-based Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC) contingents formed an important source of these personnel. After all, military and political leaders looked to the universities to make a distinctive contribution to the war effort. However, the army, governments, schools, and COTC members all struggled with the exact role the training corps should play. The principal question focused on whether officers should be favoured for selection based upon university education, especially since students supposedly made ideal officer candidates, particularly in critical technical positions. COTC units laboured to prepare their volunteers for these roles in active service. Nonetheless, introductory and interrupted training, shifting and often contradictory government policies, high deferral rates, rampant complaints, and army disappointment with the program meant that the COTC never reached the lofty heights its founders envisioned.
The COTC derived, like virtually all Canadian military conventions, from British precedent. The 1908 establishment in Britain of the university-based Officer Training Corps came in response to abysmal military performance in the Boer War. Beginning in 1912, Canadian universities adopted the program, creating officer training as a means to better students morally and physically. Students were widely perceived to be future civilian leaders, and the COTC also helped steer some of the best-educated middle and upper class men into military service. The first unit was established at McGill University, but the outbreak of the Great War provided the real impetus to university training. Western University, later renamed the University of Western Ontario (UWO), established its contingent in November 1914. (1)
In the inter-war period, the Western COTC suffered through the severe cutbacks and outright neglect that marred all contemporary Canadian military ventures, with the Department of National Defence regularly balking at picking up the unit's costs. (2) Not surprisingly, a consequent lack of equipment severely hindered training. Volunteers had to purchase their own outdated uniforms, including swords, circumstances that often reduced members to training in civilian clothes. However, due to the dedicated efforts of committed faculty, the unit survived to meet the onset of the second great war.
Upon the arrival of that war, COTC units experienced a surge of recruits, with Western's contingent ballooning from 260 to nearly 500 men. (3) Volunteers were not obligated to enlist in the army proper, as the organization existed for training purposes only. Nonetheless, since all officers required a provincial matriculation examination, universities were the logical place to seek out potential leaders. Initially, the COTC provided trainees with basic infantry instruction and, for medical school students, some military medical seasoning.
This rudimentary training did not immediately lead to active service as an officer, even if a candidate wished to enlist, largely because of the Mackenzie King government's focus on air training and the dispatch of only one army division overseas. Also, although the country possessed just 455 professional officers before the war, 6,500 reserve and former service members were eligible for commissions, sufficient numbers to meet the limited need. (4) In addition, the prevailing attitude, expressed by Western COTC Major H.M. Thomas in a 1939 speech, cautioned that "the best possible service for any undergraduate at present is to complete his education." (5) University student bodies remained repositories of potential officers, but the first volunteers from the COTC did not enlist in the active army until early 1940. (6)
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More sustained training began...
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