One of the most storied military units in Canada will be established again on Friday
Ian MacAlpine The Whig-Standard
One of the most storied military units in Canada will be established once again on Friday.
When 1 Canadian Division -- with the red patch that has been its symbol dating to the First World War -- stands up, it will be to lead the military into the complicated and politically sensitive modern wars and emergencies that Canada and its NATO allies can expect to be facing for the rest of this century.
The First has been stood up five times now, starting in the First World War, when Germans used the red patch that is its emblem to characterize all Canadian soldiers as "little red devils."
The Kingston-based unit will be a rapid-response headquarters for future Canadian missions, whether that mission is a domestic deployment following a natural disaster or an overseas deployment such as Afghanistan or Haiti.
"This will be Canada's first response," said Maj.-Gen David Fraser, a former Afghanistan commander who will take command of the new unit when it is stood up on Friday.
"If you've got another Afghanistan, another U.N. mission, another natural disaster, you'll call us first."
Fraser is a career infantry officer with a boot in both the military and academic worlds.
A member of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, he received battlefield commendations in Bosnia and earned his Master's degree at Royal Military College and Queen's University.
He has spent the last two years in charge of the Canadian Forces staff college in Toronto.
He can talk counterinsurgency and doctrine like a scholar but he still keeps his helmet and the rest of his battle kit on a stand a few feet from his desk.
The Kingston-based unit will be the government's first response to any future military or civilian emergency and Fraser says its mission was created, and will continue to be informed, by the work the Canadian Forces has done in Afghanistan.
The country has punched above its weight there and not only gained the respect of its allies, but shed the thinking and operational thinking that may have been useful during the Cold War but needed to change to operate effectively today.
"You don't fight by yourself any more," said Fraser, who compared the learning curve the military went through as akin to "a reverse cliff."
"You fight with your allies and you fight as one service today. We are not the Canadian Forces of yesterday, we are not army, navy or air force, we are one force and our job is to deliver capability for Canada."
The new unit, which will have 132 personnel when it is fully staffed, will count among its division troops the units any military needs when deploying to a war or an emergency, including Kingston's 21 Electronic Warfare Squadron, combat engineers, an air defence regiment and a counter-IED section.
It will also have a permanent and high-ranking Air Force officer attached to it, as no deployment can operate without planes, helicopters, and these days, unmanned aerial vehicles.
It will also have a civilian representative embedded at the highest levels to co-ordinate the work of other federal government departments, such as the Canadian International Development Agency.
Canada's whole-of-government approach in Afghanistan, much praised by other NATO allies, links both military and civilian efforts and is seen as the model for the future.
Fraser is fiercely proud of the job the military has done in Afghanistan, where he was commander of the multi-national brigade around Kandahar in 2006, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
He says having a command unit able to deploy on short notice anywhere in the world, will build on the credibility Canada has established in Afghanistan and said it seemed fitting that the First Division, with its impressive history, would be leading the charge.
"We're back in the days after World War I and World War II where Canada was seen as having one of the best armies in the world," he said, saying the country has regained an international swagger that it had not enjoyed since then.
"Our allies didn't think that we could do it, but we did it, and Canada is back on the world stage in a big way.
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