Some Canloan BD's from the Canadian War Museum

[Greeves]

I was at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa yesterday and have a whole bunch of pics for posting. I thought I'd post here first for the benefit of our uniform collectors.

From my understanding the Canloan officer program sent Canadian officers on attachment to British units in order to gain experience. If anyone knows anything else about this I'd love to hear it.

Anyway, here's the display case I found:

[Greeves]

Some close-ups:

[Greeves]

Found one to The Queen's - my particular collecting interest!

[Greeves]

For the Airborne collectors in our group:

[Jack Dutton-Roberts]

WOW Geoff,

Looks like you had a great time

The Airborne BD is particularly interesting. A Canadian attached to the 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment, 1st Airborne Division? How perculiar...surely this person must be documented...? Ade or Geoff, what company did this man belong to? I forgot what colours the slip ons are now..

Thanks from Jack.

[Greeves]

WOW Geoff,

Looks like you had a great time

The Airborne BD is particularly interesting. A Canadian attached to the 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment, 1st Airborne Division? How perculiar...surely this person must be documented...?

Thanks from Jack.

I had a great time, Jack! I was there for the Trooping of the Colour of the 3rd Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment - who are recently returned from Afghanistan. My father is a retired LCol with this battalion and he, along with about 20 other Korean War veterans were the guests of honour.
Lovely day!
I'll see what I can find out about this Border Regiment BD - I'll contact the museum and see what they can tell me about it.

[Greeves]

One last one. Amongst the Canloan BD's is this one to the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada (a regiment with which I used to serve). It doesn't have a Canloan "Canada" strip on it and it isn't named to a British regiment. However, it does have a divisional patch I don't recognize - can anyone help?

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Geoff, this a great stuff The patch you did not recognise is for British 8th Corps.

The "Can Loan" scheme came about as we Brits had a shortage of junior officers whereas the Canadian Army had a surplus.

"Can loan" officers to 1st (Airborne) Battl The Border Regt were:

Lt's; Comper; Colbert and Crabbe. All joined 24th April 1944. Lt Crabbe was tragically killed in a PIAT training accident on June 4th 1944.

Several more joined in July 1944 and these four served at Arnhem:
Lt's Assen, Bouville, Comper and Wellbelove.

Cheers, Ade.

[Greeves]

Thanks for that Ade! I'll contact the museum and see if we can narrow down which of the officers you mentioned has their BD on display.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Geoff, I think I have found your man Easy really, I should have thought earlier but I am shattered after a weekend away at a living history show; anyway the red coloured Coy slide to the shoulder strap would make him part of "C" Coy. This would mean he would be Lt. P.G. Bouville OC of 18 Platoon. His service number was CND540 and he was wounded and taken PoW at Arnhem.

Cheers, Ade.

[Tony Farrell]

Interesting usage of the Arm of Service strips there. Would I be correct in assuming that multi-strips for infantry units denoted battalion? Was this official? Oh, and a nice bit of 'narrowing down' there Ade!

[Greeves]

Hi Geoff, I think I have found your man Easy really, I should have thought earlier but I am shattered after a weekend away at a living history show; anyway the red coloured Coy slide to the shoulder strap would make him part of "C" Coy. This would mean he would be Lt. P.G. Bouville OC of 18 Platoon. His service number was CND540 and he was wounded and taken PoW at Arnhem.

Cheers, Ade.

Wow! That's pretty impressive, Ade! But what was his dog's name?

[Greeves]

Interesting usage of the Arm of Service strips there. Would I be correct in assuming that multi-strips for infantry units denoted battalion? Was this official? Oh, and a nice bit of 'narrowing down' there Ade!

Tony, I don't know much about cloth items- - what are the Arm of Service strips?

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Geoff, sorry, no name for his dog


The "arm of service stripes" are the small coloured strips of cloth sewn on the arm beneath the formation sign. Each branch of service wore a different colour or combination of colours. So at a glance it was possible to tell which arm a soldier belonged to. (An exception to this was the Airborne forces who did not wear these. Instead they wore the "Airborne" strip as shown on the Border Regt. BD in your photos. Parachute units did not wear these even, according to regulations. But the Para battl's of 6th A/B Div never seem to have read that particular Army Council Instruction )

I don't have time right now as work beckons, but I will post up the list of colours for you.

The use of several strips to denote seniorority of a Infantry Regt within a Infantry Division was widespread. Thus the senior Regt wore one strip, the second ranked unit two and the junior Regt three.

Cheers, Ade.

[Jean-Loup]

Every time I am in Ottawa, I go to visite that museum. I particularly like the WW1 part. To bad lots of the german stuff is fake (like that SS trooper).
JL