Canadian units


The Canadian Forces began building up its forces in Afghanistan in the summer of 2005, expanding the mission from the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, called Operation Athena, to a more aggressive mission in Kandahar, called Operation Archer working closely with the U.S. led Operation Enduring Freedom.

The Department of National Defence calls it “reaffirming its strong defence commitment to Afghanistan.�?

Canada is now in the fifth deployment of soldiers in Operation Athena. The reconnaissance squadron based at Camp Julien near Kabul will stay there until the fall of 2005. Its mission is to provide ISAF with intelligence and to support the planned elections to the Afghan National Assembly and Provincial Council. There are 900 troops on Operation Athena; about 700 are based at Camp Julien in Kabul; the rest elsewhere in southwest Asia.

Operation Archer is called a “Provincial Reconstruction Team,�?made up of personnel from the Canadian Forces, Foreign Affairs, the Canadian International Development Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The deployment for Operation Archer began in early July 2005, when a 220- member Theatre Activation Team left for Kandahar. The reconstruction team left later in July. The plan called for the Provincial Reconstruction Team to remain in Kandahar 18 months.

After the Afghan National Assembly and Provincial Council elections, currently scheduled for the fall of 2005, the Canadian presence at Camp Julien will end.The remaining Canadians in Kabul will move to Kandahar . In February 2006, the Canadian Forces will deploy a brigade headquarters, about 250 people, and an army task force of about 1,000 soldiers.

Operation Archer

• An infantry company from the 3 rd Battalion, Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry
• An engineer squadron from 1 Combat Engineer Regiment
• A combat support company from 1 Service Battalion and 1 General Support Battalion
• Health and medical support from 1 Field Ambulance

The Canadian Forces also says “specialized elements�?are part of Operation Archer, likely including the special forces Joint Task Force 2.

Operation Athena

• An armoured reconnaissance squadron group with Coyotes and light armoured vehicles (LAV III), based on a squadron from the Royal Canadian Dragoons with infantry from the Third Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment.
• An engineer squadron based out of 2 Combat Engineer Regiment, Edmonton.
• A group assigned to help train the Afghan National Army.
• A command element linking the chief of the defence staff in Ottawa with Task Force Kabul.
• Part of 2 Service Battalion, Petawawa, responsible for delivering centralized administrative and logistics support services to Task Force Kabul.
• Dukes Company from the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, which is responsible for force protection at Camp Julien.
• A Health Support Services unit from 2 Field Ambulance that provides medical and dental support to the task force. Support Units Other Canadian units include:
• An airlift element in Camp Mirage, the Canadian base located in southwest Asia, operating CC-130 Hercules tactical transport aircraft.
• An infantry element from Land Force Central Area responsible for force protection in Camp Mirage.

Units that have served in Afghanistan

• Royal 22e Regiment
• 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group
• Third Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment (3 RCR)
• The PPCLI or "Patricias"
• Royal Canadian Dragoons

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Royal 22e Regiment

The Royal 22e Regiment was founded shortly after the beginning of the First World War in 1914.

At the beginning of the war there were just 3,000 regular soldiers in the Canadian Army. The Canadian Expeditionary Force was raised through local militia regiments and at the time francophone soldiers were scattered throughout those militia regiments.

A Quebec businessman, Arthur Mignault of the Franco-American Chemical Company, offered Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden $50,000 of his own money to raise a regiment "composed of and officered by French Canadians." Mignault's proposal was supported by Opposition leader Sir Wilfred Laurier, and soon accepted by Borden, whose government was concerned about lack of support in Quebec for the war effort.

The raw battalion was soon in the worst battles of the Western Front. Its first major action was in 1916 at Courcelette where the soldiers were ordered out of the trenches to capture a village. Soldiers from the battalion fought at Vimy Ridge and Amiens. It came under gas attack at Passchendaele. (About 1,200 men had been recruited for the regiment. After Passchendaele, 600 had been killed or wounded.)

At Cherisy, all the officers were killed or wounded, including a young Georges Vanier, who would command the regiment in the 1920s and eventually become governor general.

In the Second World War, the Van Doos were part of the Canadian assault on Italy, fighting through the Moro Valley and the streets of Ortona. In one fight, at a gully near a town called Case Berardi, some of the Van Doos were surrounded by Germans. An officer named Capt. Paul Triquet led them on a charge from the gully into the town.

In Korea, the regiment fought along the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and took part in the battle for Hill 355.

In later years, the Royal 22e Regiment took part in peacekeeping operations in Cyrpus and the Republic of the Congo, Bosnia and East Timor.

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2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group

The brigade group traces its history back to the early days of the First World War, as the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade that began in 1914. The unit received battle honours that include Ypres, the Somme and Vimy Ridge.

The unit was deactivated in 1918, and then reborn in the Second World War.

In the Second World War, the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade, landed in Sicily and then fought its way up through Italy, and took part in the fierce battle at Ortona. The Second Canadian Infantry Brigade then moved to Europe,

The current brigade also has its roots in the Special Service Force. The First Special Service Force was a joint Canadian and American unit, later made famous by Hollywood as the Devil’s Brigade, which operated from 1942 to 1944.

The Second Canadian Infantry Brigade was deactivated in 1945, then reborn in 1954, later becoming the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade Group, based at Camp Petawawa near Ottawa.

It became the 2Combat Group in the 1960s and in 1977 it was combined with the Canadian Airborne Regiment to form the Special Services Force.

The Special Service Force was dissolved when the Canadian Airborne Regiment was disbanded in 1995 after the Somalia scandal. It was then redesignated as 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, following earlier groups, the 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in Western Canada and 5e Groupe-brigade mécanisé in Quebec. The Department of National Defence says the units are designed to combine the flexibility of special forces with the general capabilities of a military unit to give it "wide employability."

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Royal Canadian Regiment

The Royal Canadian Regiment is one of Canada’s oldest military units, founded in 1883, as a regular unit that would train the Canadian militia. It was in action two years later in the Northwest Rebellion and fought at Batoche and Cut Knife Creek, and later assisted the Royal Northwest Mounted Police in the Yukon during the Gold Rush.

In 1899, the Second Battalion of the RCR served in South Africa in the Boer War. During that time the Third Battalion was formed to guard the Halifax Citadel.

In the First World War, the regiment combined with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and other Canadian units to form the “Shiny 7th Brigade�?that fought at Cambrai and liberated the Belgian city of Mons.

In the Second World War, the RCR landed at Palermo in Sicily and after fighting across the island, was involved in another amphibious landing at Reggio de Calabria. The RCR was also part of the fierce battle at Ortona and then took part in attacks on the German defences in Italy called the Hitler Line and the Gothic Line.

The regiment was transferred to Europe in February 1945 and liberated the Dutch city of Appledorn.

All three battalions of the regiment also fought during the Korean War. In February 1952, the Second Battalion fought the Chinese at the battle Kowang San. It was replaced by the Third Battalion, which took over the Jamestown Line on Hill 187, where it fought one of the last engagements before the armistice in 1953.

The regular Third Battalion was disbanded in 1954. In 1958, a reserve militia unit The London and Oxford Fusiliers was redesignated as the Third Battalion RCR (London and Oxford Fusiliers).

In 1970, with yet another reorganization of the Armed Forces, the third battalion was reborn as a regular unit and the London-based militia unit became the Fourth Battalion.

The First Battalion, originally the First Battalion of the First Canadian Infantry Regiment was disbanded in 1946 and then reborn in 1949. Like the Third Battalion, it is stationed at Camp Petawawa.

Both the First and Third Battalions RCR were deployed during the October Crisis in 1971.

The Third Battalion RCR was stationed in Europe as part of NATO from 1972 to 1975, then was posted to peacekeeping duties in Cyprus in 1976.

In 1990, two companies from 3 RCR and one company from 1 RCR served in the Gulf during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the first Gulf War.

In 1992, soldiers from the Third Battalion helped secure Sarajevo airport during the civil war in Bosnia. It returned to Bosnia for a tour with the stabilization force, SFOR, in 1998 and 1999.

The First battalion has served as peacekeepers in the Sinai, in Bosnia and Kosovo.

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The PPCLI or "Patricias"

The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry have earned a distinguished reputation during the two World Wars and the Korean War. The regiment was created on August 10, 1914, and mobilization began the next day. Most of the soldiers who came to the Patricias had served with regular forces of the British Empire, and many of them had seen action in South Africa.

The regiment is named after Princess Patricia of Connaught, the daughter of Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria. He was the first member of Britain's Royal Family to become Governor General of Canada, serving between 1911 and 1916.

Patricia served as Colonel-in-chief of the regiment. She designed the badge and colours for the regiment. For Christmas in 1915, she sent a card and a box of maple sugar to every Canadian soldier serving overseas. She used her own sewing machine to make thousands of socks for Canadian troops. During the First World War she fell in love with Captain Alexander Ramsay, her father's aide-de-camp, and the year after the war ended they were married. She had to renounce her royal title to marry the commoner and for the rest of her life she was Lady Patricia Ramsay.

In the First World War the Patricias served at Ypres, Frezenberg, Passchendaele, Mount Sorel, Amiens, the Somme and Vimy �?to name a few of the battles they engaged in. In the Second World War, they took part in the landing at Sicily, served in Italy from 1943 to 1945, then fought their way up to northwestern Europe.

The 2nd battalion of the Patricias fought valiantly in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953, receiving the Distinguished Unit Citation from the President of the United States for the battalion's stand near Kapyong in April 1951. As a result, the battalion received a four-foot-long streamer, which is attached to the pike of the regimental colours.

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The Royal Canadian Dragoons

The Royal Canadian Dragoons is Canada’s “senior cavalry regiment.�?It was founded in December 1883 in Calgary and first saw action two years later during the Northwest Rebellion, and in 1896 one unit was sent to the Yukon to keep the peace during the Klondike Gold Rush.

The regiment served during the Boer War in South Africa from 1999 to 1902. During the war, a lieutenant and a sergeant from the Royal Canadian Dragoons received the Victoria Cross.

During the First World War, the regiment was part of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, part of the First Canadian Division.

After the First World the Dragoons, like most cavalry regiments changed from horses to armour and became the First Armoured Car Regiment (Royal Canadian Dragoons).

The Dragoons served in Sicily and Italy in 1943 and 1944. After the Normandy invasion, the Dragoons became the Reconnaissance Regiment for the First Canadian Infantry Division as the Canadians moved through northwest Europe and the Dragoons liberated the town of Leeuwarden in the Netherlands.

After the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Dragoons fought in Korea and then was stationed in Germany. It also served on a peacekeeping mission in Cyprus. After it was withdrawn from Europe in 1987, the regiment was stationed at Camp Petawawa.

One squadron and a reconnaissance troop served in Somalia and the regiment also served on two rotations in Bosnia.

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