Honouring the past and looking to the future
May 18, 2019 - Tim Bryant, Western Sentinel
The Canadian Army Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RCEME) is 75 years old.
On May 15, 2019, the RCEME corps celebrated three quarters of a century since its founding near the end of the Second World War in 1944 as a corps within the Canadian Army.
The celebrations at 3rd Canadian Division Support Base Edmonton were a bit more subdued than they ordinarily would have been, explained 3rd Canadian Division Support Group Sergeant-Major Chief Warrant Officer Wayne Bantock. With 3rd Canadian Division currently engaged with Exercise MAPLE RESOLVE, fewer than 200 people were present for the celebrations.
However, CWO Bantock said it was rather appropriate the division’s RCEME corps was on exercise on the corps’ anniversary.
“RCEME has always done their best work in the field,” he said. “And that’s where most of our soldiers are right now. I think the fact RCEME right now is in the field, working on equipment, doing their jobs, sustaining a brigade – I think it’s very important. It’s symbolic. It’s what we do.”
It’s especially fitting considering the other major historical event that took place in 1944.
“Seventy-five years ago, the corps was getting ready to participate in the D-Day landings, and now 75 years later, they’re getting ready to participate in missions all over the world,” CWO Bantock added.
In addition to marking 75 years as a corps, the RCEME corps also received a bit of its past back – dark blue berets have been reintroduced to the uniform. The berets were not part of the corps’ original uniform, but were introduced shortly after the War, explained 3rd Canadian Division Equipment Technical Sergeant-Major CWO Jon Ryder.
“It goes back to the 1955 to 1965 era, post-World War Two, when the board or ordnance or the technical corps wore blue berets,” he said. “Then unification came along and put everyone back into green berets.”
Caption
Members of the Canadian Army Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers pose for a group picture as part of the corps’ 75th anniversary celebrations held at 3rd Canadian Division Support Base Edmonton on May 15, 2019.
Photo by Robert Schwartz, 3rd Canadian Division Support Base Edmonton Imaging
Caption
Chief Warrant Officer Jon Ryder and Major Hilary Forbes cut the Canadian Army Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers cake as part of the corps’ 75th anniversary celebrations on May 15, 2019.
Photo by Robert Schwartz, 3rd Canadian Division Support Base Edmonton Imaging
Since then, there has been a gradual reintroduction of elements of the RCEME corps’ past into its modern existence, in much the same way other Canadian Armed Forces formations have seen the past brought into the present.
“We got the horse back in 1991, we got our ‘Royal’ back a couple of years ago, and now we’ve got our blue berets back,” CWO Ryder said. “It’s kind of a throwback to the past while celebrating the past and looking forward to the future.”
CWO Bantock said reintroducing the blue berets is important to the RCEME corps’ identity.
“It’s a very significant step,” he said. “It’s a very important step in the history of the RCEME corps to get that back.”
Caption
The Canadian Army Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers with their newly readopted blue berets.
Photo by Robert Schwartz, 3rd Canadian Division Support Base Edmonton Imaging
Caption
Private Luffy Dhaliwal raises the new Canadian Army Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers flag as part of the corps’ 75th anniversary celebration on May 15, 2019.
Photo by Robert Schwartz, 3rd Canadian Division Support Base Edmonton Imaging
However, he said he doesn’t feel a full restoration of the RCEME corps roots, including former ranks like staff sergeant or lance corporal, will happen.
The RCEME corps’ creation in 1944 was the result of how the nature of war had been evolving since the First World War, and had accelerated during the course of the Second World War, explained CWO Bantock.
“They realized they needed one group of subject matter experts and technical experts to sustain the fight in a modern, at that time, mechanized war,” he said.
CWO Ryder explained military equipment was becoming increasingly technical.
“Tanks, armoured personnel carriers were coming in, heavy machine guns – a lot of the stuff was getting more technical and needed more attention to keep running than in previous years,” he said.
Prior to the corps’ formation, different organizations within the Army had their own mechanics and weapons techs.
“They decided we had to have one organization looking after the Army’s kit and fixing the Army’s equipment, so they took all those maintainers from three corps—the Royal Canadian Engineers, the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps and the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps—put them into one corps and that’s how RCEME was born,” CWO Ryder explained.
Through a history of name changes and a changing global military environment, the RCEME corps has continued its duty of recovering and repairing Canadian military equipment in theatres like Koreal; the Cold War; UN peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Cyprus and Kosovo; and most recently in Afghanistan, he said. And this involvement continues.
“We have three missions now: eFP (Enhanced Forward Presence) in Latvia, Operation IMPACT in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, and Op UNIFIER, our training mission in Ukraine,” CWO Ryder said. “We have RCEME people in all those three missions supporting our equipment, or training Ukrainian troops or Ukrainian maintainers to do what we do.”