Not to take anything away from our Canadian allies, and I certainly appreciate their support, not to mention courage and sacrifice; but they are a volunteer force, and made up of career-minded soldiers (what we used to affectionately call "lifers" in my day). For any career military man, combat time is essential to long term advancement in his service, and in a mostly peacetime army, is hard to come by. I know that the same factor is at work in the US Armed Forces. A career military force wants to fight.

In the Vietnam era, drafted troops were rotated after 13 months in country, and discharged soon after, but career officers were often cycled through faster in an attempt to divvy up combat experience among them as much as possible. The result was that the armed forces as a whole got valuable combat experience, but except for those who volunteered for extra tours, the men on the ground at any one time were inexperienced. By the time they had learned their jobs, they were pulled out and substituted by green replacements. In many cases, the enlisted draftees and their career non-coms had more combat experience than the officers leading them. This policy, as can be expected, led to severe problems, both operationally and with morale.

The problem now is different, although the US force is all volunteer, professional, and highly motivated, it is relatively small and they are forced back for multiple tours because they are over-utilized and under-staffed. This leads to fatigue even among the best troops, and inevitably, to problems on the home front with families, finances, marriages, psychological health, etc.

I am curious. Is the Canadian military experiencing similar stresses? Are they going back for multiple tours? Have there been reports of combat exhaustion, early retirement, declining re-enlistment rates, PTSD, and other related symptoms of over-utilization? I realize their commitment is not as extensive as ours, but neither are their numbers. So it is possible the two factors cancel out and yield similar results. I also understand that it is unlikely that any military organization experiencing these problems will be likely to publicize them.