{"id":321,"date":"2015-11-07T03:02:50","date_gmt":"2015-11-07T08:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation2e\/chapter\/6-16-conscription-and-the-zombie-army\/"},"modified":"2020-10-08T16:14:44","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T20:14:44","slug":"6-16-conscription-and-the-zombie-army","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation2e\/chapter\/6-16-conscription-and-the-zombie-army\/","title":{"raw":"6.16 Enlisted Women, Conscription, and the Zombie Army","rendered":"6.16 Enlisted Women, Conscription, and the Zombie Army"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_319\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"Two<\/a> Figure 6.29 Personnel of the Canadian Women's Army Corps at No. 3 CWAC (Basic) Training Centre, Kitchener, ON, 1944.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nMandatory military service was, for King and his contemporaries, the great bogeyman of Canadian affairs. It drove\u00a0a wedge between French and English Canadians in the First World War and there was no appetite for a repeat of that experience. When asked whether he would introduce conscription, King famously replied \u201cnot necessarily conscription but conscription if necessary.\u201d Even the Conservative Leader of the Official Opposition, Robert Manion (1881-1943) was hostile to the idea of conscription. Like Borden in 1914-17, King hoped for a volunteer army. He had luck on his side.\r\n\r\nThe Depression had two consequences that supported early enlistments. First, people were poor and desperate for a regular paycheque. \u201cJoining up\u201d meant an income and the government paid\u00a0one\u2019s living costs as well. It also, for a great many, meant dignity, something that was in short supply in the 1930s. In addition, many of the unemployed and working Canadians sympathized and identified with the communists (both those crushed in the Spanish Civil War and the regime in the Kremlin) and\/or with the victims of German and Italian invasions in Europe and elsewhere (see Section 7.9<\/a>). An anti-fascist [pb_glossary id=\"1961\"]popular front[\/pb_glossary] had formed across communist and social-democratic lines that replaced the pro-Empire sensibilities of August 1914 with something more ideological.\r\n\r\nDemand for conscription was strong, however, in English Canadian circles, right from 1939. Its advocates argued that this was a total war and that playing catch-up with troop numbers \u2014 as Borden had \u2014 was unacceptable. The National Resources Mobilization Act, 1940<\/i> (NRMA) passed in June, when the war was not yet a year old and Canadian troops had not yet seen combat, other than those who retreated via Dunkirk a month earlier. The Act<\/i> allowed Ottawa to register all men eligible for service and to call them up for home defence if needed. There was plenty of home defence work to be done and these conscripts \u2014 contemptuously described by their peers as \u201czombies\u201d \u2014 could attend to that. Support among King\u2019s Quebec MPs was muted but it was a good compromise in that it satisfied some on both sides of the question while not angering any single constituency.\r\n\r\nBy 1942, however, casualties abroad and in the Battle of the Atlantic meant that numbers needed to be replenished. Arthur Meighen was once again leader of the Conservatives and, unlike his predecessor, Manion, was enthusiastically in support of conscription. King\u2019s strategy was to hold a plebiscite in April asking the electorate to release him from his earlier promise to spare conscripts from service abroad. Although the aggregate returns were 64% in favour of sending zombies abroad, the Quebec numbers were a very decisive 72% against. King now had the instrument in his hands to recruit and mobilize more soldiers but felt powerless to use it.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_320\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"Four<\/a> Figure 6.30 Nursing Sisters Atala Coulombe, Elizabeth Gordon, Nan Prescott, and Frances Tetlaw of the No.15 Canadian General Hospital, RCA Medical Corps, at El Arrouch.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBy 1944, the Canadian armed forces incorporated more than 500,000 fighting men; 21,600 women signed on for the [pb_glossary id=\"1962\"]Canadian Women\u2019s Army Corps (CWACs)[\/pb_glossary], another 23,000 joined the [pb_glossary id=\"1963\"]RCAF (Women\u2019s Division)[\/pb_glossary] and the [pb_glossary id=\"1964\"]Women\u2019s Royal Canadian Naval Service[\/pb_glossary] (WRCNS or, simply and elegantly, the \u201cWrens\u201d), and nearly 5,000 more served as nursing sisters in the armed forces. King\u2019s insistence that Canadian troops participate in the Italian campaign split the armed services\u2019 command and reduced the likelihood of reinforcements to either the Mediterranean front or Normandy. Both Canadian armies were in some difficulty as a result. By mid-summer in 1944 the question of conscription was back on the table. Reluctantly, in November 1944, King agreed to deploy some of the zombies. Riots broke out in Montreal and Quebec and protests among zombies in camps across British Columbia. The mutiny in Terrace in northwestern BC was the largest military rising, with French-Canadian conscripts joined by English-Canadian zombies.\r\n\r\nWhat saved King\u2019s political career in this instance was the rapidly closing window of war. By the time the conscripts reached Europe the war was all but over.\r\n
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Key Points<\/h2>\r\n