CANADA HISTORY - War

The Brigade Arrives

It was decided by Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes, the chief of Canada's General Staff, that a special brigade would be raised by Canada in order to maintain the current mobile striking force in the Canadian army intact in case of its need for North American defence. The plentiful numbers of WWII veterans could fill the need of this special brigade and on August 7th Prime Minster Louis St Laurent asked that volunteers come forward and join up for this United Nations action. The Korea Brigade was actually trained as second battalions of The Royal Canadian Regiment, The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and the Royal 22nd Regiment.



Commonwealth Division Commanders

A civilian commander, Major General John Rockingham, was chosen as the leader of the new brigade. He was the commander of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade during world war II and was well respected throughout the military. He choose his battalion commanders from former world war two officers and was able to expand the command of the unit out to its full operational compliment in fairly short order. The final phase of the training of the Brigade took place at Fort Lewis in Washington State which was considerable warmer then Canadian options and once the troops were there the Brigade was officially designated the 25th Infantry Brigade.



Major General John Rockingham

It took several months to train and outfit the Brigade but by March of 1951 the unit of about 8,000 soldiers was ready for action on the Korean peninsula.