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To: Clive
Did Canada call up a reserve Boy Scout unit???
6 posted on 03/05/2004 12:34:12 PM PST by cynicom
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To: cynicom
Yes these Boy Scouts are called " the van doos" and the Germans were terrified of them in WW11 because they would creep in among them at night, cut a few throats and creep back out.You might find the following short history of interest.

"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 Cyprus and the Republic of the Congo, Bosnia and East Timor."

This Regiment has earned respect.
8 posted on 03/05/2004 1:02:46 PM PST by albertabound (it's good to beeee Albertabound)
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