The 1915 CEF’s Fighting, Training, Recruiting, and Administrative Echelons

The Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915 was not the crack organisation of 1918. It was a puzzling amalgam of a functional fighting force crippled by gravely dysfunctional recruiting, administrating, and training institutions.

This presentation explains this vast chasm in 1915 by examining each of the four elements and how the three malfunctioning echelons hampered the fighting component. It will, further, explain how and why this situation emerged out of a lack of experience in raising, maintaining, and administering overseas forces and a political leadership that was wholly unsuited to these challenges.