NDHQ authorized the sub-unit with an effective date of January 9, 1948. Once this was announced, a dramatic change in focus became evident. Not only did its function as a base for the development of airborne units take precedence, but the previously subtle reference to combat fighting and war, specifically its special forces role, leapt to the foreground. The new terms of reference for the employment of the SAS Company, which were confirmed in April, outlined the following duties in a revised priority:
1 provide a tactical parachute company for airborne training. This company is to form the nucleus for expansion for the training of the three infantry battalions as parachute battalions;
2 provide a formed body of troops to participate in tactical exercises and demonstrations for courses at the CJATC and service units throughout the country;
3 preserve and advance the techniques of SAS [commando] operations developed during WW II (1939–1945);
4 provide when required parachutists to back-up the RCAF organizations as detailed in the interim plan for air search and rescue; and
5 aid civil authorities in fighting forest fires and assisting in national catastrophes when authorized by Defence headquarters.[78]
The shift was anything but subtle. The original emphasis on aid to the civil authority and public service–type functions, duties that were attractive to a war-weary and fiscally conscious government, were now re-prioritized if not totally marginalized. It did, however, also represent the army’s initial reaction to the government’s announcement in 1946, that airborne training for the Active Force Brigade Group (regular army) was contemplated and that an establishment to this end was being created.
The new organization was established at company strength — 125 personnel all ranks. It was comprised of one platoon from each of the three regular infantry regiments: the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR), the Royal 22nd Regiment (R22R) and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI). All of the carefully selected members were volunteers, most with wartime airborne experience. They were all bachelors, in superb physical condition, and possessed of initiative, self-reliance , self-discipline , mental agility, and an original approach.
If there was any doubt of the intention of the unit, it was quickly dispelled when Captain Guy D’Artois, a wartime member of the FSSF, and later the SOE, was posted to the sub-unit as its second-in -command. However, due to a difficulty in finding a qualified major, he became the acting officer commanding.[79] After all, his credentials were impeccable. D’Artois had dropped by parachute into Mont Cortevaix in France, then under German occupation, in April 1944. Prior to the sector being liberated, he had trained six hundred partisans, established the Sylla underground, developed an eight-hundred -kilometre secure telephone line; he had also attacked the occupying German troops on numerous occasions within his area of operation. Moreover, he instilled in his French allies a taste for victory. For his feats, D’Artois was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the French Croix de Guerre avec palme from General Charles de Gaulle. His service with the underground earned him the praise: “Major D’Artois is the embodiment of nobility in figure, strength, and stature, but more importantly, nobility in simplicity and kindness.”[80]
D’Artois trained his sub-unit of carefully selected paratroopers as a specialized commando force. His intractable approach and trademark persistence quickly made him the “absolute despair of the Senior Officers at Rivers [CJATC].” Veterans of the SAS Company explained that “Captain D’Artois didn’t understand ‘no.’ He carried on with his training regardless of what others said.” Another veteran recalled that “Guy answered to no one; he was his own man, who ran his own show.”[81]
But the issue was soon moot. At that point, the continued survival of the JAS and its limited airborne and SOF capability, as represented by the Canadian SAS Company, was largely due to a British and American preoccupation with airborne and air-transportable forces in the post-war period. This was based on a concept of security established on smaller standing forces with greater tactical and strategic mobility. In essence, possession of paratroopers represented the nation’s ready sword. This was critical in light of the looming 1946 Canada/U.S. Basic Security Plan (BSP), which imposed on Canada the requirement to provide one airborne/air-transportable brigade, and its necessary airlift, as its share of the overall continental defence agreement. By the summer of 1948, the SAS Company represented the total sum of Canada’s operational airborne and SOF capability. Clearly, some form of action was required.
As a result, the Chief of the General Staff directed that training for one battalion of infantry for airborne/air-transported operations be completed by April 1, 1949. After all, the BSP dictated that by May 1, 1949, the Canadian government be capable of deploying a battalion combat team prepared to respond immediately to any actual Soviet lodgement in the Arctic, with a second battalion available within two months, and an entire brigade group within four months.[82] This was the death knell for the Canadian SAS Company.
The Canadian Army was now finally moving toward its airborne/air-transportable active brigade group, which was titled the Mobile Striking Force (MSF). Its effect on the Canadian SAS Company was devastating. The respective highly trained SAS platoons provided the training staff for each of the regular force infantry regiments (i.e., RCR, R22R, PPCLI) that rotated through the JAS for parachute qualification, and upon completion returned to their parent regiments to provide an experienced airborne cadre for each of these regular force infantry regiments. The slow dissolution of the Canadian SAS Company was formalized by the CGS when he announced that the sub-unit would not be reconstituted upon the completion of airborne conversion training by the R22R, which represented the last unit of the three active force infantry regiments to undertake it.
The actual disbandment was so low-key that no official date exists. Its personnel just melted away. Nonetheless, the SAS Company served a critical function in Canadian airborne and SOF history. It was the “bridge” that linked 1 Cdn Para Bn and the three infantry battalions that conceptually formed an airborne brigade (i.e., the MSF). In so doing, it perpetuated the airborne spirit and kept the requisite parachute skills alive. In also perpetuated, albeit briefly, the concept of a selected, highly trained commando force capable of special operations in keeping with the SOE and SAS traditions of WWII.
The nation’s SOF lineage went into a hiatus at this point. Neither the existence of the MSF or its successor the Defence of Canada Force represented a SOF capability. Arguably, neither even provided a real airborne capability for that matter.
As always, external factors influenced internal organizational shifts. By the early sixties, the notion of an army rapid reaction and special forces capability gathered momentum, largely fuelled by the American involvement in Vietnam. In 1966, Lieutenant-General Jean Victor Allard, the new commander of Force Mobile Command (FMC — i.e., Canadian Army), decided that the Canadian Army would develop a similar capability. Specifically, he aimed to have a completely air-portable unit, with all its equipment deployed and in the designated operational theatre in as quickly as forty-eight hours. Therefore, on May 12, 1966, the MND announced, “FMC [will] include the establishment of an airborne regiment whose personnel and equipment [can] be rapidly sent to danger zones.”
For the army commander, the new airborne regiment represented flexibility and a higher order of professionalism and soldiering. The army commander clearly believed that “this light unit is going to be very attractive to a fellow who likes to live dangerously, so all volunteers can go into it.” His creation was to be open to all three services and manned exclusively by volunteers. “We intend,” he asserted, “to look at the individual a little more rather than considering the unit as a large body of troops, some of whom might not be suited for the task.”[83]
In the spring of 1966, General Allard, now the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), took the next step and discussed the formation of what he fondly labelled the new “airborne commando regiment.” Colonel Don H. Rochester was appointed as the commander-designate and he was given a further