[RHClarke]

Histories written by members of the same organization may suffer from a bit of regimental pride, overstatement or plain BS (author dependent). I suspect the "story" about a Cdn arty unit disgracing itself may have been passed on over the bar at the mess late one night. The inaccuracies are then multiplied as the story gets retold. Perhaps, Jon, your Master Gunner heard a story about the RCR and the guns that goes like this (taken from RCA Standing Orders)...

In 25th Brigade, most of the raids were carried out by the 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR), supported by A Battery, 1 RCHA. A bond of mutual admiration grew between the battery and the RCR to the point where the guns of the battery had the RCR crest painted on them. A letter from the Commanding Officer of 1 RCHA, Lieutenant-Colonel E.M.D. (Teddy) McNaughton (who in March 1953 changed his surname to Leslie), to the infantry Commanding Officer confirmed this. A phrase in the letter would soon haunt A Battery: "It is also my intention that should ever the day come, from which the Lord preserve us, that a gun of A Battery shoots short onto the Royal Canadian Regiment, that gun and the subsection thereafter for twenty-five years will forgo the high honour and distinction of wearing the Colour and the Cypher of the Royal Canadian Regiment." It was with commendable frankness but undoubtedly with no little chagrin that a little more than a month later the Regimental diarist recorded the forfeiture of this privilege by a gun of A Battery. To the embarrassed members of that gun detachment, 1977 must have seemed far distant indeed! Two years later, however, in view of the consistently fine support given by 1 RCHA to the RCR, the infantry Commanding Officer asked that the penalty be cancelled, and from that time A Battery has proudly worn the RCR crest on all its guns.

All it takes is a few beers and the story gets changed...into crap! I guess I still have some pride in the Captain General's favourite Cdn Army organization...