although any evidence I have at this stage is anecdotal there were a great many NRMA troops that volunteered for overseas service over the course of the war. I expect that it would be difficult to track them as they would have to 'volunteer' to go...some likely did so to avoid some worse form of punishment due court martial, others changed their minds. the 12000 in February '45 were ordered to go under provisions of the act many of these disappeared during their embarkation leave. There was almost 80000 trained NRMA infantry men alone in Canada at this time. Actually DRyan your posting a few weeks ago indicated that a number units went over well after the last divisional troops went in '42. This surprised me and I was left thinking that these would have been mixed battalions of volunteers and NRMA personnel at this stage of the war.
Byers indicates over 58,000 who went active after formally being enrolled as conscripts. He estimates on the order of 200,000 of the 587,000 Army volunteers may have been 'induced' by NRMA, so some 142,000 who elected to go active once a call-up appeared inevitable or after they had received notice but had not yet enlisted. As canuck says, the coercion to convert was ongoing and direct. There was a strong belief in the Army that it would be more successful than it turned out and there were endless schemes to try to get more manpower. Appending canuck's #20, also 232 wounded and 13 PW.
Thanks for the information Kevin. Since the war diaries were eventually public record, they did not detail the kind of coercion that you mentioned, though I am sure it existed based on other sources.
I just came across this appeal from the Prime Minister to the NRMA. It was located in the war diary of the 16th Engineer Services and Works Company RCE, which was located in Newfoundland in November 1944.
nice find I have never seen that before a last appeal for volunteers. This would have been around the time that parliament invoked the clause requiring deployment of NRMA men to go overseas....King wished at all cost not to arbitrarily deploy the NRMA troops.
