They Buried Jobs Too

Three separate services with three uniforms, three rank systems, and centuries of distinct tradition — erased into one in the largest forced military consolidation in allied history.

Cause of death — The Canadian Forces Reorganization Act dissolved the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force into a single Canadian Armed Forces — one rifle-green uniform, one army-style rank ladder, on 1 February 1968.

Rear-Admiral William Landymore, the navy's senior operational commander, publicly fought it and was sacked for it. Within two years roughly nine admirals and air marshals were dismissed or resigned in protest. Sailors who went to bed as "Able Seaman" woke up as "Corporal."

The RCN's seamanship ladder — Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, Leading Seaman ("killick"), Petty Officer — the lower-deck hierarchy of a blue-water navy.

Cause of death — Unification (1968) deleted the naval anchor insignia and swapped in army rank titles. "Able Seaman" became "Corporal" overnight.

"Killick" — Commonwealth slang for a Leading Seaman, after the fouled-anchor badge that resembled a killick (a stone-and-stick improvised anchor) — survives in navy slang to this day. The rank title died in Canada in 1968; the nickname refused to.

The poetic, RAF-pattern rank structure of Canada's air force, shared with every Commonwealth air arm.

Cause of death — Unification adopted army rank titles; the entire RAF-derived ladder — Flying Officer, Squadron Leader, Wing Commander, Air Vice Marshal — vanished.

Canada is now the odd one out: the RAF, RAAF, and RNZAF still use "Wing Commander" and "Squadron Leader," but Canadian air officers became "Lieutenant-Colonels" and "Majors" in 1968 — and never changed back, even after the navy and army recovered some of their own traditions.

Flew Canada's Cold War nuclear-strike and reconnaissance fighter from bases in West Germany — a stubby-winged Mach-2 interceptor pressed into the low-level strike role.

Cause of death — The CF-18 Hornet replaced the CF-104 (and the CF-101 Voodoo and CF-5) under the New Fighter Aircraft program in 1987.

Canada lost roughly 110 of its 200+ CF-104s to accidents, earning the "Widowmaker" name from the press. Pilots preferred their own grim jokes — "Lawn Dart" and "Aluminium Death Tube." Survivors were sold to Turkey, which flew them until 1995.

The Royal Navy surgeon's untrained assistant — restrained men during amputations, cleaned instruments, disposed of severed limbs, and fed the wounded "loblolly," a thick gruel.

Cause of death — Professionalized into the Sick Berth Attendant (1833), then Medical Assistant.

The RN's directive to organize a Sick Berth Attendant aboard every ship dates to 1833 — the formal birth of the branch. "Loblolly" likely fuses lob (Yorkshire dialect for "to bubble") with lolly (archaic English for stew).

Maintained, repaired, and manufactured a warship's sails — a 74-gun ship of the line carried several acres of canvas in 30+ pieces — plus pennants, jacks, and deck buckets.

Cause of death — Steam propulsion ended the need for shipboard sail manufacture.

A single topsail for a ship of the line took an estimated 1,000+ man-hours to make. Sailmakers were rated "idlers" — not an insult, but the official term for tradesmen who worked all day and were therefore excused from standing night watches.

The bomber's navigator-bomb-aimer — fixed position by astral navigation, map reading, and wireless, then released the payload; the original two-man-crew partner to the pilot.

Cause of death — Split into two new trades — "Navigator" and "Air Bomber" — in 1942.

The single-wing "O" brevet was abolished in 1942, but airmen who'd earned it early in the war kept wearing it rather than switch to the new Navigator's badge — a quiet act of seniority signalling.

Fed coal into the boilers (stokers) and hauled coal from bunkers while clearing ash (trimmers) in the stokeholds of coal-fired warships — the absolute bottom of the engineering hierarchy.

Cause of death — Oil-firing and later gas turbines made shovel-and-furnace coal work obsolete.

Naval tradition celebrated the clean "bluejacket" seaman while branding stokers coarse troublemakers. A University of Exeter social history argues that prejudice buried the real story of the men who powered the Royal Navy through its coal age.

Manned the gun turrets of RAF bombers — the rear (tail) turret being the most exposed and lethal seat in the aircraft.

Cause of death — Integrated defensive systems and multi-role jets eliminated the dedicated manned gun turret.

WWII rear-gunner life expectancy was grimly short — often cited at roughly five sorties. The name "Tail-End Charlie" stuck to every rear gunner after one early crew gave it to the first commissioned RAF rear gunner.

Teenage recruits — entered as young as 15 — trained in seamanship, gunnery, signals, and brutal discipline at shore establishments like HMS Ganges before joining the fleet.

Cause of death — The boy rating was abolished in 1956 after roughly three centuries; raising the school-leaving age to 16 ended boy entry entirely by the early 1970s.

HMS Ganges trained boys to climb its 143-foot mast, with a volunteer "button boy" standing on the cap at the very top. The base stopped taking boys in 1973 and closed in 1976.

Sent and received high-speed Morse over the ship's wireless — a rating that demanded greater speed and dexterity than the signalmen they served alongside.

Cause of death — Spark-gap Morse gave way to voice radio; the title walked through Wireless Telegraphist → Radio Operator by 1962.

"Sparker" comes literally from the spark-gap transmitter — the operator who made the sparks that became radio waves. The slang outlived the spark-gap hardware by half a century.

A commissioned officer's personal attendant — polished uniforms, prepared meals, maintained quarters, and managed the officer's "bat-horse" (pack animal) on campaign.

Cause of death — Postwar professionalization and the end of National Service (1960) made personal servants indefensible; fully gone by the early 1970s.

"Batman" has nothing to do with bats — it's from "bat," an obsolete word for a packsaddle (Old French bât). The WWI title was "soldier-servant"; by WWII the Depression had thinned their ranks so far that only senior officers rated one.

Managed the engines, fuel, and systems of large multi-engine aircraft from the Lancaster through the Cold War V-bombers — the third crew member who kept the machinery alive in flight.

Cause of death — Digital flight management and two-crew cockpits eliminated the role; it lingered on legacy airframes (Lancaster → Vulcan → VC10) until they retired.

Other than the pilot branch, the Air Engineer was the oldest aircrew trade by continuous service — February 1941 to 2008. The last new "E" badges were earned in 2002, on aircraft already older than the men wearing them.

Mounted infantry who rode to battle on tough Australian "Waler" horses and fought dismounted — the iconic ANZAC arm that made the charge at Beersheba on 31 October 1917, remembered as one of the last great cavalry charges.

Cause of death — Mechanization — regiments converted to motor and armoured-car units in 1942 and mostly disbanded 1943–44 as the tank made horse mobility obsolete.

The Walers never came home. Of all the AIF horses, only one — "Sandy" — was returned to Australia; the rest were sold or destroyed overseas. (The popular tale that every trooper secretly shot his own horse is, per the Australian War Memorial, mostly myth.)

A Royal Australian Navy network of mostly civilian planters, officials, and islanders who hid behind Japanese lines in the Pacific, reporting enemy ship and aircraft movements by radio. Enrolled in the RANVR in April 1942.

Cause of death — A wartime-only mission — the network stood down when the Pacific War ended; the threat it existed to watch was gone.

US Admiral William "Bull" Halsey said: "The coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the South Pacific." Their early warnings let outnumbered Allied fighters scramble before Japanese raids arrived.

Women — usually soldiers' wives — officially attached to French regiments, carrying food, wine, and water onto the battlefield and serving as nurses; from 1860 eligible for the same decorations as the men.

Cause of death — The Third Republic's modern short-service conscript army deemed mixed-gender ranks incompatible with professional discipline; the War Ministry banned the role in 1906.

They wore quasi-military uniforms with a regimental skirt and the famous small barrel (tonnelet) slung at the hip. Several were decorated for braving fire to bring drink to the wounded. The role was the French original that inspired the American Civil War vivandières.

Bearded combat engineers who marched at the head of an assault wielding axes to hack through enemy barricades and obstacles, wearing a heavy leather apron for protection.

Cause of death — Modern engineering and the death of the close-assault breaching role retired the axe-and-apron pioneer to ceremony.

Because pioneers led assaults and rarely survived, they earned the right not to shave; the beard became mandatory in the Foreign Legion in 1844 and the tawny leather apron official in 1835. They still open Legion parades — axes on shoulders — as a "unit of tradition" only.

Moroccan irregular mountain troops in striped djellabas, organized in company-sized goums and battalion-sized Tabors, who fought brutally effective mountain warfare in Tunisia, Italy, France, and Germany.

Cause of death — Moroccan independence in 1956 — the last goum was disbanded on 9 June 1956 and folded into the new Royal Moroccan Army.

The Goumiers suffered over 8,000 casualties in Europe — roughly a third of their strength — and earned 26 unit citations. Their mountain assault through the Aurunci range helped crack the German Gustav Line in Italy where conventional units had failed.

Soldiers who bred, trained, and deployed homing pigeons to carry messages through artillery, gas, and jamming when wire and radio failed.

Cause of death — Modern signals technology made the bird redundant; de Gaulle ordered the last operational loft dissolved in 1961, sparing only a ceremonial one.

Europe's last military pigeon loft still flies at Fort Mont-Valérien under the 8e Régiment de Transmissions — but the Ministère des Armées states plainly that "in case of conflict, the loft is not considered operational for a mission, due to lack of training." A trade kept alive purely as memory.

Light infantry famous for flamboyant North-African-style uniforms — baggy red trousers, short jacket, fez — originally raised in Algeria in 1830.

Cause of death — Decolonization — the remaining zouave regiments were disbanded in 1962 immediately after Algerian independence stripped away their reason to exist.

The zouave uniform was so striking that volunteer regiments on both sides of the American Civil War copied it wholesale — there were "Zouave" units fighting at Bull Run in baggy red trousers because of a French colonial fashion.

French colonial light cavalry recruited from Arab and Berber horsemen of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, known for white burnous cloaks and red saddle-cloths.

Cause of death — Decolonization disbanded the 2nd–9th Spahis in 1962; the mounted cavalry trade was already dead, the survivor mechanized.

Only one regiment lives on — the 1er Régiment de Spahis — kept for its WWII record and to preserve the branch's traditions. It is now an armoured unit crewed by personnel recruited in mainland France, not colonial horsemen.

Colonial infantry recruited across West, Central, and East Africa — founded by decree of Napoleon III in 1857 — who fought in huge numbers in both World Wars.

Cause of death — Decolonization — as French African colonies became independent 1958–60, the regiments were dissolved and their men transferred to new national armies; the last unit went in 1964.

Some 700,000 African colonial soldiers fought for France across the two World Wars; an estimated 30,000 died in the WWI trenches. The pension and recognition debates over their service continued into the 21st century.

Armoured heavy cavalry in steel cuirass and helmet, the shock arm of the Imperial German Army meant to break enemy lines with the charge.

Cause of death — The Treaty of Versailles capped Germany's army at 3 cavalry divisions / 18 regiments; the surplus heavy-cavalry regiments were disbanded in 1919.

The Garde-Kürassier-Regiment, raised in 1815, was disbanded in September 1919; the Saxon Guard heavy cavalry was struck off on 31 March 1919 — armour that had survived a century of warfare, ended by a clause in a peace document.

Lance-armed light cavalry used for reconnaissance, screening, and the charge — Germany fielded 26 Uhlan regiments at the outbreak of WWI.

Cause of death — Obsolete against entrenched firepower, then formally axed when Versailles slashed German cavalry to 18 regiments total.

The lance, their signature weapon for two centuries, was a parade-and-relic item by the time the regiments were dissolved. "Uhlan" entered English as a byword for marauding scouts.