[klambie]

Haven't looked at Battle Exhaustion in ages, but is it possible that Copp was referring to the period early in the war, as units were first mobilizing? In that circumstance, it might be reasonable that problems were passed off to reinforcement units.

However, once units were fully mobilized and reasonably trained up (say mid 43 and later), where else were guys going to go? There would have been some wastage in full strength units, but far more guys coming over and being stuck in the reinforcement stream with no line unit in need of personnel.

I've looked at a reasonable number of personnel files for one unit, and while you will occasionally see guys that bounced around various reinf. and training units for years, you will usually see something explicit in an evaluation or the like if someone thinks he is a problem. Far more common to see guys who join or are called up a bit late, do their basic and get sent overseas to a reinf. unit (often very quickly), where they sit until combat is heavy enough to require large numbers of reinforcements.

I've also seen some information in a war diary of one of the Infantry Reinf. Units that indicate that they were a bit of an administrative gong show, at least in 1944. They did little training and had little equipment to do any training, so seem to have spent a lot of time re-organizing and re-re-organizing, moving people about with little obvious benefit. There are indications in this unit that the quality of many reinforcements is poor, but it is difficult to say if that is because they have been given lousy training (I'd tend to think this) or because of problems with the men themselves.