The battalion that MacKenzie took to Sarajevo was made up of two companies of Van Doos and a company from the Royal Canadian Regiment. But they had soldiered together and lived together for years as part of a brigade in Germany and were a close-knit bunch. But such tight-knit units no longer exist. To this day, the constant six-month army rotations into Bosnia throw together relative strangers with longtime comrades, eroding the bonds that bind soldiers together. Col. Randy Boddam, an army psychiatrist, said the generals are likely on to something.
Unit cohesion is certainly a well-identified factor, but it's only one of several factors.
They don't share the same camaraderie as the regulars, Dallaire said, and may suffer because of it. And we use a lot of reservists. On returning to Canada, in the early 1990s at least, reserves were shipped home without a chance to adjust in familiar surroundings with the comrades who had been through the tour with them. In the latter part of the '90s, we kept them on for longer than just a couple of weeks when they came back from the missions. Some of those who didn't get that decompression time may still be incubating a breakdown years after their service.