14 Wing Greenwood’s “hard Army” personnel – members of the Royal Canadian Corps of Electrical Mechanical Engineers – marked their unit’s 81st birthday May 23, BBQing in a barrel and making do at a cake-cutting with a massive metal spatula.
“We adapt,” said Master Warrant Officer Barry Brownell, the flight warrant for 14 Mission Support Squadron’s Transport & Electrical & Mechanical Engineering section, and the 14 Wing equipment technical quarter master sergeant.
“Back in 1944, the Second World War was almost over when we formed. Why would our special skills have needed a trade? There were lots of jacks-of-all-trades in the military then.”
But, as “everything advanced,” Brownell says, equipment became more involved and too complicated: more specific skills were required by the army. The early RCEME even included aircraft maintainers and test pilots.
Today, in 2025, the RCEME includes vehicle, weapons, material and electro-optronic technicians, and land equipment engineering technologists. There are about 30 RCEME members stationed at 14 Wing, some “one ofs” in their trade, but many of them working as vehicle technicians.
“We come into play on all airfield and grounds equipment – the mules, the de-icing machines, the mobile staircases, the vehicles: anything that moves under its own power that’s not an aircraft.”
May 15 is RCEME Day, held across Canada to build esprit de corps and celebrate the creation of the corps, designated as May 15, 1944. 14 Wing’s RCEME set May 23 as their local celebration, hoping for a Cloud Lake camp-out. Instead, with rain, they got in a few rain-free holes of golf, played picnic games, bowled and socialized on the floor of Hangar 8, surrounded by much of what they work on day-to-day.
“It’s important to keep this kind of thing up: the RCEME birthday is something important,” said Brownell before the cake-cutting. To members: “keep up the good work!”
