Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Nairn S. Boyd

Born on 14 December 1917, Nairn Stewart Boyd was raised near Winchester, Ontario, a rural community located some seventy kilometers from Ottawa. His parents, Malcolm Spurgeon Boyd, a dairy farmer, and Jean (Stewart) Boyd, were of Scottish stock. Jean and Spurgeon, as the father was known - a name doubtless inspired by a celebrated Baptist preacher in Britain -- dutifully brought up their children in that rigorous faith. Nairn and his older sister, Albra, and his younger siblings, Kendon and Leora, attended the local public school - S.S. No. 20, Osgoode Township -- and just as regularly the sunday school of the Baptist church in nearby Vernon. Like most farm boys - Gordon Holder [HR], a future McMaster classmate comes to mind - Nairn was also expected to do his proper share of the farm chores, that is, when his schooling and church attendance permitted.

By the time Nairn qualified for his secondary education he had already made his mark as an athlete. At Winchester High School (WHI) he continued on that course, excelling in track and branching out to become proficient as well in hockey, football, tennis, and badminton. Wearing the purple and gold colours of WHI, he was virtually unbeatable in the 100-yard dash and the broad jump. At home on the farm a special area was set aside where he could practice for the high school track meets staged not only in Winchester but as far afield as Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and Cornwall. He was consistently showered with laurels, eventually being awarded over a dozen cups and some fifty medals. Thanks to his efforts the high school won and retained the coveted Gerald Meikle Memorial Cup in competition with other high schools in the region. He also delivered results on the football field, playing "scintillating" and "brilliant" games as a touchdown-scoring backfielder for the WHI squad. It came as no surprise when he was selected Boys'Athletic Director in his final year at the school. He was not the only member of the Boyd family so honoured. His sister, Albra, an accomplished athlete in her own right, reigned alongside him in a counterpart role.

At the same time, Nairn maintained for the most part a solid scholastic record though he seems to have had some difficulty consistently maintaining high grades in Upper School. In a glowing biography prepared for WHI's yearbook, Vox Scholae, the editor may have offered an explanation for this state of affairs when he wrote that Nairn, "King of the Track in Eastern Ontario" was "a good student (when athletics allow.)" All the same, Nairn clearly qualified for university admission and given the family's religious background it surprised no one when in 1937 he selected McMaster University, a Baptist institution, as his proposed alma mater. It had recently relocated from Toronto to Hamilton.

To uphold the religious link came at a price, however, namely the cost of living away from home, and specifically on campus in South House of Edwards Hall. Yet his parents were probably relieved to know that that home away from home was the least boisterous part of the red brick residence. A Marmor yearbook photograph taken in 1940 captures Nairn in the company of other Edwards Hall denizens who, sadly like him, would die serving in World War II. These included Gordon Holder, William Hilton, and Frederick Wellington, whose names would later join his on the University's Honour Roll.

Fortunately for his financial well-being Nairn's skills on the hockey rink combined with his satisfactory academic record to land him a welcome Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) Scholarship, tenable for his whole undergraduate career provided he maintained an acceptable scholastic standing. Together with this and his parents' support, the summer money he earned at a Muskoka resort and on a Canada Steamship Lines cruise ship enabled him to make ends meet. To the delight of the Boyds he periodically returned to Winchester for family get-togethers and visits to his friends. All the while he gave a creditable account of himself at McMaster. Having announced plans to become a teacher, he started off in the Honour History program. Later, however, he shifted to the History and Political Economy Option after a somewhat spotty academic beginning. He also changed his professional direction, now opting for a possible legal career after graduation. In the new program he fared considerably better in his course work and examinations and, as a result, managed to retain the vital OHA Scholarship.

Thankfully, Nairn's performance on the hockey rink had, if anything, become even more polished. Indeed, he had few peers both on campus and off. In 1939 he created more fans when he played in the City Hockey League against such teams as the highly rated one put together by a local regiment, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry. In football too he continued to win praise. At six feet and weighing 200 pounds, this fit non-smoker was a formidable foe at the positions he played, first as outside and then as flying wing. In both the 1937 and 1938 seasons he helped to lead the McMaster team to its second and third Dominion Intermediate Rugby Championships. As an approving sports editor of the weekly Silhouette put it, Nairn carried "the mail in many a skirmish" and in concert with friend, teammate, and future airman Charles (Charlie) Szumlinski [HR] could be counted on for "most of the plunging duties".

Nairn also made a name for himself on the badminton court, where classmate Robert Dorsey [HR] had excelled. As at high school he continued to dominate in track and field events, specializing still in the 100 yard dash and the broad jump. All these versatile contributions netted him his 1st Grade Athletic Colours Award in 1939. Small wonder perhaps that he was regarded as a "man's man" though this status by no means blunted his attractiveness to the opposite sex - indeed quite the reverse. Easily fitting the description, "tall, dark, and handsome", Nairn also had a genuineness and courtliness about him that charmed many a female undergraduate.

Given his prowess in sports, it followed that he played a prominent part on the Athletic Executive, one of his many ventures into the realm of student activities. Early on he was a member of the Chess Club, where he doubtless played Dorsey, also an active member. He attended and contributed to the scholarly sessions of the Men's International Relations Club, and became its president in his junior year. He also found time for the activities of the Political Economy Club and for those of the Science Club on the other side of the campus. Moreover, he participated in the work of the McMaster Christian Union, where his Baptist adherence was especially welcome. On one occasion his religious affiliation and penchant for student activities made him an obvious choice to organize a special student service at James Street Baptist Church, the denomination's flagship place of worship in Hamilton.

It was on the Student Body Executive that Nairn truly left his mark. He ultimately capped his service in various intermediate positions - sophomore treasurer for one -- by being elected to the prestigious office of "Head Boy" or President of the Student Council for the 1940-41 session. As a result, reminiscent of the plaudits bestowed on Kenner Arrell [HR] two years before, he was awarded an "Honour M", emblematic of outstanding academic and extracurricular achievement. The campus triumphs of this letterman became legendary. A student who entered McMaster a year after Nairn's departure in 1941 clearly recalled that the former Head Boy was still held in awe as a model of student behaviour and leadership. Indeed, he had become in the eyes of some unabashed admirers the proverbial "Big Man on Campus" - a description, however, that the apparently modest Nairn would have shrugged off..

In October 1940, in his capacity as Student Council President, he had advised the incoming "frosh", including Henry Novak [HR], of their solemn responsibilities as newly minted McMaster people. He told them that "1944 [their normal graduating year] will find you embarking on a career - a career whose success depends upon a four-year application of yourself to books, lecture attendance, and student activities". For some unfortunates in the audience "1944" would never come or if it did - as in the speaker's case -- it would find a good many of them bound to a "career" that put them in harm's way in one or other of His Majesty's Forces.

Just a year before Nairn made his speech to the assembled freshmen World War II had begun with Germany's invasion of Poland. Its integrity had been guaranteed by the United Kingdom and France, and Canada's expected participation in the conflict had shortly followed those two countries' declarations of war. This sobering turn of events bore heavily on McMaster's student body for what everybody began calling "the duration".
By the time Nairn made his welcoming speech in the fall of 1940 much worse had followed. France and the Low Countries had been knocked out of the war by the German Blitzkrieg and Britain was isolated and fighting alone, that is, if one did not count the considerable support of Commonwealth countries like Canada. In these drastically changed circumstances Ottawa had put the country on something resembling a war footing and in 1942 introduced a modest form of conscription, albeit for home defense.

What all this meant to the male university student was that henceforth voluntary service with campus COTC units was now made compulsory. And this applied in full measure to McMaster. Thus, besides his other less martial and voluntary "student activities", Nairn was required - though he needed no urging -- to serve in the McMaster COTC Contingent. He had already signed on as a cadet anyway, that is, as a candidate for an officer's commission, rather than as a member of the so-called auxiliary corps. The latter was sometimes unfairly dismissed as an "awkward squad with two left feet", made up of those who did not entertain lofty military ambitions. Along with the auxiliaries the cadets, who received more advanced and concentrated training as part of the Non-Permanent Active Militia, did their basic service on campus and at summer camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake. The town sounds like a picturesque setting but in that stark wartime it did not exude anything like the charm of its tourist-thronged descendant.

After his graduation from McMaster in the spring of 1941, Nairn spent the summer working on the family farm. This prompted a bemused former schoolmate, who had not attended university, to wonder why "a BA like Nairn would still be shoveling [manure]." That and other rustic exercises ended, however, on 27 September 1941 when Nairn, already promoted 2nd lieutenant in the militia, enlisted in Kingston. He was shortly dispatched to Brockville for further officer training and in November, 1941 his militia rank was confirmed in the active army. The event was proudly reported by the McMaster Alumni News, which carefully kept track of its constituency's wartime accomplishments. In the meantime, Nairn had applied to serve in the Canadian Armoured Corps (CAC) and was accepted. It was a comparatively new formation organized in the calamitous summer of 1940 on the foundations laid in the interwar period by a more modest unit. A training school, which had briefly functioned in London, Ontario was transferred to Borden and expanded and reorganized. It was also renamed the Canadian Armoured Fighting Vehicles Training Centre (with the burdensome acronym CAFVTC).

Before proceeding to Borden, however, Nairn was posted to Ottawa and then to No. 9 CAC Training Course at Debert, Nova Scotia where he was promoted 1st lieutenant on 21 February 1942. The following June he was assigned to the 23rd Tank Regiment (Halifax Rifles) and posted to Camp Borden for the next stage of his training, roughly the route followed by former McMaster classmate, Albert McCreery [HR]. Nairn spent several months at the training centre, and took a variety of vehicular driving courses. Late in July 1942 his stay at Borden was briefly interrupted by a one-month stint at the Canadian Army Trades School (CATS) in Hamilton. While stationed there to take a driver mechanics training course this inveterate athlete participated in an interdistrict track meet as an army representative. He again won his favourite race, the 100-yard dash. As well, he seized the opportunity to pay brief visits to his McMaster friends.

Nairn also had the chance to become more attentive to a person who had only been an acquaintance before - Patricia (Pat) Holbrook, the daughter of Dr. John H. Holbrook, medical superintendent of the Hamilton Sanatorium.
When she first met him, as Head Boy in his graduating year, she had been - to use her words - a "green frosh". That was no longer the case in the summer of 1942 when they met again during his brief stay at CATS. The meeting place was apparently the Brant Inn in Burlington, a popular and romantic dance spot and wartime rendezvous for many a McMaster student. Nairn asked her for a date while he was in town and when she agreed and went out with him their relationship was sealed. "Sparks flew" between them, as Pat recalled, though being "shy" about it, they kept the relationship secret but only for a short time. A romantic and speedy courtship was publicly launched on 11 August when Nairn helped celebrate her 21st birthday at a "bonfire roast" on the grounds of her parents' home at the Sanatorium. Before long they were formally engaged.

When the month-long CATS course ended, however, it was back to Borden for Nairn. In the following months his fiancee paid frequent rail visits to the camp when he could not get leave to Hamilton. After enjoying one such leave at the turn of the new year, 1943, Nairn went on an extended course at the Ford Motor Company plant in Windsor - the No. 8 Special Automotive Course - that acquainted him with the mechanics and maintenance of a variety of tracked and wheeled vehicles. After satisfactorily completing the course he returned to Borden and more tank instruction. In all likelihood one of the tanks Nairn trained on was the Valentine, a British vehicle now being manufactured in Montreal. While most of the Valentines were dispatched to the Soviet Union after it was invaded by Germany, some 20 were held back for training purposes at Borden. Another trainer was the Canadian designed and built Ram, a medium tank, which was used in both Canada and Britain. Together the Valentine and the Ram, particularly the latter, helped to prepare Nairn for the operation of the front line Sherman tank, which had become the armoured mainstay of the Allies. In the end, CAFVTC at Borden trained Nairn and some 20,000 other officers and men in what were perceived to be the fine points of tank warfare.

On 29 May 1943, just weeks before an optimistic Nairn was scheduled to go overseas, he married his fiancee, Pat Holbrook, who just two weeks before had graduated from McMaster in History and Political Economy, the same course Nairn had taken. For both ceremonies the new groom had thankfully been granted special leaves. Once the festivities ended, however, Nairn was immediately ordered back to Borden and then dispatched to Camp Aldershot, an advanced infantry training centre. It was located at Kentville, Nova Scotia, one of the many small towns in Canada radically transformed by the exigencies of war. Nairn's next stop after Aldershot and Kentville would be Halifax and then embarkation for overseas. In the interval Pat Boyd (as she now was) traveled to Nova Scotia to be with her husband and they spent what she would wistfully recall as a "few blissful days" together. Then on 17 June a "very bleak" departure day arrived. The new wife remembers watching from the pier as the ship carrying her husband and the rest of the Halifax Rifles set course in convoy for the United Kingdom. It was the last that she saw of him, though over the following months they kept in constant touch by letter.

Nairn arrived at his overseas destination after a record seven-day crossing. Shortly thereafter the Halifax Rifles were disbanded and its members dispersed among other formations. For his part, Nairn was attached to the 2nd CAC Reinforcement Unit. He then engaged in more training, principally on the Ram and then the Sherman tank, which he would ultimately command in battle. From the reinforcement unit he was eventually posted on 15 April 1944 to the Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment, which had been mobilized at the outbreak of war in 1939. In 1942 it had been converted to a tank unit and re-designated the 27th Armoured Regiment. It was now being prepared as part of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade, 4th Canadian Armoured Division, to participate in the crucial D-day landings in Normandy. They were scheduled for early June, 1944, less than three months after Nairn joined the regiment.

"Operation Overlord", the opening of the so-called Second Front in the West, long demanded by a beleaguered Soviet Union, was originally scheduled for 5 June 1944 but inclement weather forced a postponement to the morning of the next day. In the wake of a massive Allied aerial and naval bombardment, the Canadian invading force went ashore at "Juno Beach", their designated sector on that stretch of the Normandy coast. They shared with their American and British comrades on other Normandy beaches a multitude of hazards and dangers. First of all, there were mined underwater obstacles, a treacherous surf, and wrecked and tossing landing craft. Then came exploding shells, and the inevitable din, stench, and confusion that arises in a concentrated battle zone marked by unrelenting fire from an entrenched and determined enemy. All these made for a kind of living hell. But in spite of the hazards the Canadians succeeded in establishing a beachhead and began to fight their way inland. Even so, as an esteemed military historian soberly wrote in 1970: "At the outset the margin between success and failure was narrow. The ultimate triumph has obscured the fact that the Allies were in great danger … and had a very narrow shave".

When D-Day arrived, Nairn and his regiment were poised to take an active and key role. This former history student may have shared another officer's sentiment, that "whatever the outcome, this was ringside at making world history and there was no missing the tension in the air, the excitement we were all sharing". The long months of training in Canada and the United Kingdom would now be put to the supreme test. The 27th CAR was sent into the fray once a substantial coastal sector had been cleared of the enemy. Just before noon on 6 June Nairn and his troopers in "A" Squadron disembarked with their tanks at Bernieres-sur-Mer. Even before they landed, however, they could see the growing congestion on the beach as Canadian troops, materiel, and vehicles of every description jostled for the limited space. Once some kind of order was established the 27th's freed-up tanks, accompanied by the North Nova Scotia Highlanders of the 9th Brigade, moved out to nearby villages and then pushed on to Villons-les-Buissons just before dusk descended on D-Day. Nairn would shortly write home that his farmer father would be upset by the way the tanks rode roughshod over the fields of waving Normandy wheat.

On the morning of D-Day plus one the Canadians began an advance toward the next target, the key airfield at Carpiquet, near Caen, the strategic road and rail centre which was their primary objective. A battle soon shaped up with German armour, the 12th SS Panzer Division, which had scrambled to infiltrate and otherwise neutralize the Canadian intrusion, while awaiting reinforcements. The major action took place near the Normandy towns of Buron and Authie. There the Canadians met their first serious opposition and suffered their first tactical setback when German tanks and artillery stalled the 27th , the Highlanders and other units deployed in the engagement and inflicted heavy casualties. Nairn survived this unnerving battle but the momentum of the Canadian advance did not.

At this stage the still green Canadians, for all their protracted training in England, were in many instances inadequately prepared for the brutal reality of Normandy. As yet they were no real match for the battle hardened enemy whose ranks included fanatical members of the Hitler Youth who had little compunction in cold-bloodedly killing some of their Canadian prisoners, including those from the 27th Armoured. Meanwhile, the savage encounter on 7th June set the pattern for what was to follow - a bitterly fought and drawn-out struggle to overcome a stubborn German opposition, now steadily growing in strength. Caen, which had been the assigned Canadian objective very early on, would, as a result, remain in enemy hands for over a month after D-Day.

All the same, in due course the 27th, like other fully committed Canadian units, became as battle-hardened as their German foe, a quality they would desperately need in the actions to come. This became readily apparent when the 27th and other units launched an assault on the fiercely defended approaches to Caen in early July. Forming part of operation "Charnwood", it precipitated what has been aptly called the "bloody battle of Buron". On the evening of the 7th Nairn and other tank commanders were given a grim picture of what to expect when the attack went in the following morning. After a heavy RAF bombardment of Caen and its neighbourhood, the 27th and accompanying infantry units prepared to assault elaborately defended enemy positions, made all the more formidable by foreknowledge of the attack. The former commanding officer of the Highland Light Infantry of Canada, a Waterloo County unit that played a decisive role at Buron, ruefully reminisced that "tanks take about 20 minutes to warm up so the Germans didn't get too much of a surprise. All the tanks warming-up along the front line sounded just like an air raid". .

Nairn and his fellow tankers soon shared the later experience of an uncomfortable infantry officer forced to travel in an advancing Sherman …

I was jammed with all my equipment into the narrow co-driver's seat …. peering out at the limited field of vision the slits provided. It was quite eerie to watch the enemy shells silently hitting the ground and exploding just a few yards away. You could hear nothing except the noise of the motor of the tank and the explosion of our own gun firing. I felt as though I were in a tin box that was going to be hit and brewed up at any moment.

"When a tank was hit", to quote another stark account, "the shell 'drilled' a hole through the tank and released a whole shower of shrapnel that would ricochet around inside the tank [and] result in some dreadful injuries …." Nairn's commanding officer, Major Sidney Radley-Walters, who distinguished himself in the battle of 8 July, later reported that Canadian tanks, including those of his own "A" Squadron, often suffered that fate in the ensuing fight. Not only was their own thrust and that of the infantry fiercely contested but they were counterattacked repeatedly. At the same time, they had to contend with the deep anti-tank ditches, machine gun nests, and 88 artillery pieces that ringed Buron.

The Canadians doggedly persevered, however, in what was essentially a replication of a Great War battle, not least in the heavy infantry casualties it inflicted. With the support of British units and their own reinforced and determined soldiers, and boosted by the bold actions of Bren gun carrier and Sherman crews, the Canadians finally succeeded in battling their way into Buron and forcing a German withdrawal. Though Caen shortly fell as a result, the achievement of that goal took a heavy toll. Indeed, as an historian has written, it was a "costly operation for everyone", Canadian, British, and German alike.

Nairn Boyd was among the fatal victims on 8 July, his tank being one of many destroyed or damaged. But for the grieving Boyd family the toll did not end there. Elsewhere in Normandy Nairn's younger brother, Kendon, was also killed in action the very next day. A trooper, he had followed Nairn into the CAC and had been serving in a contact detachment of the 3rd Canadian Division.

Nairn Stewart Boyd and brother Kendon are buried in Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, Reviers, Calvados, France.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Sue (McDowell) McPetrie, Patricia (Holbrook) Radley-Walters, Mark Steinacher, Bernard Trotter, Sheila Turcon, Leora (Boyd) Windrim, and Stanley Windrim provided much needed help and co-operation. Patricia Radley-Walters and Leora Windrim (marked LW below) furnished valuable recollections and documentation that were essential to this study.

SOURCES: LW: Vox Scholae (Winchester High School), 1937, pp. 7, 16, 17-20, 30, 45; Ontario Eleventh Annual District School Track and Field Meet, Lansdowner Park [Ottawa], First June 1935, Ontario Twelfth Annual Schoolboy Track and Field Championship, Toronto, Ontario, 27th June 1936; National Archives of Canada: Wartime Personnel Records / Service Record of Lieutenant Nairn S. Boyd; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information on Lieut. Nairn S. Boyd; McMaster Divinity College / Canadian Baptist Archives: McMaster University Student File 7326, Nairn S. Boyd, Biographical File, Nairn S. Boyd (including McMaster admissions application and newspaper obituaries); McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives: Silhouette, 6, 13 Oct. 1939, 1 Dec. 1939, 1, 18, 31 Oct. 1940, 7 Feb. 1941, 3, 14 Mar. 1941, 6 Feb. 1942; Marmor, 1938, 104-5. 1938-9, 37, 101, 111, 1940, 60, 61, [63], 65, 71, 98-101, 1941, 16 passim, 105 McMaster Alumni News, 30 Apr., 10 Dec. 1941, July, 1943, 12 Oct. 1944; LW: Hamilton Spectator, 4 December 1937, 17 August 1942, 1, 15 July 1944, 7, Ottawa Citizen, 17 July 1944, 6, Ottawa Evening Journal, 28 June 1944, 1, Winchester Press, 20, 27 July 1944, 1.
Donald F. Ripley, The Home Front: Wartime Life in Camp Aldershot and Kentville, Nova Scotia (Hantsport, NS:Lancelot Press, 1991); John Marteinson and Michael R. McNorgan, The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps: An Illustrated History (Ottawa: Royal Canadian Armoured Corps Association and Canadian War Museum, 2000), 229, 239, 241-4, 250 passim; Terry Copp and Robert Vogel, Maple Leaf Route: Caen (Alma ON: Maple Leaf Route, 1983), 98-108; Allan Snowie, Bloody Buron: The Battle of Buron, Normandy - 08 July 1944 (Erin ON: Boston Mills Press, 1984), 64; Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker, Rhineland: The Battle To End The War (Toronto: Stoddart, 2000 ed.), 157; C.P. Stacey, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, III: The Victory Campaign: The Operations in North-West Europe, 1944-1945 (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1960), chap. VII ("Normandy: The Battle of Caen"); Blake Heathcote, Testaments of Honour: Personal Histories of Canada's War Veterans (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2002), 284 [Bob Grant's recollections], 308 [Ed Haddon's recollections], 317 [Laurie Wilmot's recollections]; John Morgan Gray, Fun Tomorrow: Learning to be a Publisher and Much Else (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 269.
Internet: "Historical Sketch of the 27th Armoured Regiment (Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment)", 6 pp., www3.sympatico.ca/ chrjohnson/sherbrk.htm

[For related biographies, see Robert Edmund Dorsey, Gordon Rosebrugh Holder, James Gordon Sloane]