Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Roy H. Hillgartner

Born at home on 12 November 1912, Roy Howard Hillgartner came from a large family in Binbrook, Ontario, a village some twenty-five kilometres southeast of Hamilton. His siblings included three sisters, Edna, Gladys, and Mabel, and as many brothers, Ralph, Lloyd, and Harry. Their parents, Alvin and Edith Hillgartner, both had strong roots in the area and with their children worshipped at the Binbrook United Church. The father worked as a carpenter, and on his "small holding", which came complete with dwelling and outbuildings, he kept a cow, a pig or two, and some poultry. To get to his work places, he relied for years, as did so many in those days, on horse and buggy.

Roy, like his siblings, was expected to do his share of the home chores while attending the proverbial "little red school house" (the phrase used in his "Obit" in the Marmor , the McMaster student yearbook). It was actually a white-painted two-room structure - S.S no. 3 -- situated on Cemetery Road in town. It was presided over by Principal W.F. Orchard, a Navy veteran of what he would have called the Great War. He taught many of the pupils himself in a direct, no-nonsense, and highly structured fashion, the standard approach for that day and age, particularly in a rural community where so much school time had to be worked around the demanding farm timetables of the pupils. Years later when Roy was applying for admission to McMaster University he readily listed Principal Orchard as a referee.

After passing successfully out of S.S. no. 3, Roy had to leave Binbrook for Hamilton in order to attend high school, which turned out to be Hamilton Central Collegiate Institute (HCCI), the pioneering secondary school in the city. There is no evidence that he could commute so he must have boarded in town, just as a sister and brother did when they took work in Hamilton. He enrolled at HCCI in 1926, progressed steadily through all the "forms", as they were then called, and matriculated five years later. According to the "Alumni" section of the school's yearbook, Vox Lycei , he, like some other graduates, then stayed "at home and [was] privileged . [to have] that extra few minutes sleep we crave, who must forego it". In Roy's case it is highly improbable that he enjoyed the luxury of catching extra sleeping time in Binbrook. In all likelihood he spent that post-high school interval working on neighbouring farms or employed in other lines of work earning money for the higher education that he sought.

That moment came in the fall of 1932 when Roy entered McMaster University, newly relocated from its original Toronto home to the fashionable Westdale district of Hamilton, a scene far removed from the rustic setting of Binbrook. All the same, he appeared to dress up to his new surroundings. In the frosh group picture that appeared in the 1933 Marmor he clearly stands out with his sporty three-piece suit, complete with double-breasted vest. In the light of his later fate there is a special poignancy in what a fellow freshman of '36 wrote for that same Marmor : "As the end of the university year draws near, it is only fitting that we, the class of '36, record the events of our freshman year in a lasting form which at a later date may recall memories to us [and, as it turned out, to the future historian as well] of those more or less carefree days". The last comment was pointedly qualified, doubtless a reflection of the crippling depression stalking the country and affecting virtually everyone, on campus and off.

Of a scientific persuasion, Roy originally planned to register in Honour Chemistry and Geology but later selected the more general Honour Science course. His tuition fees, for which he had carefully saved up, would have amounted to some $100.00 annually (in 2001 terms, roughly $1200.00 with inflation factored in). As expected of all fledgling scientists, he became a member of the comparatively new Science Club, established when the University moved to Hamilton in 1930. With youthful enthusiasm it set out, under the faculty leadership of Chemistry Professor William Walker, to put the sciences on the campus map or at least put them in the same league as, say, the humanists' venerable Modern Literature Club. The Science Club began the practice of staging its own annual conversaziones or social gatherings, which did much to boost esprit de corps among its members, Roy included. Outside club activities and the laboratory he briefly tried out for intramural sports, playing, according to his Marmor Obit, "interyear rugby (once)". Already a member of the United Church and the Masonic Order, he also joined, as did so many others of that church-going generation, the McMaster Men's Christian Union (MMCU), one of the campus religious organizations that was later folded into the all-embracing McMaster Christian Union. Like its successors the MMCU sought to strengthen the "Christian quality of life" in the student body, an exercise obviously endorsed by member Roy.

Throughout he maintained his honour standing in the science course and graduated BA in 1936. His heart set on teaching, he was accepted at the Ontario College of Education (thus fulfilling a prophecy in his Marmor Obit) and successfully passed its training courses and qualifying examination in science. His first teaching post was at the high school in Blackstock, northeast of Toronto, where he spent three years. It appeared that he not only taught science there but also shop, for which he took supplementary courses to augment his own skills. He wrote his brother Lloyd from Blackstock in May, 1941, telling him about his recent activities and other events of interest, including the approach of final examinations at the school. He also noted - shades perhaps of his own youth - that "some of the students stay home part time to work", in all probability on the farm. Obviously Roy wanted to maintain his McMaster ties for he made a point, he told Lloyd, of attending the first reunion of his graduating class in May 1941. He noted the presence of Syl Apps, already a sports celebrity - the only one he mentioned by name -- and seemed pleased that "quite a few" former classmates showed up for the occasion. By this time brother Lloyd had followed in his footsteps by becoming a fellow McMaster alumnus, having graduated in 1940 in Honour Mathematics and Physics.

From Blackstock, presumably in search of more remuneration, Roy moved on next to the high school in Exeter, a town that would be greatly affected by the establishment of the nearby Centralia station of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. When Roy arrived on the scene in 1941 he was greeted with a comparatively new school building, opened as recently as June, 1939, only months before World War II broke out. He was appointed at the then going salary of $1650 (2001: some $20,000) to teach mainly shop courses. But he was not in Exeter for long. In July, 1942, after teaching just one year there, he was called up under the National Resources Mobilization Act (NRMA), which had been swiftly brought in by the Mackenzie King government in the dark summer of 1940. France had just fallen to the Germans and Britain lay open to possible invasion and defeat, alarming developments that posed a threat to Canada. Thus the NRMA required military service for the defense of the country, first for an admittedly paltry thirty days and then ultimately for the duration of the war. The service was later extended to the Western Hemisphere though not for overseas unless a soldier volunteered for it. This provision softened the impact of the legislation on a wary and isolationist Quebec whose support was politically vital to the King administration.

Obviously Roy's status as a teacher did not exempt him from military service and he duly underwent the requisite training. He did not, however, immediately volunteer for active service. Jaded by unhappy memories of the Depression, which had struck rural communities like Binbrook particularly hard, and brought up in the spectral shadow of the Great War, he was less than enthusiastic about putting his name forward for active service in this new conflict. He may well have shared the disillusionment reflected in the Canadian anti-war literature which had formed part of the "hangover that followed the Great War", to quote Pierre Berton's Marching as to War. In any event, Roy resolved, as did others for similar reasons, to remain for the time being with the NRMA or Reserve Army, as it was called. In this connection, it is worth remembering that the public's response generally to the war had been lukewarm at best. Indeed, it failed to produce the cheering crowds and patriotic fervour that had characterized the almost hysterical reception of the Great War a generation earlier. In the interval society had visibly lost its innocence.

Meanwhile, Roy was assigned to the Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury Regiment (SSMSR), an amalgamated unit formed in the interwar period out of older ones and now based in Nanaimo, British Columbia. It was there that Roy underwent his basic and advanced training in 1943. He had already received a taste of the military when he had served part time with a militia outfit, the 2 nd Battalion of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, spending part of the vacation summers of 1940 and 1941 at their camp in Niagara-on-the-Lake. In late 1943 he was temporarily struck of the SSMSR's strength and attached to No. 11 Vocational Training School (VTS) in Victoria B.C. where he took and passed a course in "map-making", as his service record briefly described it. Roy expanded on this in a letter to Lloyd in late January, 1944:

It is quite an interesting course. Has to do with procedure in ordnance mapping using air photographs. The photographic views have to be plotted on strips of tracing paper by picking control points in each view. They are transferred to a work sheet and the contours built up to scale. A surveyor and mapper from the parliament buildings gives the instruction and lectures.

On the face of it, the training may have been preparing Roy for some form of intelligence work, as his family later supposed, though his service record is not definitive on this point. In any case, after completing the course, he returned to the SSMSR in March 1944.

A little over a month later, Roy was transferred to the Rocky Mountain Rangers (RMR) based in Vernon, in the heart of B.C.'s picturesque Okanagan Valley. It was there, on 27 April 1944, that he enlisted for what was called General (or active) Service, which he had declined to do earlier. Doubtless patriotic stirrings and the fact that two of his brothers and a sister were also in the armed forces combined to produce that decision. Another possible factor was the heavy pressure then being exerted on NRMA soldiers to don the so-called "Canada" badge and volunteer for overseas duty. In any event, after the decision was taken, things moved swiftly for Private Roy Hillgartner. First, in early May he enjoyed an embarkation leave with his family and then on the 25 th of the month he became part of a contingent that left for England, travelling much the same route to war that other McMaster graduates and students had and would. He arrived overseas on 2 June 1944 - "safely" as he wired his relieved family --- just four days before the massive D-Day operation was launched. He was not earmarked to be a part of that, however, since he had to undergo further training before being assigned to a combat unit across the Channel. He must have been kept busy because in that interval he managed to send only one letter to his parents.

Roy's time came on 31 August when he was ordered to France. He arrived there the following day and within a week, having been re-posted from the RMR, he was assigned as part of a group of 90 reinforcements to the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada. A Winnipeg-based regiment, it formed part of the 6 th Infantry Brigade of the 2 nd Canadian Division, which was attached to 21 st Army Group. The regiment was engaged in the campaign to clear the Germans and their V-1 rocket sites from the Channel coast and to open up ports for receiving Allied supplies. The pilotless rockets were a devastating and unnerving "vengeance" weapon that the Germans had recently unleashed on London and other English cities, and the destruction of their launching sites was a high priority.

When Roy joined the Queen's Own Camerons the unit was temporarily in a rest area in the vicinity of Dieppe, the evocative scene of the abortive raid of 19 August 1942. Now the Canadians, many of whom had been involved on that fateful day, returned to the place victorious and were acclaimed and entertained by French civilians from near and far. The celebration came complete with a full regimental march past. The Camerons' war diary relates that on their last night in the rest area many soldiers, doubtless including Roy, the newcomer, re-visited Dieppe and were given another "warm welcome".

On 6th September the unit moved out and proceeded easterly along the coast. Although there was no immediate enemy opposition heavy rains soon made for miserable conditions, one of its victims the opportunity to "sightsee", as the war diary whimsically put it. Roy and his fellow Camerons would have readily believed that the fall of 1944 proved the "wettest and coldest of the century" in western Europe. The following day, as the rains continued, the regiment prepared for possible action against the German "pocket" at Calais. The action did not happen. Instead, Roy and his comrades were treated that evening to the diversion of a film show.

On 8th September, with the rains unabated, the regiment continued on through what one historian aptly described as a "watery landscape". In due course it passed through St. Omer and shortly encountered flying bomb sites that had been badly damaged by Allied air strikes. The Camerons then proceeded to Furnes where Roy and the others rested for the evening. There was still no real sign of the enemy though it was clear that he had booby-trapped the seafront in their vicinity. Throughout French civilians gave the Canadians much needed help locating the traps and offering key directions along that stretch of the coast. On the 9 th the weather mercifully cleared and in warm sunshine the regiment pushed on, passing "Oost Dunkerque" on their way to La Panne Bains, where it would be "consolidated". Everyone was well aware that this was the scene of the storied evacuation of Allied forces in the perilous summer of 1940 when the whole Western Front had collapsed under the weight of the German Blitzkrieg . The tables were now being turned but ultimately at a heavy cost.

Near La Panne Bains the regiment drew a direct enemy response for the first time since leaving Dieppe, when it was periodically shelled by a coastal gun. It also suffered its first casualty in this phase of its operations. On the early afternoon of the next day, the 10 th , the regiment made a "small advance" and met far more determined resistance from enemy machine gun and mortar positions. Meanwhile some Camerons had taken over parts of the so-called West Wall abandoned by the retreating Germans. They were found to be, in the words of the war diary, "very comfortable as h[eav]y shells could not pierce 9 f[ee]t of concrete and armour plate". That did not hold true for the more exposed positions that other Camerons were occupying and as a result they sustained casualties when high velocity anti-aircraft 88s fired on them. Roy was one of the fortunate survivors of this, the first significant encounter with the Germans since the start of their advance.

The 11 th September, which opened with chilly but thankfully dry weather, saw "stiffening [German] opposition", marked by heavy machine gun and mortar fire, as the regiment reached the so called Bray Dunes. More Canadian casualties were suffered. Again Roy survived. Patrols were then sent out to "recce" the enemy positions, which were found to be "strong and well "dug in". Heavy fighting was clearly in the offing and it duly erupted the next day, the 12 th . Following an artillery barrage, two forward companies of the regiment mounted an attack only to be met with "very intense" fire of every description. When evening came they had advanced a mere two hundred yards beyond the position established the night before. It was sometime during this lengthy and hectic action - reminiscent of a Great War battle -- that Roy's luck finally ran out. He had been with the regiment barely a week.

In this theatre of war, as a British war correspondent remarked of the Canadians, "death had become personal, a daily and nightly lottery in which each man . held a ticket". Sadly Roy was one such ticket-holder. His overseas war had been as violent and lethal as it had been brief. Within days "Dad Hillgartner" received the news and immediately wired Lloyd, the absent family member. Lloyd was then away in Moncton, New Brunswick serving as a meteorologist for the Department of Transport. He later relayed the information to the McMaster Alumni News, regretting that he could not provide details.

A sympathetic McMaster official then contacted Roy's mother for more information about her son and was provided with pictures and a brief outline of his military service. Subsequently the family received word from the regimental chaplain, writing on behalf of the commanding officer. In an obvious attempt to furnish some kind of consolation, he wrote them that "Roy was buried in free soil, soil that his own faith and service helped to free, and perhaps the joy of the people to whom his coming meant freedom, happiness and even life itself may lighten your load of sorrow". As at Dieppe just a short week before his death, Roy had indeed been an integral part of a joyously welcomed liberating force.

This theme was underscored by McMaster's weekly Silhouette, which often editorialized on the war's major developments. The student paper also religiously sought to keep its own Honour Roll up to date in spite of the difficulties in gathering information on overseas casualties. In Roy's case it was finally able to do so in the issue of 3 November 1944.

Roy Howard Hillgartner is buried in the Adegem Canadian War Cemetery, Maldegem, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium.

C.M. Johnston


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Ralph Hillgartner and his wife Mary freely provided information, recollections, photographs, and copies of documents (letters and a telegram, for example) that did much to illuminate this biography. Ernest Oksanen kindly furnished statistical data on inflation rates. Angela Connell, Kathleen Garay, Kenneth Morgan, and Mark Steinacher provided welcome archival assistance.

SOURCES: National Archives of Canada: Wartime Personnel Records / Service Record of Private Roy H. Hillgartner; Record Group 24, War Diaries, vol. 15162: War Diary of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, Cdn Army (OS), 3 Sept.--12 Sept. 1944; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information, Private Roy Howard Hillgartner; Hamilton Public Library / Special Collections: Vox Lycei , 1931 , 52; Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 5485, Roy H. Hillgartner, Biographical File, Roy H. Hillgartner: McMaster admissions application, Certificate for the Ontario College of Education, Edith Hillgartner (20 Nov.1944) and Lloyd Hillgartner (1 Oct.1944) letters; McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives: Marmor , 1933 , 53, 1935 , 98, 1936 , Silhouette, 3 Nov. 1944, 1; Ronald Bogart and Joseph Wooden, From a Hard Old School .A History of South Huron District High School (Exeter ON: n.d.), 21-2, 246; Pierre Berton, Marching as to War: Canada's Turbulent Years, 1899-1953 (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2001), 299 passim, 472; J.W. Pickersgill, The Mackenzie King Record, I: 1939-1944 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960), chap. V ("Parliament and the Blitzkrieg"); G.C.A. Tyler, The Lion Rampant: A Pictorial History of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, 1910-1985 (Winnipeg: Public Press for the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, 1985), chap. IV; George G. Blackburn, The Guns of Victory: A Soldier's Eye View, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, 1944-45 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996), chaps. 2 and 19; Denis Whitaker & Shelagh Whitaker, Rhineland: The Battle to End the War (Toronto: Stoddart, 2000), 1 passim; 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), 354-6.

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