Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Charles W. MacDonald

In his fine book, The Regiment , Farley Mowat writes of the wartime accomplishments and tribulations of his unit, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, or as they were popularly dubbed, the Hasty P's while it was engaged in the bitterly fought Italian campaign. He recounts, among many others, an engagement that took place on 4 September 1944, at the village of Santa Maria di Scacciano, which lay just beyond the Gothic Line, the German defences recently breached by Allied forces. Unflatteringly described in the Canadian Army's Official History as a “squalid hamlet”, it occupied a strategic ridge in the Pesaro area north of Ortona, the old fortress town captured by the Canadians in an “epic battle” in late 1943. In the engagement at Santa Maria, however, through a miscue revealing their position, the Hasty P's B Company was virtually ambushed by alerted German paratroopers. While the regiment's A Company was trying under heavy fire to neutralize the enemy's advantage, B Company,

was being slowly decimated by snipers, machine guns, and concentrated artillery fire. Rather than stay put and be destroyed piecemeal, the company at noon launched an attack of desperation. The two platoons and the scouts scurried from their scant shelter through a virtual shroud of fire and reached the row of houses on the edge of town. The fighting became indescribably confused. Within an hour both platoon commanders were dead and the surviving men were split up into sections, fighting their own independent battles from house to house. Germans and Canadians fought hand to hand.

In his graphic account Farley Mowat, did not, however, identify the fallen platoon commanders. There was a good reason for this. As the Hasty Ps intelligence officer, his presence was often required at battalion headquarters and consequently he rarely met the reinforcement officers who were constantly joining the unit. Thankfully the regiment's war diary does supply the names of the platoon commanders, one of them turning out to be Lieut. Charles William (Charlie) MacDonald, the subject of this biography. The war diary also noted that the day after the battle, with the enemy finally subdued, a well attended burial service for Charlie and the other five Canadian fatalities was conducted by the regimental padre on the edge of the shattered village of Santa Maria. Charlie had the sad distinction of being the only Hamilton teacher killed in action in World War II.

Charlie's life had begun on 30 November 1914 in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, a town once known as Albion Mines, where his forbears had toiled as “colliers”, beginning with his great grandfather, Kenneth MacDonald, a Scottish immigrant, who married a local Nova Scotian. Within a few short years of Charlie's birth, however, he was rendered fatherless, a tragedy that left a deep and lasting mark. According to family lore confirmed by archival sources, hiss father, William MacDonald, who had enlisted to fight in the Great War, had died accidentally in early 1918 while serving in Canada as a lieutenant with the Royal Flying Corps, soon to become the Royal Air Force.

Information supplied by the Virtual War Memorial indicates that William's widow, Isabella (or Isobel), was at the time a resident not of Stellarton but rather of Hamilton, Ontario, and that her husband's remains were actually buried in the local civic cemetery. Obviously the family had taken up residence in Hamilton at least as early as the closing months of the war, though, to be sure, no entries appear for then in the relevant annual issues of Vernon's Hamilton Directory. They may have gone unrecorded, however, because with William away in the service the rest of the family, which now included Elizabeth, Charlie's younger sister, had quite possibly moved in with friends or relatives who had been part of an earlier migration from Nova Scotia. In any case, the MacDonalds' migration meant that son Charlie would be spared a life's work in the Stellarton collieries. Meanwhile Isabella briefly brought up the boy and his sister on her own until she married her second husband, Hamiltonian Henry Reginald Gray. She together with Charlie and Elizabeth came to reside with the supportive stepfather and his children from a previous marriage, Robert and Henrietta. From all accounts the MacDonald children's transition to the new family arrangement went smoothly.

The auburn haired and ruddy complexioned Charlie appears to have taken the first two years of his primary education in an unidentified Hamilton public school before his family made the move to the Gray residence at 422 Hughson Street North. There is, however, ample evidence in school registers that Charlie continued and completed his early schooling in Hamilton's Bennetto School, which he had entered in 1922 at the Sr. 1 st (Grade 2) level. After that grounding, he embarked in September, 1930 on his secondary education at Hamilton Central Collegiate Institute (HCCI), which, he soon learned, carried o a hearty athletic competition with more recent arrivals on the scene, Delta and Westdale Collegiates. From the outset Charlie shone academically and thrived as well on the basketball court where he played the game with a passion, becoming, in the words of an impressed classmate, an “excellent team player and forward”, Charlie's preferred position. In his final year he was hailed in Vox Lycei, Central Collegiate's yearbook, as “a Trojan player”, particularly when he turned in a “sensational game” against Delta. He also ventured into badminton and though at the “pioneering stage” of the game he was nonetheless deemed promising by the yearbook's sports writer.

Charlie did not, however, neglect his classroom studies. Indeed, for his accumulating academic accomplishments, he was awarded the Lyceum Gold Medal in History and English at the commencement exercise following his matriculation in the spring of 1935. Among the other subjects to which he did justice was French, taught him by Muriel Paul, the aunt of Lloyd Telfer [HR], a future airman, who was also attending the school. The year before Charlie matriculated and embarked on his career as a teacher, was freighted with dark events that would profoundly affect his future. They were duly addressed by a student columnist in Vox Lycei. In the 1933-34 edition he wrote of the death of the German Chancellor, Paul von Hindenburg, and the “advent of Adolf Hitler”, the highly controversial Nazi leader who succeeded him. The student writer shrewdly added that the “German people will sadly regret that they have not Hindenburg at their head to inspire and lead them”. In the long term they doubtless did but tragically not in the short one. Even so, one Vox Lycei contributor obviously thought Hitler hardly the equal of Napoleon as an examination subject, though Hitler's conquests would come to dwarf those of his Corsican predecessor. Moreover, before the full horror of the Nazis' anti-Semitic outrages became known, it was still the fashion to print tasteless and insensitive “Jewish jokes” in what passed for the yearbook's humour section.

The world Charlie, the hopeful medalist and matriculant, entered had been made even less rosy by the Great Depression that had been stalking much of the globe since the disastrous Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. He probably reasoned, however, that Depression or no there would still have a need for teachers, perhaps now more than ever, and accordingly he enrolled in the Hamilton Normal School, which prepared its students for the profession. After taking the prescribed courses over the academic year, 1935-36, Charlie was taken on by the Hamilton Board of Education and appointed a Probationary Teacher. His first full teaching assignment was at Memorial School in Hamilton's east end Delta district, where his enthusiastic innovativeness in the classroom soon became apparent. His agreeable teaching place had been built after the Great War to commemorate the Canadians who died in that conflict. Little did the school realize then that Charlie, one of its teachers, would die in the global war that followed it a generation later.

In September, 1935, as part of a Department of Education requirement, Charlie also enrolled at nearby McMaster University in Course 18, an Arts program tailored to the needs of Extension students who took instruction in the evenings and at Summer School. In spite of his own full teaching load at Memorial he nonetheless must have looked forward to work in the disciplines he had done well in at Central. Certainly History and English, his favourites, bulked large in the course, which also included, among other subjects, French and Political Economy, that generation's term for Economics. As in high school he gave a good account of himself. He repeated the process the following academic session and as its winter term was drawing to a close he was informed that he had been elevated to permanent staff. In other words, he had achieved what amounted to tenure, an important career milestone.

Charlie was genuinely on his way, though his appreciative pupils at Memorial would not have had to be told that. Indeed one of them later recalled that he “put the learning bug into a lot of us”. In turn the more able among them in his Senior IV (Grade 8) classes were often recipients of the book prizes he awarded for “outstanding work in History”. One treasured prize in 1937 was Discoverers and Explorers of North America, a comprehensive and readable book which reflected a then staple theme in Canadian history. Apparently the thoughtful Charlie paid for this and other prize books out of his own pocket since no public funds were allocated for this kind of recognition in the Depression ‘thirties.

The popular and innovative Charlie also encouraged his pupils to participate actively in the educational process. For example, he recruited one of his receptive charges, a gifted illustrator, to paint colourful and graphic pictures of the historical episodes covered in class. Charlie's stepfather, Henry Gray, lent a hand by making the wooden stands for the finished products. Others in the class were also invited to take part in a variety of classroom schemes, among them, the preparation of descriptive maps and charts to make key geographical points. Few pupils seemed to be left out in this exciting participatory exercise. If Charlie had once been inspired in this fashion by one of his own teachers, then he certainly passed it along.

Nearly six feet tall and weighing some 160 pounds, the athletic Charlie, dubbed the “brawny Scot” in the McMaster Marmor , readily combined his classroom teaching at Memorial with physical training instruction. He also pursued the game that he had enjoyed at Central Collegiate and soon became a familiar figure on local basketball courts. With other Extension students Charlie understandably sought a place on McMaster's basketball team. To their considerable consternation they were told by the Athletic Director, Arthur Burridge, that they were ineligible because of their part-time Extension status. Rebuffed on that front, they promptly tried out and were accepted by the Normal School Graduates' team, which played in the same league as McMaster. Charlie and his friends were soon able to take their revenge on Burridge by knocking his team out of contention for the league championship. For recreational basketball Charlie and close friend, Donald (Don) Purdy, played where they had first met, on the courts of the downtown Hamilton YMCA. Afterwards they habitually enjoyed a “hamburger and Coke” at a popular restaurant and coffee shop – quite possibly Renner's – close by the city's s hub, the intersection of King and James Streets.

Charlie's commitment to basketball came to share time with other diversions. In the short intervals between Summer School and the start of the new teaching term, Charlie and some dozen of his colleagues invariably headed north to camp, fish, and canoe in Algonquin Park, a popular retreat and scenic playground for jaded city dwellers. Formed in 1893 as Ontario's first provincial park, it was in the days of the teachers' visits in the ‘thirties facing a serious problem. By the end of the decade, however, it was resolved when steps were taken to stem the undue encroachment of timber interests that threatened the park's pristine state and the lands set aside for recreation-seekers like Charlie and his friends.

In the eerie summer of 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of the war nearly everyone seemed to expect, Charlie enrolled in a physical training course in Kingston so that he might enhance the instruction he gave at Memorial. He did not, however, entirely forsake his summer studies at McMaster. He was allowed to take a mandatory Biblical Literature course extramurally, whereby he prepared for and wrote the course examination in Kingston under supervision agreed to by McMaster. The following September Charlie was back in Hamilton, teaching his Memorial classes and resuming his Extension studies at McMaster. His return coincided with the outbreak of war and he immediately enrolled in McMaster's newly organized Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC) and like Gordon Holder [HR] was attached to a local militia unit, the in his case Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (formerly the 91 st Highlanders).

The following summer, after a militarily dormant winter in Western Europe, the war suddenly became alive and dangerous when the Germans launched their successful Blitzkrieg against the Low Countries and France, and forced the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk. One day while this dramatic news was sinking in, Charlie placed a phone call to his friend, Don Purdy. As Don recollected, it was no ordinary call. Charlie suggested that they both sign up as instructors in the Army's recently announced physical training program. Don quickly agreed to the idea, having, like his friend, already qualified in the Kingston course and instructed their respective school classes. Now they might have an opportunity to demonstrate their skills in a new venue geared to the country's nascent war effort. They applied and in July, 1940, after being given a formal leave of absence by the Board, were duly signed on as sergeant instructors in the Army's physical training school at the Connaught Ranges in Ottawa. The posting also meant, of course, a temporary suspension of his McMaster studies and his detachment from the COTC and the Argylls. In McMaster' case, however, he did preserve one link, signing up to take a course extramurally as he had done before but in the end he did not write the examination,

After being posted to Kingston from Ottawa, life in the Army's physical training branch began to pall, a situation exacerbated by the poor quality of the food Charlie and Don were expected to eat.. The upshot was that they both tried to get out of the program and seek service in another branch of the Army. The colonel in charge, however, would have none of it. The bold and disenchanted Charlie then asked that officer what he would do if they decided to walk out of the camp and never return. The colonel's apoplectic response to this perceived effrontery was, to say the least, predictable and scathing. While they did not lose their stripes over the incident they were nonetheless told again that they would have to stay put.

Fortunately for the two instructors a way appeared out of the impasse when a friendly sergeant major who shared their dislike of the commanding officer advised them to apply for a perfectly legitimate transfer to an officers' training school. That advice they promptly heeded and in due course had their applications accepted. In December, 1940 their days as physical training instructors were over as they set out to become officer cadets. Although Charlie completed the course and persevered with the Army, friend Don Purdy gave up on it and transferred to the Navy and their wartime paths parted.

For Charlie presumably, it meant his reattachment with the cadet program he had earlier pursued with the Argylls in Hamilton. It involved evening sessions at the Hamilton Armouries on James Street North and a two-week summer camp period at Niagara-on-the-Lake, which had become a mecca not for tourists, as it would at a future time, but rather for military personnel. It was thus a full life for Charlie MacDonald as he juggled teaching duties, military obligations, and degree requirements at McMaster. His life was made even fuller and more gratifying when he met and ultimately became engaged to a fellow teacher, Elfreda Louise Pirie of Hamilton. Their friends recall the good times they shared with Charlie and Elfreda at venues like Burlington's popular and spacious Brant Inn whose Lido Deck was often thronged with young people dancing to the swing tunes of local orchestras.

In September, 1941 Charlie found himself at a new school and entering as well the last lap of his Extension course. At his new place of work, Hess Street School, he doubtless displayed the same teaching talents that had earned him praise at Memorial. Indeed, one of his superiors was so impressed with his overall ability that he was sure that Charlie would soon become principal material. As it turned out, the fates rules otherwise. At McMaster, in the meantime, he signed up for another History course and a Sociology one, the latter taught by the recently arrived British scholar, James Wreford Watson, who also wrote highly regarded poetry under the name, James Wreford. Happily he had not traveled to Canada on the ill fated Athenia, the first British vessel sunk by a German U-boat in the opening hours of the war. In the military, meanwhile, Charlie was promoted through the ranks, one of which was company sergeant major. Then o 17 March 1942, having demonstrated leadership abilities, he was recommended for a commission as 2 nd lieutenant. As Elfreda Pirie, now his fiancée, well knew, this was the immediate prelude to his formal enlistment for active service with the Canadian Army, a momentous step for all concerned when it was taken on 3 April 1942.

Charlie immediately wrote Elven Bengough, the McMaster Registrar, about how his decision might affect his standing and graduation. He obviously received the answer he wanted. On 14 April, on impressive Department of National Defence stationary, Charlie wrote the following from Stanley Barracks in Toronto:

I was very pleased that the Faculty Executive has recommended my name to the Senate for graduation this spring. With regard to your request for documentary evidence of my acceptance for war service, I submit the following information from Part II Orders of No,2 district Depot, dated April 6th.
"2/Lieut. Charles William MacDonald (Single) is taken on strength of No.2 District Depot, C.A., A&S. Hlr's of Can. (R) C.A., effective 3 Apr. 42" (Auth: H. Q.6974-2-41 (Pers. 1b) dated 17 Mar. 42)".

Charlie had benefited from a standing wartime arrangement. On the strength of his class and term work, he had been excused from the final examinations and permitted to graduate BA at McMaster's Spring Convocation, a ceremony happily attended by fiancée Elfreda and by his family and friends.

On the military certificate sent to Bengough, Charlie had been classified as “single” but that would shortly change. Two months after graduating, he was given special leave to marry Elfreda. On 11 July 1942 the ceremony unfolded, with Charlie resplendent in uniform, at First United Church in Hamilton, her parents' place of worship. Officiating was one of the city's most promising pastors, Rev. E. Melville Aitken, a recent arrival from a United Church pulpit in Calgary. Charlie, though raised as a Presbyterian, was no stranger to First United Church, having joined its popular and acronymic Fiat Club (“First In All Things”). For that matter he may have belonged to the Presbyterian group that had joined with the Methodists to help form the United Church years before when he was still in primary school. In any case, the Fiat Club had been organized after the Great War to spread, in the words of the church's chroniclers, “Christian fellowship among the young men of Hamilton” and to “provide outstanding leadership in spiritual, athletic, dramatic, and social activities”. As it turned out, its considerable membership also included other McMaster students such as Murray Bennetto [HR] and Frank Zurbrigg [HR], both of whom joined the RCAF.

Thus in the short space of some four months all the varied strands but one come together in Charlie's life: his enlistment and promotion, his graduation from McMaster, and now the celebration of his marriage. “For the duration”, however – to quote the current hackneyed phrase -- his teaching duties were over, the Board having no choice but to grant him an extended leave of absence from the classroom so that he might pursue his military service. Nor was Charlie under any illusions about where that career could lead and how it could end. Mindful his father's fate and the years he had been denied his presence, he apparently had no wish to subject a child of his own to that unhappy experience. He chose, therefore, with the blessing of an understanding Elfreda, to defer raising a family until his own future was sorted out.

By the time of his wedding Charlie had already served at training facilities at Long Branch near Toronto and then in Toronto itself for what is described in his service record as “All Purpose” instruction. Then it was on to other training centres and finally to Camp Borden for further instruction after which he bade an emotional goodbye to Elfreda, and his family and friends before he took the momentous step of entraining for Halifax to join there the Argylls on the eve of their departure for the United Kingdom, scheduled for late July. 1943. Just two months before, the unit had returned from a lengthy and sunny sojourn in Jamaica, an experience that Charlie, engaged in civilian and military activities at home, had not shared, though probably told about it by fellow officer and McMaster student, Gordon Sloane[HR], who had joined the regiment in the Caribbean island.

Halifax presented them all with a sight to behold. The ship that would carry them across the Atlantic was the majestic Cunard liner, Queen Elizabeth , whose great funnels easily towered over a three-storey dock building. The impressed Argylls, Charlie included, went aboard on 21 July to join thousands of other servicemen already ensconced in the ship's spacious quarters. Two days later, tugs guided the ship out of the harbour, after which it was on its own, heading out for the open sea. Given its speed the ship could outrun any U-boat and therefore proceeded without the customary convoy escort of destroyers and a capital ship. On 27 th July after a swift four-day crossing land was sighted, presumably Ireland, and not long afterwards a prospective screen of five destroyers and friendly escorting aircraft made their welcome appearance. In short order the Queen Elizabeth entered Scotland's Firth of Clyde, presenting a memorable spectacle as it grandly sailed, with thousands of waving servicemen at its rails, to its destination at Greenock (Gourick).

With his Scottish roots Charlie must have been thrilled even more than his officer colleague and fellow McMaster graduate, Donald (Don) Seldon by their arrival on the Clyde. Don Seldon described it this way, as quoted in Black Yesterdays:

I know I certainly had a very great deal of affection for the British Isles, for no particular reason. But I’m sure I had tears in my eyes too as we went up the Clyde. Our pipe band was out playing on the top deck and the great crowds of people lining the shores waving … It was very emotional experience, I found. And it was a very exciting time.

A day after the Argylls completed their Scottish disembarkation on 28th July, they and Charlie arrived by train at the major British training station at Camberley in Surrey.

Within a week of settling in to new and different routines, Charlie enjoyed his first though not his last, leave to London. On 7 August, accompanied by Don Seldon, he toured the major sights and savoured some of the city's renowned night life, namely a production of “The Merry Widow” at His Majesty's Theatre. Doubtless he wrote Elfreda about this momentous visit to the metropolis, which despite the “Blitz”, was still able to “carry on” some of the famed activities for which it had been noted in peacetime. It so happened that better war news, after months of defeat and disaster, had visibly lifted the Londoner's morale. What with the Germans thrown on the defensive in Russia, Bomber Command on the offensive over Germany, and the Allies on the move in southern Europe the skies were beginning to clear though everyone was well aware that much anguish and hardship still lay ahead before the enemy was decisively beaten.

Meanwhile Charlie and the rest of the Argylls had something to be equally concerned about closer to home. Indeed it affected their very identity. There was soon talk – and it had all the earmarks of being official -- that the regiment, like others before it, might be broken up and the bits parceled out to other formations as replacements or reinforcements. This was the last thing that any Argyll wanted to happen after the months of bonding in Canadian training camps and the Jamaican sojourn. By dint, however, of inventive and intensive training under the leadership of determined officers the regiment demonstrated its capacity to serve and prosper as a viable unit in it s own right and as a consequence the axe did not fall.

Charlie participated in the training exercises held at various points in England and Scotland but ironically his overseas stay with the regiment, his military home for years now, was to be short lived. Within three months of his arrival in Britain he was posted to “M” (for Mediterranean) theatre of operations, n other words, the Italian front, which the Allies had opened up the previous summer, at about the time of the Argylls' arrival in Scotland, In some cases, and this may have applied in Charlie's,, promising junior officers were sent temporarily to gain battle experience for the forthcoming invasion of Normandy, the major “Second Front” which the battered Soviet Union was constantly demanding. In most if not all instances, however, once there the officers were in place they were retained to serve as reinforcement personnel in a bloody and rugged campaign that took a heavy toll of officer and rank and file alike. In any case, Charlie's die was soon cast. His move to the Mediterranean theatre was signaled on 4 th October when he was transferred from the Argylls to the first of two Reinforcement Units, the second of which sailed for the Mediterranean on the 26 th of the month.

It promised to be an exciting time for Charlie. It opened up vistas that he had only been able to imagine or to muse about in his peacetime classrooms. After leaving the English Channel and safely negotiating the hazardous Bay of Biscay, his convoy passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, the legendary Gates of Hercules. Then it was on to the western Mediterranean and finally to the North African port – quite possibly Tunis -- where Charlie and his fellow military passengers disembarked on 9 th November. If something like a holiday cruise spirit had buoyed them on the way out it was soon dispelled by the ugly reality of war-torn Italy to which Charlie and the others were duly dispatched. By the time of their arrival one of the Axis partners, Italy, had thankfully bowed out of the though the Allies had their hands full fighting battle-hardened German units, who made every inventive effort to impede their foe's advance.

On 4 th December, after being kept in a holding position for about a month, Charlie was assigned to the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, which had been in action from the very start having participated in the Allied invasion and conquest of Sicily. They had done so as part of the 1 st Canadian Division, a formation attached to the British 8 th Army, which, together with American forces, had recently liberated North Africa from the Axis. The Hasty Ps had then “proudly” taken their place in the vanguard of the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland across the Straits of Messina in late August, 1943.

By the time Charlie joined them they had just had, after weeks of sporadic and scattered fighting, their first full scale and prolonged battle with German forces at the Moro River close by Italy's Adriatic coast. The Germans challenged the Canadians with some of their best front line units and a bitterly fought see-saw battle had ensued, with the Hasty Ps giving as good as they got. It was not for nothing that a newly arrived and impressed padre instinctively recognized them as “fighting men”. The latter's first major encounter was marked by costly advances and reverses on both sides, by entrapments and ambushes on hillside and in olive grove, by raucous exchanges of machine gun, mortar and artillery fire, by tanks immobilized in slimy mud, by snow and a deathly cold, and not least by a rugged terrain slashed by rain-filled and fast-flowing ravines and gullies rendered almost impassable.

It was the regiment's bloody initiation into the kind of campaigning that would characterize in part the Canadians' shifting military fortunes in what Farley Mowat has called their “Winter War”, which lasted for five grueling months until May dawned in 1944. . In the infrequent lulls between actions the regiment sent out patrols and scouting parties to extract information about the foe's defences and possible intentions, an exercise reminiscent of the duties of McMaster graduate James Young [HR], who served elsewhere on the Italian front.

But whether it was night patrolling, scouting expeditions, or violent house-to-house combat in battered Italian villages where adequate cover was often difficult to come by, the Hasty Ps grimly soldiered in what Mowat has called their “purgatory” on the Moro front, Charlie was eventually plunged into this maelstrom but not before he was assigned to a so-called commanders' course, bravely aimed at acquainting newly arrived and untutored platoon leaders with the military facts of life in Italy. Armed with whatever benefits conferred by the course, Charlie entered the Hasty Ps' frontline on 5 January 1944 after he spent what proved to be his one and only Christmas in wartime Italy. When he did join the unit, he probably experienced what the aforementioned padre had, that the Hasty Ps were “pretty down-to-earth and there were no down-your-nose stares and no questions asked … as if he had been born in the unit”.

Several days after his arrival the regiment moved up to replace another Canadian unit, the 48 th Highlanders, which had been occupying positions in the Arielle Valley. A scant two weeks before, one of Charlie's fellow McMaster graduates, Lieut. Kenner Arrell [HR of the 48 th , had been killed in action nearby. But for that their paths may well have crossed when the two regiments exchanged places on 9 Jan, 1944. But Charlie and his fellow Hasty Ps had graver matters than this to ponder, even if they had known about the incident. The severe wear and tear of the continuous fighting had taken its toll on their outfit. It was not only running low on ammunition and artillery shells but was also undermanned with no significant reinforcements in sight. In effect the regiment was more or less reduced to occupying a holding position until these shortcomings were remedied. Nor were matters helped by the weather, which for the most part could only be described as foul.

The Germans, meanwhile, must have sensed the regiment's straitened situation as January wore on. In any case they decided that it was an opportune time to shift some of their forces to a new front opened up by potentially dangerous an Allied amphibious thrust on Italy's west coast behind their enemy's main defences. But the tenuous Anzio beachhead, already fiercely counterattacked by Germans in the vicinity, might well be destroyed altogether should they receive reinforcements from the Arielle Valley. To forestall the move the undermanned Hasty Ps and other units were ordered on 30th January to do what Mowat described as the hopelessly impossible, that is, to attack and try to pin down the German forces earmarked for Anzio.

From trying to hold their own in bleak and straitened circumstances they were now called upon to achieve some kind of miracle. The regiment nonetheless mounted an attack that in short order eerily replicated a Great War scenario, with troops leaving their trenches and advancing across open ground against heavy fire from an entrenched and well armed foe. The results were predictable: the regiment suffered heavily. But even if the Germans were not dislodged and many may well have joined the planned exodus to Anzio, the spirit that had sustained the Hasty Ps from the outset did not desert them here.

All the same, the battlefield and its Canadian dead and wounded bore grim testimony to the ferocity and desperation of the fighting. Charlie MacDonald, hit by a shell fragment, was among the wounded that day in late January. Borne out by stretcher bearers, he had been felled while leading his platoon into action, possibly for the first time. He was taken first to a field hospital and after treatment there transferred to a general hospital in the rear. Following his release and what appears to be a period of convalescence, he returned to the regiment only to be hospitalized again for much of the month of April. His service record provides no details but he may have had a relapse or come down with a bout of jaundice, which so many soldiers suffered in the Italian theatre. On the other hand, he may have been among hundreds of Canadians attending an April Palm Sunday service in as church building that was shelled by enemy artillery. Dozens were killed and wounded in the bombardment and Charlie may well have been listed among the latter.

Following his second period of hospitalization he does not appear to have returned immediately to the Hasty Ps. Indeed his service record notes that it was not until 23 rd August that he did so. In the twelve days following his return – the short interval that ended with his death – thee regiment was occupying a rest position south of Pesora on the Adriatic coast. But that would dramatically change. In the opening week of September -- a peacetime Charlie would have been starting a new school year – the Hasty P's, along with other Canadian units, was ordered to pursue and engage the Germans, who were in retreat following an Allied breach of their Gothic Line.

In the twelve days following Charlie's return to the Hasty Ps – the short interval that ended with his death – they were occupying rest position near the Adriatic coast. But that would dramatically change and the unit would soon face another grim prospect of battle. In the opening week of September -- a peacetime Charlie would have been starting a new school year – the regiment, along with other Canadian units, was ordered to pursue and engage the Germans, who were in retreat following an Allied breach of their defences known as the Gothic Line.

At the outset the Hasty P's followed in the wake of two sister regiments, the Royal Canadian and the aforementioned 48 th Highlanders, which had gone forward courtesy of motor transport. Lacking vehicles of their own the Hasty Ps were obliged to march to the sound of the guns along the coastal road. They were subsequently diverted inland, however, to engage an enemy rear guard position, one of many thrown up to impede the Allied advance. The Hasty Ps' objective was a ridge occupied in part by the aforementioned village of Santa Maria di Scacciano. There they confronted battle-hardened German paratroopers, the likes of which had earlier taken the life of McMaster graduate Kenner Arrell. Together with other enemy units all along the line, the paratroopers had hastily improvised a defensive position in a desperate attempt to stem their foe's advance and bring about a stalemate, the last thing the Allies wanted.

One Hasty P company, initially supported by Sherman tanks, which had been held up by a blown bridge, moved on their own close to the enemy's position under mounting fire from machine guns and mortars. Meanwhile B or Baker Company, in which Charlie served as a platoon commander, made its own move and unobserved by the enemy, took up a position in farm buildings onthe outskirts of the village. They then inadvertently revealed their position, which brought down withering fire from German artillery and mortars. As a result, B Company was pinned down and being decimated, the action described in this biography's opening paragraph. Charlie and another platoon commander, despairing of their situation, opted to break out of it and rush the enemy's position. But in short order they and the men who followed them were fatally enveloped in what Farley Mowat aptly described as a “shroud of fire”. As best it could, the rest pf the company then broke up into smaller units and engaged the paratroopers in fierce hand-to-hand and house-to-house fighting in the now battered village. Shouts, curses, screams, and groans mixed with the incessant clamour of gunfire to produce the horrific cacophony known to every battle field. After it was all over and the day had been won, albeit at heavy cost, a shaken sergeant major who visited the carnage scene reported, among other things: “There was a dead lieutenant but we could do him no good so we left”. The remains may well have been those of teacher cum soldier, Charlie MacDonald.

Three months almost to the day before his death in action, the historic and deservedly trumpeted Allied landings in Normandy on D-day all but eclipsed the hard fought war in Italy to which Charlie had made his own signal contribution. At the time of his demise the Allies, including Canadians, had broken out of Normandy and were in hot pursuit off the enemy, and all eyes seemed to be riveted on their progress across northwestern Europe. As a consequence, Italy became a virtual military backwater and the Canadian troops who remained there were often derided as so many “D-day Dodgers”. Recently, however, efforts have been made to redress a perceived imbalance and to make the public more aware of the pivotal role played by Canadians in Italy. Among these is Mark Zuehlke's comprehensive work, Ortona, which bears the s pardonable subtitle, Canada's Epic World War II Battle.

At home, Charlie's death was recorded in a cut-and-dried fashion in the Minutes of the Hamilton Board of Education, his erstwhile employer: “The Chairman referred to the announcement that Lieut. Charles MacDonald, formerly of the Public School Staff, had been killed in the Italian theatre of war”. Although more might have been said than what was recorded by the Board's secretary, the terse item as it stands has all the clinical coldness of a military service record. That to date Charlie had been the only Hamilton teacher to have died on active service seems to have stirred no emotions where one would understandably expect them, especially given his teaching prowess and leadership skills. Indeed had he not enlisted for active service a colleague reiterated what others had said, that Charlie would soon have been given a school of his own.

Before 1944 came to a close a more moving and commemorative recognition than the School Board's unfolded at Memorial School under the auspices of the Hamilton Teachers Council. Among other events, a portrait of Charlie, an enlarged and framed version of his McMaster graduation photo, was presented by the staff and pupils of the school at a special assembly. The ceremony was attended by Elfreda, Charlie's widow, and by family members and close friends in the school's spacious auditorium. It was fitting that an institution dedicated to the memory of the Canadian fallen of the Great War should pay tribute to a former staff member felled in that conflict's global successor. Among those on hand to officiate were C.E. Kelle, the principal under whom Charlie had served and Professor Clement Stearn, McMaster University's Director of Extension, whose department had provided the courses Charlie had taken for his BA degree.

After Professor Stearn’s opening prayer, “Old Man Kelley”, as he was known to generations of Memorial pupils, read from Scripture and then called on the classic lines: “He fought a good fight. He finished his work. He kept the faith. Hence was laid up for him a crown of righteousness.” Charlie doubtless served as a model for the “true proud Britisher” the former principal had constantly exhorted his pupils to become. Another dignitary, an Argyll chaplain, then stepped to the podium and spoke highly of Charlie’s record as both teacher and soldier. At appointed times in the service an assembled teachers’ choir sang “Not unto us be the glory” and had the audience join them in the psalm, “Unto the Hills”. The unveiling of Charlie’s portrait was performed by fellow teacher and overseas veteran, William Burden, who had initially seen service with the Argylls, Charlie’s original unit, before joining the Lorne Scots Regiment. Their relationship had been a close one, capped by Charlie’s being chosen as best man at his colleague’s wedding. The impressive service at Memorial School ended with the traditional rendering of the haunting “Last Post” and “Reveille”.

Some time later, in early in 1948, in a move that would have pleased Charlie, he was memorialized by his friends and former teammates in the Normal School Grads basketball team, like him all former McMaster student. They presented a handsome trophy bearing Charlie's name that was put up for competition in Hamilton Public School senior basketball tournaments. The trophy also served as a reminder that the popular instructor, athlete, and outdoorsman was the only Hamilton teacher killed in action in World War II. He was, to be sure, not the only teacher named on McMaster's Honour Roll. Roy Hillgartner [HR], a '35 graduate who had taught high school in Exeter, Ontario, was killed in action in Belgium, indeed within a week of Charlie's death in Italy.

Charles Wm. MacDonald is buried in Gradara War Cemetery, Commune of Gadara, Province of Pesaro, Italy.

C.M. Johnston

[A Personal Note: The subject of this biography was one of the author's exemplary teachers at Memorial School in Hamilton, Ontario. Should the biography be read by other former pupils or by readers who may also have additional information, the author would be pleased to hear from them: 905 648-6272 or ocjohnson12@cogeco.ca]


ACKNOWLDEDGMENTS: The following kindly provided valuable assistance in the form of oral history, documentation, recollections, leads, or editorial help: Sean Adams John Aikman, Melville Bailey, James Elisha, Paul Fayter, Robert Gray, Nancy Haalboom, Margaret Houghton, Lorna Johnston, Douglas MacKenzie, Marlene MacKenzie, Mildred (Aitken) McLaren, Farley Mowat, Linda Payne, Donald Purdy, Melissa Richer, Gary Shutlak, Jean Spearin, William Tindale, and Sheila Turcon. Jean Spearin furnished key leads to Charlie MacDonald’s friends and relatives and relayed information contained in an historical work on First United Church (see below). Nancy Haalboom, William Burden’s daughter, provided welcome documentation and photographs drawn form her father’s memorabilia. Linda Payne, who has helped with other Honour Roll biographies, also supplied leads and, as well, vital MacDonald family information culled from the National Archives, particularly from the Censuses of 1881and 1901. Sean Adams, James Elisha, and Melissa Richer at the Canadian Baptist Archives made available important documentation, as did John Aikman of the Hamilton-Wentworth Board’s Educational Archives and Heritage Centre and Margaret Houghton of the Special Collections Department at the Hamilton Public Library (see below). Gary Shutlak of the Provincial Archives of Nova Scotia supplied productive leads to other repositories in that province.

SOURCES: National Archives of Canada, Wartime Personnel Records: Service Record of Lieut. Charles Wm. MacDoanald; Record Group 24, vol. 15073: War Diary of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, entries for 30th Jan., and 1st - 4th Sept. 1944; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information on Lieut. Charles Wm. MacDonald; McMaster Divinity College / Canadian Baptist Archives: McMaster University Student File 7677, Charles Wm. MacDonald (also contains correspondence with Registrar Elven Bengough), Biographical File, Charles Wm. MacDonald; McMaster University Library / Special Collections: Marmor 1942, 23; McMaster Alumni News, 15 June, 4 July, 1942, 12 Oct. 1944; Educational Archives and Heritage Centre of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board: School Registers, Bennetto School, 1922-30, Minutes of the Hamilton Board of Education, 121, 153, 216, 272, 275; Hamilton Public Library / Special Collections: Vernon’s Hamilton Directory (1914 through 1918), Vox Lycei, 1933-34, 77, 78, 79, 93, 113, 1934-5, 81, 95, 141; Hamilton Spectator, 15 Dec. 1944; Phyllis A. Davis, Adventure in Faith, written to commemorate the 125th anniversary of First United Church (Hamilton: Anniversary Book Committee [1949]), 56, 71, Ralph Pawson, Growing Together: A History of First-Pilgrim United Church, Hamilton, Ontario (Hamilton: Historical Committee of First-Pilgrim United Church, 1998), 136; Gerald Killan, Protected Places: A History of Ontario’s Provincial Parks System (Toronto: Dundurn Press and Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 1992), 15, 66; Robert L. Fraser, Black Yesterdays: The Argylls’ War (Hamilton: Seldon Printing Ltd., 1996),147, 148, 149, 151, 152, passim; Farley Mowat, The Regiment, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973, 2nd ed.), chaps. 12,13 and 14, and particularly pp.159, 162-68,,179-80, 216-17, 218; G.W.L. Nicholson, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, II: The Canadians in Italy, 1943-1945 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1956), chap. 17 for background, and in particular p. 529; Mark Zuehlke, Ortona: Canada’s Epic World War II Battle (Toronto: Stoddard, 1999).

Internet: Virtual War Memorial