Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

J. Douglas Young

When John Douglas (Doug) Young entered McMaster University in September, 1937 he did so as a virtual continuing student. He had already spent four years at the Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario, which conferred diplomas not degrees on graduates like Doug. Since civil engineering had been his non-military course at RMC he would have enjoyed a substantial credit towards an engineering degree at a university offering such a program. Instead of proceeding in that direction, however, he had decided to register at McMaster in order to take upper level economics courses, better to prepare himself for graduate studies in business and ultimately a career in that field.

To appreciate why Doug had gone to RMC and entertained such ambitions, his background and earlier years must be traced. To begin with, he was born on 7 July 1916 to a prominent commercial and military family in Hamilton, Ontario. His Scottish-Canadian and Presbyterian grandfather, James Mason Young, had co-founded the Hamilton Cotton Company in 1882. This flourishing concern made him one of the area's high-profile entrepreneurs and a contributor to what one booster publication called the city's "phenomenal" industrial growth. Believing that a military education would instill the values and discipline that his sons and society were perceived to need, he sent them to RMC, an institution founded in 1874. There Doug's father excelled as a student and after his graduation in 1911 he pursued further studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Soon enough James' formal instruction at RMC would be put to a severe test by the Great War, which erupted in 1914. He went overseas as an officer in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, serving with the 3rd Artillery Brigade, and was wounded on the Western Front in March, 1915. On their way to visit him in hospital his parents were lost when their ship, RMS Lusitania, was sunk by a German U-boat, an electrifying event that ultimately helped to bring the United States into the war. The grieving son was subsequently invalided out of the service and returned to Canada in 1916. In the post war period he participated with brother Alan in the management of the family firm. During this time Doug, his eldest child, would be joined by William (Bill), a sister, Georgina, and two more brothers, David and Benjamin.

Having the desire and the means to educate his own sons at private institutions, James Young sent Doug, first, to Hillcrest, a private primary school in Hamilton that had replaced the fire-stricken Highfield School for Boys established at the turn of the century. In 1929, some years after Doug had left its halls, it was relocated elsewhere in the city and renamed Hillfield School, which meant that henceforth, like other former Hillcrest students, he also qualified as a Hillfield Old Boy. Meanwhile, to broaden Doug’s education in a more arcadian setting, his father had then dispatched him to the academy he himself had attended, the preparatory Lakefield College School near Peterborough. Lakefield had started modestly in late Victorian times in a large disused farmhouse and adjacent outbuildings. In due course, as the school continued to flourish, classrooms, a dormitory, and a chapel were added to the rustic premises of what had become the kind of private educational enterprise that appealed to James Young. His sons were duly schooled there before proceeding to Upper Canada College (UCC) in Toronto, a more advanced boarding school dating from pre-Victorian times. The move certainly made for a dramatic change of scene, from the tranquil pastoral setting of Lakefield to the clamorous urban environment of Ontario’s capital.

During the two sessions Doug spent at UCC - from September 1930 to June 1932 - he boarded in the residence known as Wedd House where he and his fellow denizens were sheltered from the worst ravages of the Depression stalking the country. The school's yearbook, College Times, reveals that on the athletic front, Doug took readily to intramural hockey, starting out with the junior team and ending up with the Senior House Colours in 1932. In the classroom he was required to take a full range of courses - corresponding generally with the public high school curriculum - and achieved high grades, particularly in chemistry and physics in his final year. He was also instructed in French and Latin, mathematics, music, and not least, Ancient and Modern History. Before departing the college with his junior matriculation he was awarded the Tom Lawson Prize, given for general proficiency. This kind of recognition would almost become routine.

Doug's family had decided that instead of completing his senior matriculation at home he should spend an invigorating educational year abroad, notably at the Le Rosey School in Lausanne, Switzerland. In those imposing and lofty surroundings - a far cry from the plain-like Toronto scene -- he took courses in what amounted to immersion French along with subjects that taken together provided him with the equivalent of an Ontario senior matriculation. Armed with these credentials, he returned from Lausanne and in September, 1933 proceeded in a kind of foreordained way to RMC, his father's alma mater. Doug's career there was "exemplary", capped by his appointment as head cadet and battalion sergeant-major. Along the way, to quote a glowing obituary, he "chalked up a staggering record of personal achievement". He consistently won the general proficiency prize and awards in mathematics, chemistry and physics, history, and modern languages. His grasp of French in particular qualified him as a military interpreter. The arts subjects he took were an integral part of the general course in civil engineering, designed to provide the student with the essentials of a "cultural education".

As is the way with college yearbooks, the RMC's Review spelled out Doug's varied accomplishments in a tongue-in-cheek way. "Although Doug. sleeps most of the time during lectures", it disclosed in 1937, "his academic record is one of which to be proud. For the last three years he has been at the head of the class, for which he wears a crown and pip on his right sleeve. On his left sleeve he wears crossed guns and crown and a gun layer's badge, indicating his proficiency in Artillery. "Younk" has also shown much ability in the riding school, so much so that he wears a spur on his sleeve, and helps with the breaking in of re-mounts".

As at UCC the popular "Younk" also indulged in athletics though by this time they no longer held the pride of place they once had at the College, having yielded to what were deemed the higher priorities of the academic curriculum. In any case, Doug, an energetic and healthy non-smoker, ventured at once into a variety of intramural sports, opting primarily for football, however, in which he played on what was called the 2nd team. Off the parade ground and the playing field, he made a name for himself on the squash court and in the billiards room, recreational facilities recently added to enhance the College's amenities.

Doug also engaged in some bold and colourful off-campus diversions. For example, in the summer of 1936 - as reported by the Review -- he "got the wanderlust" and in the company of a classmate, "drove across Canada and the United States". The yearbook wryly added that he "likes the California police the best although he spent five days longer there than he expected". Perhaps this and other adventures account for a classmate's good humoured though coded observation that "four years of virtue, it seems, hath its own peculiar rewards". In any event, with his wanderlust satisfied, at least for the moment, Doug finished out his final year in 1937 and graduated, as expected, "with distinction". The Review proudly announced that he had constantly demonstrated his "outstanding …ability … as a leader" and noted that he had been awarded the Governor-General's Gold Medal as well as the College's coveted Sword of Honour.

Crowned with these laurels, Doug came home to Ancaster and, as noted, enrolled at nearby McMaster University, originally a Toronto institution which had moved to Hamilton's fashionable Westdale district just seven years before. Presumably its Baptist affiliation gave no offence to his own Presbyterian commitment. Entering his father's occupation as "manufacturer" on his admissions application, he indicated, as he had in other situations, that he was going to follow in the parental footsteps, this time by making a mark in the business world. To that end it was "agreeably arranged" with an obviously impressed McMaster administration that Doug take a number of selected courses in political economy (now styled economics). These he thought would help prepare him for the rigours of what he planned next, a stint at the prestigious Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts. The school, which subsequently made inquiries about his standings at McMaster, learned what it wanted to know, that he had met the requirements and passed his courses with a mixture of firsts and seconds.

Then it was on to Harvard. In the two years spent studying in Boston Doug again did well academically, achieving "Distinction" in three courses and a mixture of "High Passes" and "Passes" in the remainder. Significantly his highest grades were in marketing, accounting, and business statistics, which must have come as good news to his "manufacturer" father. In June, 1940, however, the very month Doug received his Harvard MBA (Master of Business Administration), he left Boston behind and headed for home, having made up his mind to enlist for active service in the conflict - already called World War II - that Canada had entered in September, 1939. "For the duration" - as the wartime phrase went - his plans for a business career were summarily put on hold in emulation of his father's decision in the Great War. All the same, as James Young had doubtless perceived, the worlds of commerce and the military may not have been all that far apart. Indeed, the quest for leadership, efficiency, organization, and the proper exploitation and deployment of resources, so vital in the business sphere, was also seen to be the hallmark of military service.

By this time Doug, the RMC graduate, was, of course, no stranger to the military regimen. Besides, while attending McMaster and Harvard, he had, like his father before him, served in an artillery unit, in his case the 11th (Hamilton) Field Battery, a militia outfit dating from the early post-Confederation period. Meanwhile it so happened that Ottawa, faced with an ominously changing international scene, had recently announced plans to beef up the thin military budgets of the 'twenties, which had reflected the legacy of the Great War's horrors. While a high-ranking army officer thought the increased defence estimates fell "far short of what was required", he conceded that "[they] at least indicated a most welcome change in trend".

Among other things, it meant that the artillery, which had been particularly hard hit by the cost-cutting of the past, would receive more attention. Existing batteries would be strengthened and additional ones established in various parts of the country, encouraging news to the professional group known as the Canadian Artillery Association. In this more auspicious gunner's environment, and thanks to his RMC accomplishments, Doug had been assured of an early militia promotion, that is, if he qualified. He had readily met that condition and was duly commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in his unit, the venerable 11th Field Battery, Royal Canadian Artillery (RCA). From all accounts, the amiable Doug, who had excelled in the artillery courses at RMC, had proven a capable officer at training sessions and summer camp and was well liked by both superiors and subordinates.

The day Doug enlisted for active service -- 3 June 1940 -- and those leading up to it had been freighted with apprehension and foreboding. The war, less than a year old, had just taken a catastrophic turn for the worse. The day before he joined up, a battered British Expeditionary Force (BEF), at the cost of virtually all of its equipment, had only narrowly completed a hurried evacuation from the French port of Dunkirk. The BEF was but one of the hapless victims of the German Blitzkrieg that swept across western Europe. Holland had been speedily overrun by the Wehrmacht some days before, Belgium had surrendered even more recently in the face of overwhelming odds, and disorganized and demoralized French armies were reeling from the enemy's hammer blows. The unthinkable was happening. The Western Front was collapsing and, worst of all, a weakened Britain was facing the grim prospect of an imminent German invasion. In these circumstances perhaps Doug's decision to enlist is easily explained.

He did not see action immediately, of course. For some two months he shuttled between Hamilton and Toronto assignments before receiving a posting to Petawawa Military Camp where he arrived on 2 August 1940 as a lieutenant with the 11th Field Battery. A little over a month later he was singled out for promotion to Acting Adjutant of the 12th Field Artillery Regiment and assigned to its headquarters. Within a matter of days he was promoted Acting Captain and on 3 October 1940 dispatched to Sussex Military Camp in New Brunswick. After a three-week Christmas furlough he returned to Sussex and was ultimately posted on 17 March 1941 to the Headquarters of the 3rd Canadian Division, RCA.

Now a full-fledged captain, Doug was clearly being groomed for challenging responsibilities. As part of that process he was shortly sent to Debert, Nova Scotia, as a "Staff Captain Learner" and he readily met the requirements. Formally appointed a Staff Captain on 26 May 1941, he was expected in time to assume responsibility for a wide variety of functions, among them, operations, intelligence, logistics, training, personnel management, and inter-service relations. These and other essential duties would continue to come his way over the next three years. Before 1941 came to a close the newly promoted staff captain was assigned to the Canadian Active Service Force (Overseas) and on a ship bound for Britain. He arrived at his destination two days before Christmas, 1941 and was immediately attached to No.1 Canadian Artillery Holding Unit (CAHU).

In the midst of the long post-Dunkirk gloom one ray of hope had shone through. Some two weeks before Doug's arrival in England the United States had been plunged into the war thanks to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Doubtless everyone in beleaguered Britain, including Doug, was heartened by the news that they had been joined by another major ally. Even so, Pearl Harbor, like Dunkirk, was still a shocking defeat and overall the war showed little immediate sign of any real improvement in the Allies' lot. By this time that included the Soviet Union, which had been desperately trying to contain the massive German invasion launched in the summer of 1941.

In this ever-recurring scenario of good news laced with bad, Doug was soon enough preoccupied with his own responsibilities. On Boxing Day, 1941 he departed the CAHU after being assigned to the headquarters staff of the 3rd Division, RCA, where he honed the skills he had shown in Canada. On 20 January 1942 he was next posted to a Troop Commanders Course at Canadian Military Headquarters and within the month qualified "B" on the course. The following March he was promoted acting Brigade Major (BRMA), to serve as chief of staff to a brigadier in the 3rd Division. That rank gave way on 13 March to a confirmed majority and what was termed seniority in the RCA.

After enjoying short leaves in the summer of 1942 more staff responsibilities materialized when Doug was attached to the headquarters staff of the 1st Canadian Corps. Subsequently he was assigned as part of that force to the Counter Battery Officer Staff from which in late February, 1943 he was posted to the 11th Army Field Regiment, RCA. There then followed a Gunnery Refresher Course, after which additional staff duties were assigned him, including those generated by the newly formed 21 Army Group, the formation that would ultimately be deployed on the Continent following the D-Day landings set for early June 1944. It was during this period that Doug enjoyed welcome visits from both brother Bill and his father. Bill Young, like Doug an officer in the RCA, would serve with an artillery unit in the hard-fought Italian campaign while the senior Young, the Great War veteran, was back in uniform himself as Master General of Ordnance, with the rank of Major-General. These family get-togethers were not, however, Doug's only morale-boosting moments in the United Kingdom. Over a series of leaves he had met and become engaged to a young English woman, recently remembered by his brother, after so long an interval, only as "Mollie".

Apparently Doug could have stayed with his staff post in London but elected instead to participate in what was already being hailed as the historic Allied "return to Europe" via Normandy. Accordingly, he was shortly posted to the 13th Field Regiment, RCA, a unit assigned a D-Day role on 6 June 1944. Now holding the rank of Major, he was allotted the crucial task of serving as Unit Deployment Officer or "beach master" in his sector of "Juno", the Canadians' designated stretch of the Normandy coast. His responsibilities, which probably came naturally to a seasoned staff officer, included co-ordinating the movements of the various military formations and directing them to their exit points on the beachhead. In other words, it was an urgent matter of turning potential chaos into something resembling order though certainly never the "neat pattern" - a military historian's phrase - which some planners had sanguinely envisaged.

June 6th unleashed, as expected, a multitude of lethal hazards for the invading Allied forces, including Doug's unit. For one thing, before the Canadians could even disembark on Juno they had to contend not only with deadly enemy artillery and machine gun fire but with mined underwater obstacles and a driving tide through which their landing craft often rolled uncertainly and erratically. Indeed, the stage seemed set, as one account starkly put it, "for a repetition of what was already occurring on Omaha [Beach, the American sector], savage slaughter". Fortunately that kind of large scale killing did not happen to the Canadians, though they suffered severely enough while battling to establish their own beachhead further east.

Among the first to suffer was Doug's own outfit, the 13th Field Regiment, which was supporting the assault troops, in this case the Regina Rifles. To begin with, the craft transporting the unit landing party was destroyed either by shell fire or a mine with the loss of all on board. It was an ominous start. Even so, the Canadian gunners in other craft tried to give as good as they got. "On the run-in", the official history reported, "field guns had been firing over the heads of the infantry in the assault landing craft, which had left their mother ship and were now beginning to touch down on their beaches".

At about the same time Major Douglas Young and his party, made up of three gunners from the 13th, were in their own landing craft and also seeking to negotiate a landfall. But before they could set foot on Juno disaster struck them as well. One of the party's survivors later described what happened to his major and his comrades that lacerating day. "We crossed the Channel on a LCT [Landing Craft Tanks]", Gunner George Lacey reported on 17 June 1944,

… and transferred to LCS 107 at approximately 0600 hours 6th June 1944 …. While the ranging and shelling were going on LCS 107 cruised about some distance off shore …. I expected that we would follow the assaulting infantry ashore but Major Young decided to board [an] LCT … which had unloaded its tanks and was some distance from the beach. The LCS ran along side … the LCT … and I climbed aboard …. I had slung my mine detector and rifle on my back but the other three members of the party had laid their rifles and wireless sets on the walk … of the LCT and climbed aboard a little further forward …. I was facing away from them when the shell which did the damage hit … [and] burst beside them just below the walk level …

The effects were devastating. Doug and Lacy's comrades were grievously wounded, one gunner suffering a badly mangled arm. His wounds could be treated with a tourniquet, however, which was supplied by the LCT's crew, who also furnished morphine for the stricken soldier. Unfortunately Doug, who had also borne the brunt of the exploding shell, was beyond even this kind of help. His upper right leg was shattered and he was bleeding heavily, so much so that within a matter of minutes he was dead. The wounded survivors were transferred to a hospital ship while Lacy was obliged to return to England but only after he had unavailingly sought to get ashore and report the fate of his major and the gunners. On being queried later, he could not recall the "time [or place] of Major Young's burial". Like Lieutenant Robert Dorsey [HR] his war had ended almost before it began.

Doug's father shortly received word of his son's death. He immediately took steps to relay the grim information to Bill, who was serving still as an artillery officer on the Italian front. It was a bitter blow. Bill had long looked up to his brother as mentor and exemplar and had invariably followed in his footsteps - not to mention his father's -- indeed all the way from school and RMC to the fighting front. "Doug was gifted", he recently recalled, echoing the sentiments of others over the years, "with an easy and likeable personality, high intelligence, good administrative ability, and lots of energy…. Had his life been spared … he would have done well in the army before the war ended and he would have been a leader in civilian life afterwards", in effect, promising to achieve the goals long set by his alma mater, RMC.

John Douglas Young, having no known grave, is commemorated with similar fallen in the Bayeux Memorial, Calvados, France


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: William Young kindly supplied vital family information and reminiscences of his brother, Douglas. He was also good enough to decipher and explain his brother's service record and to provide references and editorial advice. A number of school archivists and officials also made valuable contributions. Margaret Spence assembled information about Young's stay at Upper Canada College, and Peter Dawe unearthed comparable material at RMC. In turn Kenneth Morgan released Young's McMaster University student records and related documentation, and Ross Canning furnished a copy of the artillery officer's Harvard Business School transcript. (See below for the specific provenance of this material.)

SOURCES: "James Mason Young", Dictionary of Hamilton Biography [DHB], II: 1876-1924 (Hamilton: Dictionary of Hamilton Biography [DHB], 1991), 190, "Alan Vernon Young", DHB, IV: 1940-1970 (Hamilton: DHB, 1999), 257; Hamilton, Canada: Its History, Commerce, Industries, Resources, Issued under the Auspices of the City Council in the Centennial Year 1913 (Hamilton: Herbert Lister, 1913), 33-65; Upper Canada College Archives: College Times, 1931, 1932, student records of John Douglas Young; Royal Military College Club of Canada: Record Sheet of Student 2360, John Douglas Young, Statement of John Douglas Young, Reminiscences about and Obituary of John Douglas Young, D.E.B., "2360, Battalion Sergeant-Major John Douglas Young, Graduating Class 1933-1937", The Review (June, 1937), 17; Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 6616, John Douglas Young, Biographical File, John Douglas Young; Harvard Business School / Registrar's Office: Transcript of John Douglas Young, 1938-40; National Archives of Canada / Wartime Personnel Records: Service Record of Major John Douglas Young, and Statement of Gunner Lacey G.F. Re: Major J.D. Young, 17 June 1944; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information on Major John Douglas Young.
Richard A. Preston, Canada's RMC: A History of the Royal Military College (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 1-2, 257-61, 293, 392; Soldiers and Politicians: The Memoirs of Lt.-Gen. Maurice A. Pope (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), 124; James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada: From the Great War to the Great Depression (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), 313-18; G.W.L. Nicholson, The Gunners of Canada: The History of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery, II: 1919-1967 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart [Canadian Artillery Association], 1972), chaps. II and IX, pp. 24-37, 277; 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), 100-2; Hamilton Spectator, 15 July 1944 (obituary).
Internet: "13 Field Regiment, RCA", www.canorbat.freehosting.net

[ For related biographies, see Nairn Stewart Boyd, Robert Edmund Dorsey ]