Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Perry, D.S.O.
13th and 87th Battalions

An engineer by profession, he took up his duties as a soldier at the front with courage and enthusiasm, with the result that as the casualties thinned out the ranks of the senior officers he gradually rose, until from a lieutenant he became major and then eventually commanding officer of the 13th…

(Montreal Gazette, 1 Apr 1919, 4)

Kenneth Meikle Perry was born McLeod, Alberta on 7 November 1884. His father, Aylesworth Bowen Perry (1860—1956) was an original graduate of RMC and Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The younger Perry graduated from McGill University, worked in Montreal as a civil engineer and belonged to the Black Watch. He was four times wounded in action and received the Distinguished Service Order and two Bars.

He took command of the 13th Battalion between December 1917 and April while Lieutenant Colonel Eric McCuaig was on leave in Canada. In May, to the regret of his men and himself, Perry transferred to take over the 87th Grenadier Guards. His new unit felt that they “had secured a commanding officer who was capable of handling a battalion with the best.”

Perry received assurances that he would be allowed to return to the 13th if the command once again became vacant. One month after McCuaig was promoted to brigadier general in October 1918, Perry resumed command of his original battalion.

Perry remained with the Permanent Militia after the war and became professor of tactics and strategy at RMC. He retired from the army in 1943 and died in 1949.