Lieutenant-Colonel S.R.L. White
1st Bn., Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians)

The new colours which you have just present have yet to justify existence, but I have no hesitation in saying that we are willing to a man to do under them what we have done under the old ones, to keep them flying for the honour of the Regiment and the glory of the British Army, whether in this country or in any other where duty calls us to fight for our King and country.

(Col. White, 4 Feb 1913, in F.E. Whitton, The History of the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment, vol. 1, 167)

Samuel Robert Llewellyn White was born in Blackrock, County Dublin, Ireland, on 4 June 1863. He was commissioned with the Leinster Regiment in 1885 and served as a captain during the Boer War, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He became commanding officer of the 1st Battalion in 1911. As the unit was stationed in Fyzabad, India at the outbreak of the Great War, it did not arrive to France until December 1914.

The 1st Leinsters served on the Western Front as part of the 82nd Brigade, 27th Division. In the brigade, the “Royal Canadians” fought alongside the first actual Canadian regiment, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. White remained in command until early March 1915 when the fifty-one-year-old was invalided due to ill health. He was replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel C.B. Prowse of the 1st Battalion, Prince Albert’s (Somerset Light Infantry). On home service, White commanded the 17th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment until it was disbanded in 1917.

He died on 2 September 1925.