Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Crowe
Royal Canadian Regiment

That evening, when our battalion rested, the CO, Ralph Crowe, another would-be Cavalier, with tears in his eyes reminded his senior subordinates that Billy’s [Major Pope] death should never have been; that it was an object lesson for all of us. We were not to expose ourselves needlessly. The Second-in-Command had no business stalking enemy armour and we, the company commanders, had even less business putting ourselves in positions of great danger when our men were supposed to be properly led by the sound application of our tactical training and by accepted techniques of command and control. He was so very right.

(Strome Galloway, The General Who Never Was, 142)

Born on 2 October 1911 in Guelph, Ontario, Ralph Marston Crowe was an instructor at the Royal Military College, having also graduated there in 1933. He was commissioned in the RCR and served two years with the Indian Army on the Northwest frontier in 1936-37. He left the staff of RMC to go overseas in December 1939. Following a posting to the 1st Canadian Division headquarters, in February 1940, he transferred to the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment as a major.

Having left for Canada in September, he returned overseas as brigade major with the 8th Infantry Brigade in July 1941. Following completion of courses at the junior war staff college in Camberley, England, he earned a promotion to lieutenant-colonel and joined the Canadian reinforcement unit headquarters as general staff officer. The school commandant remarked on his graduation in February 1942: “he has done extremely well. He is thorough in all that he does and has well balanced judgement, combined with a practical outlook.” While the instructors agreed Crowe would make “a very sound, reliable staff officer,” his fate would be as a regimental officer.

In March 1943, Crowe succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel T. Eric Snow in command of the RCR, just months before the invasion of Sicily. The regiment landed with the 1st Canadian Division as part of Operation Husky on 10 July 1943. While attempting to contact the rest of his battalion on 24 July, Crowe’s party came under enemy machine gun fire. Although wounded, the colonel attempted to return fire but was struck down again. Private Fred Turner died attempting to save his commander’s life.

As the area descended into an intense firefight, the RCR could not recover Crowe’s body until the next day for proper burial. As second-in-command Major Billy Pope had been killed in action a week earlier, command of the RCR temporarily passed to Major T.M. Powers, who wrote to Crowe’s widow:

The whole regiment mourns the passing of a commanding officer who was both as brave as a lion and gracious as could be in his dealings with us … Ralph is buried with the remainder of the small gallant party who were with him, just outside the Town of Nissoria, a place where the Hun had set up his infernal machines to prevent one inch of ground being in our hands.