Lieutenant-Colonel Pot Doucet
Perth Regiment

Immediately on the Canadian Army becoming operational, we began to get briefings twice a day at H.Q. about progress of the fighting on our own front and the other Allied fronts in France. Our briefing officer was Lieutenant-Colonel H.E.T. (“Pot”) Doucet of Montreal. “Pot” Doucet was the most able briefing officer any correspondents had helping them in France. Personally I have never known a better one anywhere.

(Ross Munro, Gauntlet to Overlord, 68)

Born in Montreal in 1907, Herbert Emile Theodore Pothier (Pot) Doucet was an engineer, Royal Military College graduate and militia officer with Royal Highlanders of Canada (The Black Watch) since 1929. He attended the staff college at Camberley, England in 1940 before returning as tactics instructor at RMC. He went overseas in October 1942 to serve as brigade major with the 1st Infantry Brigade.

In April 1943, he became second-in-command of the Perth Regiment and one month later succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel J.S.H. Lind, who had been appointed to II Canadian Corps headquarters. His time in command, however, would be brief. Three months later, he was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel W.S. Rutherford, former CO of the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders. By August 1943, Doucet was dispatched to the 1st Canadian Division in Sicily just prior to the invasion of the Italian mainland. He later served as general staff officer for I Canadian Corps in the Italian theatre.

In April 1944, prior to the Normandy invasion, he became general staff officer with the First Canadian Army and served as the army’s chief briefing officer throughout the campaign in France and the Netherlands. In his memoir, the Canadian Press lead war correspondent Ross Munro described Doucet’s performance in daily press briefings on the Canadian Army’s fighting operations and progress:

He gave us all the information we need and gave it precisely, accurately and briskly. Every newspaperman who was ever with the Canadians in France, owed a debt to this young colonel in the Black Watch. With our own army functioning, we got the broad picture in proper perspective from him.

Similarly, NBC News radio correspondent James Cassidy described press briefings, as “superbly handled by an incisive, slight Lieutenant Colonel Doucet, whom I take to be a French Canadian and whose appearance is like that of Larry in The Razor’s Edge.”

After the end of the war in Europe, Doucet commanded the 3rd Battalion, Highland Light Infantry during the occupation of Germany before returning to army public relations in 1946. His postwar military career included army director of public relations with the Department of National Defence, military attaché to the Hague, military advisor to the Canadian commissioner in Cambodia, and director of the National Defence College in Kingston. He retired as at the rank of brigadier as deputy adjutant-general of the army in 1963.

Doucet died on 17 August 1989 in Ottawa.