Lieutenant-Colonel R.P. Locke

&
Lieutenant-Colonel H.M. Sharp
Governor General’s Horse Guards

We have lost a man of wide experience and sympathy, a good soldier and a man and have gained a worthy successor. There is one human touch to be noted: just as soon as the C.O., his 2 i/c and adjutant had passed the saluting base, Col. Locke half turned to Maj. Sharp and said “It’s all yours now, Buff” and from then on we were Buff Sharp’s command.

(GGHG war diary, 28 Sept 1941)

Born on September 2 November 1888 in Sarnia, Ontario, Russell Pierce Locke was a Toronto barrister commissioned with the Canadian Army Service Corps during the First World War. He served with the Fort Garry Horse in France just before the armistice. In April 1939, he took command of the Governor General’s Horse Guards, which mobilized as the 2nd Motorcycle Regiment in July 1940. By February 1941 it had been converted to the 3rd Armoured Regiment.

At nearly 53, Locke retired on 28 September 1941. The unit war diary observed that the colonel “will be sadly missed and the regiment as a whole is disappointed but time marches on—the old order chaneth and Lt. Col. Locke is the first to acknowledge that younger men are needed to fight this war.” He handed command over to Major Heber McKean Sharp, an RMC graduate born in September 1901 in New Brunswick.

Just over a week after taking command, Sharp led the 3rd Armoured Regiment overseas to England. After over six months training and drilling, he left the regiment in June 1942 to head the training wing at the Canadian Armoured Corps Reinforcement Unit. Major I.H. Cumberland, who had served as adjutant and then second-in-command since mobilization, took over the GGHG.

Locke, who had been Ontario provincial commissioner for the Boy Scouts, became a juvenile court judge in 1944. He was elevated to Ontario magistrate in 1952. He published a regimental history of the war years in 1954 and died in Toronto on 1 October 1958.

Sharp died in 1985 in Port Hope, Ontario.