Lieutenant-Colonel Matthias McA’Nulty
27th Armoured (Sherbrooke Fusilier) Regiment

Col. M.W. McA’Nulty, Canadian officer chosen to take back Hong Kong and evacuate Canadian prisoners of war in Japan, told … it was not the atomic bomb which made the Japs call it quits, but the terrible pounding they took from the American B-29’s.

(St. Johnsbury Republican, 22 Mar 1946, 1)

Born on 17 February 1893 in Point Alexander, Ontario, Matthias William Cyrus McA’Nulty was a stockbroker in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, commandant of the Cadet Officer Training Corps at Bishop’s College and commanding officer of the Sherbrooke Regiment from 1924 to 1930. During the First World War, he had enlisted with the Railway Construction and Forestry Depot as a lieutenant in August 1917 and went to France on a draft to the Canadian Machine Gun Corps a year later. McA’Nulty took command of the Regiment again in 1939.

In July 1940, at the urging of McA’Nulty for representation of the Eastern Townships in the Canadian Active Service Force, a new unit was formed from the amalgamation of the Sherbrooke Regiment and les Fusiliers de Sherbrooke. McA’Nulty became the first commanding officer of the bilingual Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment, which had anglophone and francophone companies.

In August 1941, the regiment went to Newfoundland for garrison duty. With uncertainty over their unit’s status, morale suffered during this assignment until McA’Nulty announced its conversion to an armoured regiment in January 1942. The now redesignated 27th Armoured Regiment left in February for the training camp in New Brunswick while McA’Nulty and a detachment departed for England. Command of the remaining regiment fell to Major A. Biron and then Major A.C. Cave until the Sherbrookes left Canada in November 1942.

Having completed senior officer courses overseas during the interim, McA’Nulty resumed command when the regiment arrived in England in November. However, by the end of December he was deemed medical unfit, returned to Canada, and replaced by Major B.D. Lyon. “He is a very capable commanding Officer and is well liked by all ranks,” the war diarist recorded, “and I know that all the unit will join in expressing their regrets at his departure in whishing him Good Luck and Good Health wherever he may be sent.”

McA’Nulty’s last assignment of the war was to take charge of the liberation and repatriation of the survivors of the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada taken prisoner at Hong Kong in December 1941. He related of his mission:

The most emotionally disturbing experience was a visit to 173 Canadians on the [USS] Ozark, which was used as a depot for released P.O.W.’s … within ten seconds the whole 173 were around me … They wanted to know everything about Canada and especially what the people at home thought of the fight they had put up at Hong Kong. It was touching: they wanted to give me things.

During his tour of Japan just weeks after the surrender, he visited Nagasaki and expressed astonishment so much destruction had been caused by just “one small bomb.”

He died in Ottawa on 19 October 1966.