Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Motzfeldt
Royal Highlanders of Canada (The Black Watch)

It was a Scot—and a vain one—who said there were only two classes of people in the world: those who were Scots and those who would like to be Scots. That explains why Napier Moore, editor of The Financial Post, searching through “Clans and Tartans of Scotland” … was unable to find any reference to the Clan MacMotzfeldt. But there is such a tartan. It is of recent creation and the story of its coming into being is very interesting.

(Reprinted in Windsor Star, 3 Nov 1949, 4)

Born in Denmark on 8 June 1908, Ulric Johan (Eric) Motzfeldt graduated from the University of Copenhagen and in 1929 immigrated to Canada where he worked as an insurance broker in Montreal. He joined the Black Watch as a lieutenant on the declaration of war and rose to company commander by the time the regiment deployed to Normandy in July 1944. As a member of the Royal Highlanders, he jokingly called himself MacMotzfeldt and others knew the six-foot-two officer as “the Great Dane.”

On 25 July 1944, Motzfeldt joined a reconnaissance party near Caen lead by Lieutenant-Colonel S.S.T. Cantlie. The group came under German machine guns, leaving Cantlie mortally wounded and Motzfeldt badly shot up. Following a prolonged recovery, in February 1945, he rejoined as second-in-command under Lieutenant-Colonel B.R. Ritchie. By mid-March, Motzfeldt took over as acting commanding officer when Ritchie left for England. “[T]he fighting was a test of the morale of the men,” he Motzfeldt wrote of the campaign into the Netherlands, “many of whom have never before been engaged in such stiff battles.”

On 5 April 1945, a rocket barrage struck the battalion tactical headquarters, killing one and wounding Motzfeldt and many of his staff. Major V.E. Traversy took over until Lieutenant-Colonel S.W. Thomson, former commanding officer of the Seaforth Highlanders in Italy, arrived the next day. The war ended while Motzfeldt recovered from his wounds in a London hospital.

Some time after V-E Day, he took a short leave to visit his former homeland. Arm still in a sling, he reunited with his mother in Copenhagen and was even invited for an audience with the King of Denmark. To honour both regimental and national heritage, a tartan manufacturer created a special tartan for Motzfeldt combining the Black Watch pattern with the Danish red and white colours. Back in Montreal by July 1945, he resumed his insurance brokage business and to an Innerkip, Ontario farm in the 1960s.

He died with his wife in a car accident on 30 June 1967.