Lieutenant-Colonel Andy Law
Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders

Every man worked as a member of a team. They showed such coolness and determination as I have ever seen … However, we had to leave a lot of casualties behind as we were caught by machine-gun fire. It was remarkable so many got away and we lost a good many friends.

(Law to wife, quoted in Winnipeg Tribune, 9 Sep 1942, 13)

Born in Kirkoswald, Scotland on 19 September 1903, Andrew Thomson Law was an electrical engineer who moved Canada as a young man. He married in Winnipeg in 1931 and was commissioned with the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders the next year. He served as major and second-in-command before the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942. On the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Alf Gostling, Law led the battalion forward across the beach under withering enemy fire. “It was a great show,” he wrote home. “And it was a great honor for me to command them in the first Cameron engagement. The boys did honor to the name Cameron and it was a heartbreak to see so many gallant lads fall.”

Although the raid had ended in the near annihilation of several battalions, Law had performed heroically and succeeded in evacuating more that half his men from the beach. He earned the Distinguished Service Order for his service as acting commander:

He took over and fought the whole action, advancing two miles inland with the Camerons inflicting great losses on the enemy. To him goes much of the credit for brining back eighty percent of his force as far as the beach, fighting a magnificent rearguard action. That many of the Camerons are alive today is due to his leadership and their own valor

Law declined the offer of another battalion, opting to stay with the Cameron Highlanders, now under Lieutenant-Colonel Ben Cunningham, former brigade major at Dieppe. In January 1943, following Cunningham’s reassignment to army headquarters, Law received the promotion he had waited for. He commanded the Camerons for over a year until February 1944, when he was fired for inefficiency by Brigadier G.S.N. Gostling, brother of the former Cameron CO killed at Dieppe. Knowing he and the late Alf Gostling had never gotten along, Law expected to be removed once Brigadier Gostling took over the 6th Infantry Brigade.

Command passed to Major N.H. Ross, who described his task to restore battalion discipline: “I had to do what Andy Law should have done and what I kept telling him he should do. But he didn’t have enough intestinal fortitude to do it.” Law had “not got the guts” to fire underperforming officers and the longtime regimental sergeant major.

Law was posted to a training unit in England. After five years overseas, he reunited with his family in April 1945. Law died in Victoria, British Columbia on 11 January 1986.