Lieutenant-Colonel H.T. Kempton
South Saskatchewan Regiment

So again passed another of the original officers of the regiment into higher army service. He, like Lt.-Col. Wright, seemed to be a very part of the flesh and blood of the unit. He was keenly disappointed on not going into “action” with the men with whom he had trained from the beginning.

(Maj. G.B. Buchanan, The March of the Prairie Men, chap. 4)

Born on 1 January 1895 in Barking, Essex, England, Harold Thomas Kempton owned a bookstore in Weyburn, Saskatchewan with his brother since 1912. He served in the Royal Air Force during the First World War and joined the Weyburn Regiment afterward. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Kempton was a major in the amalgamated South Saskatchewan Regiment. He led the advance party overseas in August 1940 before the rest of the battalion followed in December.

A year later, Lieutenant-Colonel J.E. Wright was sent home. Although Kempton was second-in-command, the appointment would go to two outsiders, Lieutenant-Colonel S. Lett in December 1941 and then Lieutenant-Colonel C.C.I. Merritt in March 1942. In July, as the SSR prepared for the eventual Dieppe Raid, Kempton was posted to a training unit as chief instructor and promoted to lieutenant-colonel.

On 19 August 1942, the SSR went ashore at Dieppe. Eighty-four were killed including Kempton’s nephew, and eighty-nine were taken prisoner, including Merritt. When the depleted unit returned with so many officers captured, wounded, or dead, Kempton was assigned to take command. He oversaw the rebuilding process until his replacement in October 1942 by Lieutenant-Colonel F.A. Clift, former second-in-command of the Saskatoon Light Infantry.

Kempton returned home in January 1945. In addition to a lifelong interest in aviation and involvement in the Canadian Legion, he served as sheriff for the Weyburn District from 1946 to 1961.

He died on 10 September 1982 in Weyburn.