Brigadier Harry Sharp
Regina Rifle Regiment
11th Infantry Brigade

… just because they have guts enough to step out and fight … Young lads who come of age and enlist here in December will be fighting in France by April. It makes no difference how many older men are taken. All the young fellows as they come of age will go into the firing line while men of 30, the ideal age for fighting, with years of training, hang back.

(Quoted in Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 13 Nov 1944, 3)

Born on 30 April 1895 in Parry Sound, Ontario, Harry Sharp was principal of North Battleford Collegiate and a University of Saskatchewan graduate. As a student he had enlisted with the 152nd Battalion in November 1915 and reverted from the rank of sergeant to join a reinforcement draft to the 52nd Battalion in France a year later. He quick re-earned his stripes but was put out of action with a gunshot wound in May 1917. He received the Distinguished Conduct Medal and took a commission just before the end of the war.

He resumed his studies, graduated from university in 1923, and took up the principalship the next year. A prewar militia officer since 1926, he raised a company for the Regina Rifles after mobilization in 1940. He preceded the battalion overseas in June 1941 and became second-in-command in November. The next month he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel T.H. Hewitt who had passed the age limit.

By March 1943, as Sharp also reached the age limit, he was replaced by Major F.M. Matheson. He temporarily commanded the 11th Infantry Brigade from April to November 1943 before a posting to a holding reinforcement. Following his returned to Saskatchewan in 1944, he expressed regret that he could not have lead the Rifles into action at D-Day. “I know it was impossible for me to stay in the field. If I can be as happy as when I commanded the Regina Rifles I ask no more.”

Back home, he called on trained but older conscripts to be sent overseas as reinforcements rather than rely on the few young, eager but largely untrained volunteers. He also unsuccessfully sought the Liberal nomination for the federal riding of North Battleford:

It is now four years since I left North Battleford for service in Canada’s active forces. As a result I have become somewhat out of touch with individual friends and their problems, but I believe I have acquired a broader view of Canada’s position in the British Commonwealth of Nations, and a better conception of the influence which our Dominion may have in the postwar settlement of international difficulties and the preservation of peace. Our contribution to the war effort of the United Nations has been great; our contribution to a world at peace can be even greater … But if we are to be strong among the nations, we must be strong at home; and we must first put our own house in order, and keep it in order.

He resumed his principal position in North Battleford and was active in civil defence in the 1950s. He died in Lamont, Alberta on 31 December 1972.