Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Mackendrick
Queen’s Own Rifles

This Officer was gassed with enemy gas while in support near Lens at 2 am on 5.9.17. He suffered from vomiting, blepharitis & conjunctivitis, sore throat, constriction of chest & cough … Sleep is greatly disturbed, waking with terrors; is nervous & has trembling spells & slight tremor.

(Personnel file, medical report, 1917)

Born on 30 August 1895 in Galt, Ontario, Harry Crane Mackendrick was a University of Toronto graduate and First World War veteran. He was commissioned with the UofT officer training corps and joined the 111th Battalion in January 1916. He went to France as a reinforcement officer for the 4th Battalion but suffered mustard gas burns in September 1917. He was admitted to a casualty clearing station where his father, a doctor attached to with the Royal Army Medical Corps, happened to be stationed.

Suffering from nerves and rendered unfit for the front, he returned to Canada, where he served as a captain with Military District No. 1 (London, Ontario) until demobilization. He joined the Queen’s Own Rifles in 1925 and became brigade major in 1938. In June 1940, he replaced Lieutenant-Colonel I.M. Macdonell as the QOR mobilized for active service. The battalion performed garrison duty in Newfoundland until December 1940, where the colonel said, “loneliness is a greater enemy than Hitler.” They embarked for England in July 1941.

In April 1942, Major Jock Spragge replaced Mackendrick who returned to Canada to be appointed training director for national defence headquarters. He was promoted to colonel in 1944 and retired from the army in 1946. He served as honorary lieutenant-colonel for the 3rd Battalion, QOR from 1962 until his death in Toronto on 12 May 1966.