Lieutenant-Colonel G-R. Bouchard
Régiment de la Chaudière

Je lui ai dit que j’étais apte physiquement et que je croyais avoir l’expérience nécessaire pour organiser, instruire et conduire le régiment au combat, et que j’étais prêt à accepter le commandement séance tenante à cette seule condition. Je demandais que l’on me permette au moins de me rendre sur un théâtre de guerre pour y goûter la satisfaction et en avoir l’honneur, et non pas me laisser avec tous les ennuis de la préparation pour le service actif et ensuite envoyer l’unité à l’étranger sous le commandement d’un autre, et me laisser croupir au pays.

(Quoted in Castonguay, Le Régiment de la Chaudière, 123)

Born in Montreal on 22 June 1883, Georges-Rodolphe Bouchard was a retired Permanent Force officer. He joined the militia as a private in 1898 and took a commission with the Royal Canadian Regiment in 1911. He was wounded and gassed at Passchendaele and retired from the army as a lieutenant-colonel in 1935. He was recalled to duty and took command of Régiment de la Chaudière from Lieutenant-Colonel John L. Reiman in January 1940.

Before accepting command, Bouchard received assurances that the regiment would not be broken up for reinforcements as had been the fate of hundreds of battalions in the First World War. Although fifty-six, he believed himself physically fit for active service with the necessary experience to organize, instruct, and lead the regiment into battle. He asked to at least have the honour of leading the battalion overseas rather than seeing a a stranger in command “and let myself rot in the country.”

Although mobilized as a machine gun unit, it was reorganized as an infantry battalion in May 1940. Bouchard remained in command for a year until Lieutenant-Colonel Julien Chouinard of les Voltigeurs de Québec replaced him in January 1941. He became assistant director of internment operations and retired from the army in 1943.

He died on 28 January 1955 in Loretteville, Quebec.