Lieutenant-Colonel  Gus Taschereau
Régiment de la Chaudière

Gus was a rugged Quebecois, excellent in both English and French and very proud of his French heritage. I remember he was carrying four mills grenades in his battledress pockets and had two pistols!

(George Kitching, Mud and Green Fields, 95)

Born on 1 September 1907 in Quebec City, Gustave-Olivier Taschereau was Permanent Force officer with the Royal Canadian Regiment. He served as a company commander during the short-lived second British Expeditionary Force in June 1940 just before the fall of France. Fellow RCR officer George Kitching recalled on seeing French troops waiting to surrender, “Gus Taschereau was absolutely made with rage and if he had had a machine-gun I think he would have turned it loose on them. I can remember his anger. He was descended from these people and had been proud of it, but from now one he swore he would never speak to a French bastard again!”

By D-Day, Taschereau had transferred to Régiment de la Chaudière and commanded “D” Company in the Normandy invasion. He became second-in-command of the battalion in August 1944 and succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Mathieu in November.

He led the battalion during the drive into the Low Countries and Germany, earning the Distinguished Service Order for “cool disregard for his personal safety” in an attack on 1 March 1945: “The morale effect of this officer’s fine example against an enemy determined to hold his positions at all costs was decisive in the battalion’s success and provided the remaining two battalions of the brigade a firm base for attacking and overcoming their objectives.”

In June 1945, Taschereau passed command to Major Fernand L’Espérance on his appointment to command of the 3rd Battalion, Régiment de la Chaudière, part of the army of occupation. He remained in the army after the war and served in command of the 25th Canadian Reinforcement Group in Kure, Japan during the Korean War.

He died in Ottawa on 3 December 1969.