Lieutenant-Colonel Ray Hodgins
Highland Light Infantry of Canada

I came to, lying on the side of the ramp. Young Sparks was dead on the other side, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. I had shrapnel wounds in my buttocks which is the best place you can get hit. They just seared through the flesh. I didn’t even realize I had a lacerated rear end.

(Quoted in Snowie, Bloody Buron, 73)

Born on 1 June 1913 in Preston, Ontario, Raymond Dent Hodgins was commissioned in the Highland Light Infantry in 1936 and mobilized as a lieutenant in 1940. He served as a “C” Company commander on D-Day and during the Normandy campaign. During the “Blood Buron” attack of 8 July 1944, he was part of the battalion command group that was struck was an enemy shell. A lieutenant and three signallers were killed while Lieutenant-Colonel F.M. Griffiths was wounded. Hodgins suffered a shrapnel wound to the buttocks, “the best place to get hit.”

Hodgins rose to second-in-command of HLI and filled in during the absences of Lieutenant-Colonel Phil Strickland in early 1945. He assumed command in April when Strickland was appointed general staff officer for 3rd Canadian Division. Despite his higher rank, he credited non-commissioned officers for the leadership necessary to implement the plans that commanders directed:

The corporals and lance-corporals–the men at that level–they really did a job. Those guys made the first contact. Once you launched them, it was pretty hard to influence very much until they consolidated. It was their fight. They carried us. I’m just so thankful for good types up front.

(Quoted in Denis Whitaker, Rhineland, 207)

Hodgins remained in command through to the end of the war in Europe and he was one of the very few originals in the battalion when he led the HLI home in December 1945.

He died in Waterloo, Ontario on 16 May 1986.