Major Harold F. Baker
21st Armoured Regiment (The Governor General’s Foot Guards)

The real sad thing was that I lost all my good friends back there and after working with them for nearly five years, it was tough.

(Baker to father, letter 1944)

Born on 10 November 1904 in Casselman, Ontario, Harold Foster Baker was a graduate of Queen’s University and car dealer. A prewar officer in the Lanark and Renfrew Scottish Regiment, he transferred to the Governor General’s Foot Guards with a promotion to major following unit mobilization in 1940. Overseas, he became second-in-command of the re-designated 21st Armoured Regiment, which had embarked for the United Kingdom in September 1942.

A month after the regiment landed in Normandy, on 14 August 1944, Lieutenant-Colonel M.J. Scott took over the 4th Armoured Brigade following the death of Brigadier Leslie Booth. When Scott was relieved a day later with a broken ankle, Baker took over the Foot Guards only to be wounded himself shortly thereafter. After being in command for less than one day, his tank was struck by enemy fire. Evacuated by ambulance, Baker explained, “they pulled the bullets out of me and sent me back to England.” He was replaced by Major E.M. Smith, who commanded until the end of the war.

Having transferred to the British Army, Baker returned to France in early 1945 with a promotion to lieutenant-colonel in charge of the army fighting vehicle pool. The job of maintaining and repairing motor vehicles, he wrote “is just about as bad as being a General Motors Dealer.” He remained in the Netherlands for postwar work and married Belgian woman Cecile Verstraete before returning home in 1946.

He operated his car dealership in Arnprior, Ontario until shortly before his death on 15 December 1968.