Lieutenant-Colonel C.A. Muir
Lincoln and Welland Regiment

We aren’t a Field Unit yet and are still attached to Reinforcements but the Colonel and most of the old crowd are carrying on just as if we were back in Canada. I am one of the outcasts in the Unit because I want to train men to fight while this bunch of phoney peace-time soldiers run a social club.

(Anonymous officer’s letter, Sept 1943 censor report)

Born on 26 November 1896 in Glasgow, Scotland, Charles Andrew Muir moved to Canada as a teenager and settled in Hamilton. He enlisted with the 36th Battalion in April 1915 and reinforced the 4th Battalion in France. After a year at the front, he was put out of action by shrapnel at the Somme in October 1916. During the First World War, two brothers were wounded while another two were killed.

Invalided to back to Canada, Muir relocated to Fort Erie where he worked as a customs officer and warehouse manager. A prewar officer in the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, he mobilized as commanding officer in summer 1940 after Lieutenant-Colonel R.S.W. Fordham took up internment and refugee camp coordination. After home defence duty on the west and east coasts for three years, the Lincoln and Welland Regiment embarked for the United Kingdom in July 1943.

On arrival, one soldier remarked in a letter home:

I and all the others here have fallen in love with the country and its people who demonstrate their indominable spirit from amongst partially bombed out areas with Churchill’s “V” for victory and the thumbs up motions topped by cheering which was sincere in every manner. How impressive after being fortunate in being able to travel from one side of Canada to the other and observe the people’s reaction to troops.

Some of the officers were, however, less than impressed by the regiment’s leadership after arriving overseas. Calling the colonel and the senior officers “peace-time soldiers,” one officer criticized a captain as “my idea of the ultimate military zero. Sooner or later he will land in a formation where the heat will be on these phoneys and they will be on their way out.”

As a result of subsequent reorganization, Muir was relieved of command in November 1944 and eventually replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel J.G. McQueen of the 1st Canadian Special Service Battalion. The former colonel returned to Canada meanwhile his son, Major Charles Donald Muir (1918–2008), went on to serve with distinction in Europe once the battalion deployed into action.  

Muir died in Toronto on 9 September 1978.