Lieutenant-Colonel Darby Nash
29th Armoured Regiment (South Alberta Regiment)

Westerners have more initiative than easterners and it shows up on the battlefield.

(Edmonton Bulletin, 19 Jan 1946)

Born in Montreal on 23 December 1909, Thomas Boyd “Darby” Nash was a land inspector for the National Trust Company in Edmonton. A prewar member of the 19th Dragoons, he mobilized for active service with the South Alberta Regiment in 1940 and went overseas in August 1942. During the Falaise campaign, he served as HQ Squadron commander until August 1944, when he took over “B” Squadron from Major R.A. Bradburn, who had been appointed to command the Algonquin Regiment.

Nash commanded the tank squadron during the attack on Bergen Op Zoom in Holland, for which he earned a mention in despatches and later the Distinguished Service Order. In July 1945, he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel Swatty Wotherspoon in command of the South Alberta Regiment, which he led home to Edmonton at the end of the year.

He remained in the postwar army, serving as second-in-command of the reorganized 19th Armoured Car Regiment and by the mid-1950s headed the militia group in the Calgary area. He retired from the National Trust Company three years before his death in Victoria, British Columbia on 20 December 1977.