Brigadier Matthew Penhale
4th & 3rd Infantry Brigades

[On nuclear attack] Surely it is better to tell the people everything than to withhold information they must have to ensure survival.

(Quoted in Star-Phoenix, 16 Jan 1960, 5)

Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec on 13 February 1895, Matthew Howard Somers Penhale enlisted with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in 1915 after graduation from RMC. He was wounded at Cambrai in 1917 and made a professional career in the army after the First World War. After the outbreak of war in 1939, Penhale served as assistant adjunct general of Canadian Military headquarters in London before returning to Canada to head the directorate of staff duties at National Defence Headquarters.

By February 1942, Penhale was back overseas with a promotion to brigadier on the general staff of Canadian Military Headquarters and then with First Canadian Army. In September 1942, he took command of the 4th Infantry Brigade before being appointed to 3rd Brigade in April 1943, which deployed to Sicily four months later. He had a tense relationship with his battalion commanders, and performance in the campaign would lead to several leadership changes. By August, Penhale secured the removal of Lieutenant-Colonel F.D. Tweedie, battalion commander of the Carleton and York Regiment, who in turn expressed little trust in Penhale as a brigade commander.

Penhale was soon sacked himself for indecisive and hesitating leadership. Considered by superiors and subordinates as too fat and too old to be effective in a modern war, he was sent back to England in November 1943. As consolation, he received the Distinguished Service Order. He resumed duties on general staff at CMHQ, by April 1944, he was deputy chief of staff and by September returned to Ottawa as deputy chief of staff with National Defence Headquarters.

He retired from the army in 1951 and went on to be commandant of the Civil Defence College in Arnprior, Ontario into the 1960s

Died in Arnprior on 11 June 1978.