Lieutenant-Colonel Harry F. Cotton
Winnipeg Light Infantry

The Jap is not the great fighting machine we have been led to believe. He’ll battle like a madman if he outnumbers us, but this stuff about the little brown men throwing themselves on our bayonet points is just so much eye-wash.

(quoted in Vancouver Sun, 22 Nov 1944, 3)

Born in Vancouver in 1910, Henry Ferguson Cotton was a graduate of RMC and a Permanent Force officer since 1931. He served on exchange with the British Army in 1934 and was stationed in Winnipeg with the PPCLI at the start of the Second World War. He served as brigade major of the 7th Infantry Brigade in 1940 and overseas with the PPCLI until he was recalled in April 1942 to take command of the newly mobilized Winnipeg Light Infantry.

He headed the WLI as part of the 6th Division on the Pacific coast for nearly two years until he was assigned to the Pacific theatre to attachment to the Australian forces. He participated in jungle warfare course and acted as an observe of operations in New Guinea. On arrival to Australia, he remarked, “It is important for us to look into jungle fighting so as to be prepared for the future. I am very glad to have the opportunity to serve with the Australian army because we all believe Australian soldiers to be amongst the best in the world.”

“There are naturally many ‘tricks of the trade’ learnt in fighting the Japs that we can profit by,” Cotton reported, “but it is certain that our 6 Canadian Div could do well in this type of warfare.” In a press interview, he added: “The battle of the jungle is the battle of trails and Western Canadian bushmen would be good at that fighting.”

More than an observer in the campaign, he also went ashore at Morotai Island with American combat teams during the invasion in September 1944. His experience left him with a poor opinion of the enemy, observing, “we haven’t much respect for the Jap except his tenacity,” and engaged in common racial stereotyping, noting, “The Japanese is very much of an animal. He digs in like a gopher and you have to probe him out and kill him.” On his return to Canada in November 1944, he described his first-hand experience in jungle warfare:

You are never dry, never really comfortable. In some parts you have to cut your way through with a machete and you run across patches of swamp which you cannot get through … There are the constant and most annoying swarms of insects at all times.

Before the WLI went overseas to provided reinforcements, he resumed command while acting commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel C.A. Scott reverted to second-in-command. After the regiment was disbanded in January 1945, Cotton returned to Canada to be GSO 1 with the directorate of military training.

He rejoined the PPCLI after the war and retired from the army in 1960. Cotton died in Ottawa on 2 May 1989.