Lieutenant-Colonel C.M. MacMillan
Canadian Fusiliers (City of London)

A smart clean-cut off[ice]r, who doe not look his age of 40 years, alert, of good personality, fairly aggressive, is intelligent, capable, responsible and conscientious.

Reports are scanty in this officer’s file but those available show his work to be satisfactory; a good CO, has commanded his bn successfully under difficult circumstances.

(Officer Survey and Classification Board, 15 Dec 1944)

Born in Scotland on 9 May 1904, Charles Malcolm MacMillan was a militia officer with the Canadian Fusiliers since 1927. He was promoted to major in 1940 and became second-in-command in February 1942. Before the battalion landed on the island of Kiska, believed to be occupied by Japanese forces, MacMillan remarked, “Some of the boys were pretty tense and we all figured we were in for a full-scale scrap. But every man from the commanding officer down to the privates was ready to go.”

The August 1943 landing as part of the 13th Brigade proved that the Japanese had abandoned the island some time before. The press reported that the one prisoner that the Fusiliers captured was a stray Alsatian dog they named “Kiska Charlie.” After a six-month tour of duty in the Aleutians, the Fusiliers returned to Canada in late January 1944. The next month, MacMillan was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and succeeded Major R.E. Bricker in command of the Fusiliers.

In spring 1944, military authorities selected the 13th Brigade for overseas reinforcements. MacMillan tried to convince soldiers conscripted for home defence to go active for general service. By the time the battalion embarked in May about a third had volunteered for overseas service. By November, the Fusiliers and the other battalions had been converted to training units. As a surplus senior officer, MacMillan appeared before the Officer Survey and Classification Board in December 1944:

It is realized that he is an offr of 40 years of age but he is one who does not feel nor look his age and is actually a much younger offr than his actual age suggests …[but] his age is too great to permit his dispatch to the field, either in his present rank or in a lower one. This offr realizes that any appointment in the UK would be of a temporary nature and expressed this wish that in view of this he would prefer to return to Canada to secure a more permanent appointment.

MacMillan died in London, Ontario on 18 August 1990.