Major Hilton D. Proctor
1st Canadian Parachute Battalion

The training is very interesting now, and today I took my first jump from the 250-foot tower. It was a grand sensation and I landed very gently. Friday, we pack our own chutes and Monday we jump from the aircraft. I am looking forward to it and so are all the others.

I am taking an evening off and going into Columbus to see ‘Ship Ahoy.’ I believe it is a comedy and I need a laugh.

(Proctor letter 1 Sep 1942, quoted in Ottawa Citizen, 9 Sep 1942, 1)

Born in County Down, Ireland on 20 August 1911, Hilton David Proctor was a graduate of the University of Ottawa, a Bell Telephone engineer and member of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals since 1927. He mobilized as a captain in August 1940 and advanced to major in May 1942. In July, he assumed command of the nucleus for the newly formed 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion which was sent for training in Fort Benning, Georgia.

His former superior while attached as an instructor of signals at a Officer Training Centre, endorsed the appointment: “Proctor is a first class officer, intelligent and has a steady head whose work here was of an extremely high order. I don’t feel we would make any mistake in selecting Proctor for any job for which his experience and qualification might reasonably fit.”

However, he never had an opportunity to lead the unit in action. Proctor died in a “freak mishap” on 7 September 1942. On making a training jump, the wing of another plane sheared the rigging of his parachute and Proctor fell to his death. The investigation report he was unconscious during the fall from the plane strike.

Commandant of the U.S. Army parachute school at Fort Benning, Brigadier-General George P. Howell, called Proctor a “natural leader”: “We felt he had a great future and that he was about as fine a selection as the Canadian government could have made. He was very well thought of and was getting along excellently in his work here.”

His body was airlifted back to Canada for burial.