Lieutenant-Colonel R.C. Macdonald
1/6th Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment
1st Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers
2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment

All our families are very much happier about our departure now that there is an armistice. We don’t know quite what we shall find when we get there, but we shall be busy enough competing with the cold, if nothing else.

(Quoted in Birmingham Gazette, 1 Aug 1953, 5)

Born in British India on 1 August 1911, Ronald Clarence Macdonald was a field hockey player educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. In 1931 took a commission with the Royal Warkwickshire Regiment, which his father had earlier commanded. He attended staff college and following instructional duties, was assigned to the 1/6th Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment.

During the Normandy campaign, he took command in early August from Lieutenant-Colonel D.G.B. Ridout, who a regimental history noted, “could not have wished for a more worthy successor.” Macdonald led the battalion from the front until the end of the month when he announced that the 59th Division was to be broken up for reinforcements. The unit war diary recorded, “the bad news of the impeding disbandment and gloom  prevails, it really seems a great pity. Tps leave the CO’s talk with glum faces muttering in groups of three or four … This Rain is well befitting the Bns present     mood, they have accepted all manner of difficult and seemingly odd jobs with a smile, but the news of the disbanding really has got them down, this rain certainly doesn’t help any.”

Despite the loss of his unit, Macdonald had earned the D.S.O. for outstanding leadership. Within less than two months, he had been granted a new command. In early November, he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel J.F.M. Macdonald of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers. After the battle at the River Maas, in March 1945, he transferred to command his original unit, 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He ended the war in Europe recognized with the D.S.O. Bar.

His long postwar army career took him from Palestine to West Africa to Korea, where he commanded the 1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1953 after the cessation of hostilities. He retired at the rank of major-general in 1965.

Macdonald died on 28 July 2005 in Chippenham, Wiltshire.