12th Manitoba Dragoons

Lt-Col. P.C.R. Black

/ Matthew K Barrett / Leave a comment

Lieutenant-Colonel Pat Black
12th Manitoba Dragoons

 As a result of your training, teamwork, loyalty and fine qualities as soldiers, you have established the Regiment. We cannot look into the future of the months to come, nor will I try to predict what it holds for us. Wherever we may be, whatever the task, whatever the conditions, I know you will live up to the highest expectations.

(The Staghound, 8 Dec 1945)

Born in Ottawa on 26 August 1915, Patrick Cameron Rooke Black graduated from Queen’s University and joined the permanent force shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1943, he transferred from the Royal Canadian Dragoons to the 18th Armoured Car Regiment (12th Manitoba Dragoons) under command of former RCD officer, Lieutenant-Colonel J.A. Roberts. As part of II Canadian Corps, the Dragoons deployed to Normandy in July 1944 with Black as second-in-command.

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Brig. J.A. Roberts

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Brigadier James Roberts
12th Manitoba Dragoons
8th Infantry Brigade

The commanding officer looks on the patrol not as a sergeant and three men, but as the sons or brothers of men he knows well at home, and he doesn’t want to commit some good boys from his or an adjoining town to a mission which may cost them their lives. While any decent person may sympathize with the commanding officer’s view, it simply won’t work in war. For one thing, a commander must be completely impartial and he must obey, with understanding, his superior’s orders.

(Roberts, Canadian Summer, 103)

Born in Toronto on 19 August 1907, James Alan Roberts was a University of Toronto graduate, hockey player and employee of the Sun Insurance Company. After two years working at the New York branch he returned to Toronto where he took a commission with the Governor General Horse Guards in 1933. By the late 1930s, he worked with his brother to start an ice cream business in Scotland. With this venture derailed by the outbreak of war in Europe, Roberts returned to Canada to volunteer in the army.

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