Lieutenant-Colonel E.G. Johnson
Toronto Scottish Regiment
![JohnsonEG](https://matthewkbarrett.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/johnsoneg.jpg?w=200&h=325)
Black Mac went by the manual. He firmly believed in spit and polish, square bashing, long route marches, unarmed combat, arduous training schemes—in short, in all the idiotic system of army life which strives to exclude every comfort and turn human beings into robots. So we polished our brass, blancoed our web, rose at ungodly hours for inspections by lantern-light, marched like the Duke of Marlborough’s unhappy sods, dug slit trenches and filled them up again, and slept many a night on the cold moors.
(Bert Whyte, Adventures of a Canadian Communist, 199)
Born in Toronto on 30 June 1909, Ernest George Johnson was manager of a photo engraving factory and a prewar member of the Toronto Scottish Regiment. He mobilized as a lieutenant, went overseas as a captain in December 1939, and succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel D.K. Tow as commanding officer in March 1943. The regiment deployed to France in July 1944 as machine gun and mortar support for the 2nd Division.