1st Armoured Brigade

Brig. R.A. Wyman

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Brigadier Bob Wyman
1st & 2nd Armoured Brigades

Everything I have seen since I have arrived home gives new reason for this fight. There is freedom here and greener fields and even fatter cattle. You notice these things after being in Britain and they are not imaginary. They are the things we hold dear and things that most Britons cannot enjoy under war conditions.

(Quoted in Edmonton Journal, 18 Jun 1941, 1)

Born to Canadian parents in Philadelphia on 23 February 1904, Robert Andrew Wyman was a Canadian Nation Railway statistician in Edmonton and a militia officer since 1923. He mobilized as commanding officer of an artillery regiment and went overseas with the 1st Canadian Division in December 1939. After a promotion to brigadier in May 1941, he returned to Canada to organize the 1st Canadian Support Group.

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Brig. W.C. Murphy

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Brigadier Bill Murphy
9th Armoured Regiment (British Columbia Dragoons)
1st Armoured Brigade
Murphy

While his Brigade was serving in a British Corps, in an Army largely American this officer displayed outstanding powers of command and leadership, maintaining morale at a very high peak and dealing effectively with all matters of purely Canadian nature with which he confronted.

(O.B.E. citation, 16 Apr 1945)

Born on 27 April 1905 in Ashcroft, British Columbia, William Cameron Murphy was son of a BC Supreme Court justice, a lawyer and long-time militia officer. He had first joined an artillery battery at fifteen in 1920 and was commissioned with the British Columbia Regiment in 1927. On mobilization in September 1939, he transferred to the PPCLI to go overseas as a company commander. Following a posting back in Vancouver for home defence, Murphy was attached to 5th Armoured Division as a staff officer.

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