Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Hendrie
48th Highlanders of Canada

This is the worst and most ignorant C.O. I have met in my service in the Army. He is completely ignorant of how to train a battalion. He does not train his officers. He does not train his N.C.Os. His individual training is badly organized and men are bored with it; he admitted that this was so.

(Gen. Montgomery, “Notes on Inf. Bdes of Canadian Corps,” 3 Feb 1942)

Born in Hamilton on 6 March 1902, William Brown Hendrie was son of Colonel William Hendrie (1863—1924) who had commanded the 48th Highlanders from 1911 to 1913. He worked for the family transport business, Hendrie & Co., and had served with his father’s regiment since the 1920s. He was a company commander during the aborted Second British Expeditionary Force to France in June 1940. That November, he married Betty Scale (1916—2009), daughter of a British Army colonel, who he had met some months before while stationed in England.

Continue reading →