Lieutenant-Colonel Jack McQueen
2nd Canadian Parachute Battalion
Lincoln and Welland Regiment

He looked like a real soldier, but he was one of the yellowest men in the army … But a regiment is only as good as its leaders, and out leader, Colonel McQueen, was simply no good. A good peacetime soldier and a disciplinarian, but he didn’t have the guts of a rabbit. And he could not plan a battle and carry it out. At Butcher Hill, he got down in a hole and would not come out … When we came down off the hill, he kept right on going, and we were all glad to see the end of him.

(Charles D. Kipp, Because We Are Canadians, 58)

Born on 7 July 1913 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, John Grant McQueen was supervisor with the Dominion youth training program and member of the South Alberta Regiment since 1927. Commissioned in 1935, he volunteered with the Calgary Regiment on the outbreak of the Second World War. In July 1942, he was recalled from the United Kingdom to join the joint Canadian-American 1st Special Service Force then training in Montana.

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