Lieutenant-Colonel Cecil Merritt
South Saskatchewan Regiment

My war lasted six hours. There are plenty of Canadians my age who went all the way from the landings in Sicily to the very end … It was an enforced idleness. It cannot be escalated into virtue.

(Quoted in Ottawa Citizen, 3 Sept 1966, 66)

Born on 8 November 1908 in Vancouver, British Columbia Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt was an RMC graduate, football player, and barrister. Since 1929, he was a commissioned officer in the Seaforth Highlanders, the regiment his father had belonged to before being killed at Second Ypres in April 1915. Merritt went overseas as a major, attended staff college, and served on the general staff of the 3rd Division. In March 1942, he was appointed new commanding officer of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, which would land at Dieppe over four months later.

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