Lieutenant-Colonel H.T. Kempton
South Saskatchewan Regiment

So again passed another of the original officers of the regiment into higher army service. He, like Lt.-Col. Wright, seemed to be a very part of the flesh and blood of the unit. He was keenly disappointed on not going into “action” with the men with whom he had trained from the beginning.

(Maj. G.B. Buchanan, The March of the Prairie Men, chap. 4)

Born on 1 January 1895 in Barking, Essex, England, Harold Thomas Kempton owned a bookstore in Weyburn, Saskatchewan with his brother since 1912. He served in the Royal Air Force during the First World War and joined the Weyburn Regiment afterward. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Kempton was a major in the amalgamated South Saskatchewan Regiment. He led the advance party overseas in August 1940 before the rest of the battalion followed in December.

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