PPCLI

Lt-Col. White

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Lieutenant-Colonel S.R.L. White
1st Bn., Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians)
White

The new colours which you have just present have yet to justify existence, but I have no hesitation in saying that we are willing to a man to do under them what we have done under the old ones, to keep them flying for the honour of the Regiment and the glory of the British Army, whether in this country or in any other where duty calls us to fight for our King and country.

(Col. White, 4 Feb 1913, in F.E. Whitton, The History of the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment, vol. 1, 167)

Samuel Robert Llewellyn White was born in Blackrock, County Dublin, Ireland, on 4 June 1863. He was commissioned with the Leinster Regiment in 1885 and served as a captain during the Boer War, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He became commanding officer of the 1st Battalion in 1911. As the unit was stationed in Fyzabad, India at the outbreak of the Great War, it did not arrive to France until December 1914.

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Maj. Pearson

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Major A.G. Pearson
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry
Pearson

After practically all the garrison at the front trenches had been killed or wounded by enemy shell fire, L/Cpl Pearson with a few men still held on and fortunately although wounded himself managed to bring out the survivors in safety after a new position had been taken up.

(Pearson, DCM citation, 14 Jan 1916)

Born in Endon, Staffordshire, England on 16 August 1880, Alfred Glynn Pearson was shipping agent who enlisted as a private in Winnipeg in December 1914. He was one of the few non-commissioned volunteers to rise through the ranks and command a battle by the end of the war. While serving as a corporal with the PPCLI, he received the Distinguished Conduct Medal and a promotion to lieutenant. After recovering from shrapnel wounds, Pearson rejoined the PPCLI in spring 1916.

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Lt. Col. Pelly

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Lieutenant Colonel Raymond T. Pelly
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry
Pelly

Pelly always was a nervous temperament and the trenches came harder on him than on some others but you are quite wrong in imagining he is not full of courage for I know him to be. And at Frise when H.Q. was shelled he absolutely refused to go into the cellars until the last servant had taken to his hiding place.

(Agar Adamson to wife, 2 Jan 1916)

Raymond Theodore Pelly was born on 30 July 1881 in Woodford England. He served with the Royal North Lancashire Regiment from 1900 to 1914. As a member of the Governor General of Canada’s staff, in August 1914, he enlisted as a major with PPCLI under Colonel Francis Farquhar, who was killed by a sniper in March 1915.

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Lt. Col. Farquhar

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Lieutenant Colonel Francis Douglas Farquhar
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry

Have we the right to grieve for the dead, who have lived and died as the Colonel? We can only be sorry for ourselves and each other. His face showed no sign of suffering or regret … He, more than any other, has given us a reputation and a standard which we must strive to maintain. He himself is with us no longer, but his influence and his memory will endure with the life of the Regiment.

(Lt. Talbot Papineau to Lady Evelyn Farquhar, 22 March 1915)

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The Scoundrel

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Lieutenant Colonel W.H. McKinery, D.S.O.
66th (Edmonton Guards) Battalion
McKinery

All rotters are eventually found out and you will be glad to hear that McKinery has been cashiered for using his Battalion funds for his own purposes and we have heard the last of him in the B.E.F.

 (Agar Adamson to Mrs. Mabel Adamson, 2nd Feb 1916, 138)

When William Herbert McKinery enlisted in Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, he claimed to have been born in Waterford, Ireland on 5 April 1878. He also used his father’s first name, John, when filling out the attestation papers. McKinery was actually born on April 5, 1875 in Melbourne, Australia. Believing that he would be rejected as overage, the forty-year old Australian had falsified personal information in order to fight overseas.

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The Gambler

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Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Stewart, D.S.O. †
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light InfantryStewart_C

The letters from the regiment after his death read, “The men would follow him anywhere; he seemed to bear a charmed life.” Yet what was his life until the War gave him his chance? A life of adventure wearing down into plain middle-aged failure.

(Charles Ritchie [nephew], My Grandfather’s House, 1987)

Born on 14 December 1874 in Halifax, Charles James Townsend Stewart was a North West Mounted Police constable, sportsman, soldier, womanizer and all-round lovable scoundrel. After being expelled from the Royal Military College for gambling in 1892, he moved back to Halifax before joining the NWMP in 1896. After he was kicked out of the police for bullying and bad behaviour, he drifted throughout the Northwest and the Yukon. A veteran of the Imperial Yeomanry during Boer War, Stewart joined the P.P.C.L.I. as a lieutenant in August 1914.

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The Millionaire

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Major A. Hamilton Gault, D.S.O.
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light InfantryGault

Princess Patricia—or Lady Patricia Ramsay as she is now, spoke a few moving lines to us, walked through the ranks talking and chatting with the men—some of whom had been in the regiment when 25 years before this same gentle lady, then a young and extremely beautiful woman, had inspected the “Originals”.

On one side of her stood that grand old warrior “Hammy” Gault VC. [sic] Etc. who had given his leg to the cause in the last war and who would gladly do the same in this if he had any say in the matter…

(James Baker, P.P.C.L.I. to Mom, 11 Feb 1940)

Andrew Hamilton Gault was a gentleman militia officer and founder of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Born on 18 August 1882 in Kent, England, he was a member of a successful and influential Montreal manufacturing family. Gault embraced an active outdoors lifestyle as he engaged in various pursuits from safari hunting to biplane flying. He served with distinction during the Boer War and joined the Royal Highland Regiment of Canada (Black Watch). By 1912, Gault controlled an estate valued at over $1.75 million.

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The Maverick

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Lieutenant Colonel Agar Adamson, D.S.O.
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light InfantryAdamson

What really makes a real man? The best men I have known always openly say they are cowards and hate the situation they find themselves in and really are afraid, perhaps it is partly their education which helps them to realize the danger, but there is a great deal in being one of a long line of soldiers in a family, although this only partly accounts for it, for men who never saw a soldier and for generations have led useless lives, have behaved in a similar manner when put against it out here...

(Agar Adamson to Mabel Adamson [wife], 4 Mar 1915)

Agar Stewart Allan Masterton Adamson was the first Canadian-born commander of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. A native of Montreal, he was born on 25 December 1865. A member of an influential family, Adamson became a socially connected civil servant and militia officer in Ottawa. Despite being forty-eight and having poor vision, in August 1914 the Boer War veteran enlisted as a captain with P.P.C.L.I. under Lieutenant Colonel Farquhar.

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The Berserker

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Major Axel “Rass” Rasmussen †
97th (American Legion) BattalionRasmussen

Rasmussen was a big, handsome man; fearless in war and pitiless to four-flushers anywhere, any time.

(J. W. Pegler, Evening News, 26 June 1918, 2)

“But so far I’ve always found that a man has time to get down to avoid the fragments— if he moves fast. If it’s got your initials on it— well, no one but a prime so-and-so wants to live forever!”- Maj. Rasmussen

(E. S. Johnston,  Americans vs. Germans: the First AEF in Action, 1942, 33)

Axel Thorvald Rasmussen was one of the American Legion’s most famous members. The thirty-eight year old, Danish-born resident of Oregon was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection. During the Mexico Revolution, he fought in support of General Obregón’s army. Regarding his previous fights as “mere skirmishes,” in 1916, Rasmussen traveled to Canada in order to join Lieutenant Colonel Wade Jolly’s 97th American Legion.

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The Principal

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Lieutenant Colonel E. W. Hagarty
201st (Toronto Light Infantry) Battalion

Hagarty

I saw a mock funeral to day up to the 201 Batt they are being split up tomorrow, their Col. lost his job as they have less than 600 men. They dug a grave and buried a dummy representing their Col. They hated him, he was a whiskey soak, so on top of the grave they put a cross, a whiskey bottle, cig or some branches for flowers. Some reporters took a picture of it so likely it will be in the papers.

(L. E. Johns, 161th Bn. to Mother, 20 Sept 1916.)

Edward William Hagarty was principal of Harbord Street Collegiate from 1906 to 1928 and  member of Orange Order Lodge No. 344. He was born on 7 September 1862 in Brantford, Canada West. He served four years with the Queen’s Own Rifles while an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. An influential figure in the cadet movement for twenty-five years, Hagarty was selected to raise the 201st Toronto Light Infantry in January 1916.

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