Lieutenant-Colonel Dick Ross
Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa

The Camerons were the best damned machine-gun battalion that ever worked on any front. The men were wonderful all the way through. Ottawa can be proud of every one of them.

(Quoted in Ottawa Journal, 12 Dec 1945, 2)

Born on 28 May 1909 in Montreal, Richard Montgomery Ross was a prewar member of the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa. He rejoined the battalion with the outbreak of the Second World War and rose to major and served as “D” Company commander when the machine gun and mortar unit deployed on D-Day. “There was a tremendous amount of smoke, and everything in view seemed to be afire,” Ross recalled. “Shells were bursting around, but so terrific was our air support that there was very little ‘aimed’ fire.”

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