Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Labatt
Royal Hamilton Light Infantry

I hope you all came through safely. We will have to celebrate Dieppe every year at the mess after this … Little did I dream when I wrote the history of the Regt. that the biggest story was still to be told. I know from a very undistinguished experience in 1916 what a grim business “shows” infinitely smaller that your can be, and this makes one realize what a test you have come through … I wish I could be with you.

(E.D.H. Boyd to Labatt, 20 Aug 1942)

Born on 25 January 1903 in Wentworth, Ontario, Robert Ridley Labatt was the son of First World War battalion commander and pension commissioner Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Hodgetts Labatt (1864-1919). He attended RMC and took a commission with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI) in 1923. A stockbroker in civilian life, he also served as battalion adjutant from 1932 to 1936. Labatt succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel H.G. Wright in command of the RHLI in April 1940. The regiment departed for England that summer and Labatt would lead regiment ashore at Dieppe two years later on 19 August 1942.

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