Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Rowley
Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders

They kept coming in and God—if they lasted twenty-four hours, they were lucky. They just came in, went out on the line, and zap—they were either wounded or killed. They were nice guys, but they weren’t much use to me wounded or dead.

(Quoted in Denis Whitaker, Tug of War, 224)

Born on 12 June 1914 in Ottawa, Ontario, Roger Rowley graduated from Dalhousie University and worked as a bond trader in the nation’s capital. Commissioned with the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa since 1933, he served with the unit on garrison duty in Iceland in 1940 before proceeding to England in 1941. Following a series of promotions, Rowley became lieutenant-colonel of a training wing but reverted back to major to be second-in-command of the Cameron Highlanders when the machine gun battalion deployed to Normandy.

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