Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Akenhurst
2nd Regiment, Special Service Force
1st Regiment, Special Service Force
Algonquin Regiment

It hardly seems possible that I should be back with the old unit and in the thick of things less than 36 hours after leaving the former haunt at 3 CITR. It has been quite strenuous too since my arrival but we are still winning.

(Akehurst to wife, quoted in Joyce, The True story of the 1st Special Service Force, 276)

Born on 24 February 1908 in Kamloops, British Columbia, John Fenton Richardson Akehurst was chief mining engineer in northern Ontario. He was commissioned with the Algonquin Regiment in July 1940. Two years later he transferred to the newly formed joint American-Canadian First Special Service Force (FSSF), nicknamed The Devil’s Brigade. “I felt old at thirty-four, and was told I should have been rejected at that age except from my experience in cold climate,” he recalled, “… In fact, I was asked how tall, how heavy, how old, and to each I was a reject. But when asked where did I come from, I said ‘Kirkland Lake, Ontario,’ and I was in. It certainly made me curious and I felt the Force was not formed for any tropical venture.”

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