The Argylls: From Gentlemen to Liberators

Abstract

This study analyzes the development of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada (Princess Louise’s) infantry regiment during the Second World War (1939-1945) and demonstrates how they were able to transform from a militia unit with no modern equipment to a fully equipped combat battalion that was able to distinguish itself in the Allied campaign to liberate Northwest Europe. The existing literature on this subject is limited and comes mostly from memoirs and interviews with members of the regiment in the postwar period. To supplement the historiography of this subject, this study will examine the overall Canadian Army process of activating militia regiments in preparation for overseas service. The research effort for this thesis relied on primary sources such as the battalion orders and war dairies supplemented by secondary sources written on the Argylls from 1928 - 1953. Other sources include works that provide background details on Canadian and British Army training, and the memoirs of members of the regiment during the war. By consulting and critiquing these sources to obtain an objective account of how the Argylls prepared for combat, this thesis demonstrates that the cause for the regiment’s overall operational success in the Second World War was due to the amount of training that it received, allowing the regiment to increase its level of cohesion and effectiveness. Furthermore, the fates of the Canadian infantry battalion lost in the defeats at Hong Kong and Dieppe in 1941 and 1942, respectively, proved to have a great impact on the Argylls, who took it as a lesson to attain a high level of professionalism and well-trained for the combat ahead.