Militaria Sale
Peterborough Armoury 
220 Murray Street in Peterborough Ontario.
Saturday, 20 Oct from 9 am to 2.30 pm
for table reservations:
Contact Henry Clarke at
  Hclarke@peterborough.ca
 or phone 705 749 3149
Tables are $15.00 each
Admission is $3 per person, $7.00 per family
 Under 12 free.

On Wednesday 21 December 2011 at Picton, Regimental Sergeant-Major LVA “Blackie” Simpson CD. RSM Simpson joined The Regiment as a Private in 1938 and retired as RSM in 1963. An original 39er he saw action with The Regiment from Pachino to Ortona when he was transferred and subsequently ended the war as a Platoon Sergeant with the Larnark & Renfrew Scottish. He saw action with the L& R Scots at the Lamone, Naviglio Canal, and the Rubicone. He is survived by his wife Lois, son Skip (former Commanding Officer HL Simpson) and his wife Gwen of Belleville, daughter Debra McCauley and her husband Robert of Brighton and son Bob of Kingston. A much loved grandfather of 8 and great-grandfather of 12. Services were held from the Rushnell Funeral Home, Trenton with Regimental Association Padre Sid Horne officiating. Internment was at St George’s Anglican Cemetery, Trenton.

Left to Right: Don Kernaghan, Bob Wigmore, Austin Fuller,
Cy Yarnell, Cpl Davis, Doug Buck (obscured by flag) MCpl Roberts

Dad joined the Hastings & Prince Edward Regiment in 1938 at the urging of Angus Duffy who was looking for signalers for the Hasty Ps and knew that Dad had learned semaphore in Scouts. When war was declared on September 10, 1939 Dad enlisted. He was still two months short of his 18th birthday but lied about his age and no one at that time, questioned him on it. He enlisted the same day war was declared at the old Trenton Armouries on Quinte Street. The Hasty Ps started their service numbers at C4100. Angus Duffy was C4101 and Dad was C4113; one of the first to join and a member of that select group referred to as 39ers. Dad s very proud of that.

In October of 1939 like everyone else in The Regiment, Dad went to Picton. Pte Simpson underwent the standard army training and when the unit was ready to ship out on Dec 17th, Dad who was now 18 was told that he wouldn’t be going with the unit overseas as he was too young. The last thing Angus Duffy said to Dad before he left Picton that day was, “the next time I see you Blackie, I want you to be a Corporal.” Dad took Christmas leave at home while The Regiment sailed for England.

In January of 1940 along with approximately 70-80 other men, Dad was sent to the Citadelle in Quebec City. He often remarks about how cold it was that winter. He stayed in Quebec City until May of 1940 when he was shipped to Borden, Ontario for infantry training. In September of 1941 Dad shipped overseas arriving at Whitley Holding Unit in Sussex. In October he was posted to Cove teaching on a signals training course. From January to May of 1942 he was in Minley Lake instructing basic infantry and while there he was promoted to Cpl. During this time Dad hooked up with an RCR Sergeant-Major and they began a side business in what we shall term as games of chance. They were discovered, the Sergeant-Major was charged and although never convicted, the Camp Commandant thought it the perfect opportunity for Dad to leave the camp and rejoin his regiment. So in April of 1942 Dad was back with the Hasty Ps and was anxious to show RSM Duffy that he had in deed made Cpl as he promised Duffy back in Picton in 1939. Duffy immediately broke him back down to Private saying he hadn’t earned his stripes with The Regiment.

From April of 1942 until April of 1944 Dad served in the signal platoon as a Dispatch Rider. He landed with the Battalion at Pachino 10, July 1943 and served with the unit at the battles of Grammichelle, Valguarnera, Assoro, Agira, Adrano, Regalbuto, Motta Montecorvino, Campobasso, Torella, The Moro, San Leonardo, The Gully, and Ortona. He remembers vividly being at Battalion Headquarters 20 July 1943 when they brought back the body of Lieutenant-Colonel Sutcliffe who had been killed by an 88mm shell while conducting a recce of Assoro. He also tells of the Intelligence Officer Capt Battle Cockin who lying on a stretcher mortally wounded apologizing to the 2IC of The Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel The Lord Tweedsmuir for dying. He said it was of the saddest things he ever witnessed.

In April of 1944 Dad came down with a severe case of jaundice and spent a month in the hospital at Caserta followed up by a convalescent leave in Salerno. When his leave was up he was not returned to the unit but instead sent to a holding unit in Avellino. While there he was promoted to Corporal and then to Sergeant and sent on amines course. In January of 1944 the army reorganized the 1st LAA Regiment as infantry and was re-designated “The Lanark and Renfrew Scottish Regiment.” It became part of the 12th Infantry Brigade, 5th Canadian Armoured Division. In May of 1944 Dad was sent to the L&R Scots. He remembers his first action was near Piedmonte. The worst action he saw as a platoon sergeant with the L&R Scots was at the Naviglio Canal. He said the Lamone was terrible as well Ironically,The Hasty Ps fought in both those battles as well.

In March of 1945 Dad and the L&R Scots left Italy and made their way through France to a holding unit in Angem Belgium. The L&R Scots were re-rolled to artillery and Dad was posted to the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa probably because the Camerons were in Angem and Dad lived in the same military district (No.3) as The CH of O. He had to put up their brass but he never actually had anything more to do with that regiment. In April of 1945 Dad was sent to Nijmegen in the Netherlands and somewhere on the train between Belgium and Holland he put up Hasty P brass. To this day he doesn’t know if the Camerons ever went looking or a Sergeant Simpson who went AWOL. During his time in Nijmegen he started a camp news letter and did all the other things the Canadian army was doing in Holland in the spring and summer of 1945.

In early September he was sent to England and after a couple of weeks leave he boarded the ship Pasteur and set sail for Canada by way of Quebec City. On the trains and back home, he got off the train in Belleville on 23 September 1945. There to meet him were Grandpa and Grandma Simpson and his sister Etheline. Aunt Ethel recognized him but grandpa did not, walking right past him on the train platform.

Dad got out of the army after the war but in 1948 Angus Duffy talked him into coming back. He came back in as a Sergeant but was quickly a WO2 in Trenton as CSM of A Coy. In 1952 he had a “falling out” with his Company Commander and quit. Angus Duffy came right over to Trenton to see him the next day and transferred him to Belleville to be the CSM of Headquarters Company. In September 1959 he succeeded Stan Down as the Regimental Sergeant-Major. He retired in 1963. After the war he considered volunteering for both Korea and 27 Brigade in Germany but did not. How much Mom had to do with that decision we may never know.

Assorted War Stories

My favorite wartime story of Dad goes like this. Back in the early 1980s I was a young Lieutenant commanding a rifle platoon in A Coy when General Graham attended one of our Mess Dinners in Belleville. Angus Duffy was our Honorary Colonel at the time and after dinner he came up to me and said. “Skip, have you ever met General Graham?” I replied no and he immediately took me by the arm and over to the General we went. In his typical booming Duffy voice he said, General Graham I’d like you to meet Lieutenant Skip Simpson, Blackie Simpson’s son. The General stuck out his hand and immediately said to me, “Did your dad ever tell you about the time I was going to shoot him in Sicily?” and he proceeded to tell me the story. I now take you to General Graham’s autobiography Citizen Soldier which tells the story better than I ever could. It is the 22nd of July 1943. “Later in the day, the road up to the escarpment having been repaired and swept of mines, I took Major General Simmonds, the GOC to the top in my jeep. As we rounded one of the hairpin turns, we beheld a character in very short shorts, no shirt, a rifle slung over his back, crowned with a black silk top hat. This creature was on traffic control, and I recognized him as one of my former Plough Jockeys from Hastings County. Being well disciplined, he raised his silk topper and bowed from the waist. I could not help smiling at his spirit and attitude, and gave him the V for victory sign. But General Simmonds was not amused, and a few days later an order was issued that troops were to be properly attired at all times.”

Dad said a lot of times you had to give a lot of orders that you didn’t particularly like, and you had to do it in a snap. As a platoon sergeant he had a hard time keeping section commanders. They kept getting killed. He remembered vividly telling a 19-year-old soldier he was being promoted to the command role. The teenager tried to refuse it and Dad had to order the junior soldier to accept. The next day he got killed, and that hit Dad hard. That incident bothered Dad till the day he died.
He said the effects of the campaign set in one unremarkable night near the Rubicone River north of Rimini, Italy. "My whole body was shaking.” He said he was no more scared that night than any other, but for some reason, the war got to him before dawn that morning. "I thought, 'Boy, I'm glad it's dark because if these guys could see me they'd never follow me anywhere.'"
In July 1943 while under the cover of darkness The Regiment was climbing Assoro, other elements of the unit were making their way forward up the road that led to the town. This group consisted of various elements of the unit in F Echelon including the mortar platoon, carrier platoon etc. At some point the road had been cratered and Dad was sent back to find some engineers. He figured it was around 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning and he noticed a half track parked by a road junction. He pulled up on his motorcycle and asked them if they knew where to find any engineers. They simply replied No and Dad went merrily on his way. It was only after he had left that he realized we didn’t have any half tracks in the Canadian army in Sicily and in the pitch black of night he had been talking to a German Half Track.

At the Lamone Dad now a Platoon Sergeant was clearing some houses. He came around a corner, a door opened up and he was looking down the business end of a Schmeisser in the hands of a German Sergeant-Major. The German simply reversed the weapon and handed it to Dad; if he had not. I wouldn’t be writing this.

Dad was instructing at a Brigade NCO School somewhere in Italy. They were running the trainees through an open field under fire. When they got to a stone fence on the other side, Dad noticed one of his fellow instructors was missing. No one could find the guy and then about five minutes later he came across the field cursing like a mad man. Seems the Germans had dug a field latrine and not filled it in and this guy fell into it up to his waist.

Dad tells the story of one time catching a bunch of chickens with some buddies somewhere in Italy. They made a deal with a local Italian woman that if she cooked up the birds, they would share the meal with her. When they sat down to eat, the meal was so hot and spicy they couldn’t eat it. They told her the meal was hers whereby she let out a roar and all these kids came out of nowhere. She had deliberately cooked it that way so it was too hot for Dad and the others to eat and she could feed it to the kids.

Dad has a real war wound. He and a buddy were walking a couple of girls home from a dance one night somewhere in England and they ran into a couple of guys from the British Black Watch. The one guy asked Dad’s buddy if he was a Canadian, when he answered yes, the guy drilled him. Dad jumped into the fray and one of the guys from The Black Watch cracked him over the head with a whiskey bottle. Next thing Dad knew he was waking up with his head in the girl’s lap.
In July of 1943 just before Assoro Dad came upon a brand new Norton with a busted kick starter leaning up against a tree. Since Dad’s bike was an older, beat up Norton he raced back to Tac HQ and got Ivan Gunter from Coe Hill to drive him back to the disabled motorcycle. Dad then pushed the new Norton back to camp, straightened the kick starter, painted over the RCMP identification number on the rear fender and in its place painted on a new Hasty P identification number. He was feeling quite proud of himself till about a week later when the transport officer Lieutenant (later Brigadier-General) Lyle Carr of Port Hope came by with what Dad thought was a RCMP Major (Dad said he was wearing a crown). They asked if anyone had seen a missing Norton and when everyone replied No, they asked to have a look at the Hasty P bikes. They checked the identification numbers on each rear fender. Dad thought he’d had it because if they had checked the serial numbers on his bike they would have discovered Dad was riding the missing RCMP Norton. To this day he loves to say he knows of one instance where the Mounties didn’t get their man.'"
Dad also told me the story that at the Lamone they were going to put in a company night attack. They had just got a new Company Commander posted in fresh from Canada and he called an O Group for the attack. Dad was a Platoon Sergeant, and attended the orders as he had no Platoon Commander. Dad said there was nothing about enemy strength, fire support, whether they were attacking one up or two up, nothing but this Major went into great detail about personal grooming. He wanted their toothbrush in this pocket and their razor in that pocket, and the towel in yet another. As is the custom, after his orders he asked for questions and when Dad stuck up his hand the Major said “Yes Sergeant Simpson, what is it?” Dad replied “Are we going to wash em or fight em?” He broke Dad to Private on the spot but called him back that evening and told him to put his stripes back up as he had no one else with combat experience to lead the platoon into action.
Dad transferred to The White Battalion on Wednesday December 21, 2011 in Picton Ontario, the very town from whence his beloved regiment departed for Europe 72 years before. Almost 72 years to the day, Dec 17, 1939. Dad had just celebrated his 90th birthday on November 12. Dad often said he could remember when his sole goal in life was to make it to his 24th birthday. He lived 66 years beyond that. Not a bad run, not a bad run at all.