Of comradeship and military service
100-year-old chief of Scotland’s Clan Bruce hails ‘swift and true’ Waterloo squadron
Scottish peer Andrew Bruce turns 100 on Saturday and is thinking about his ties to faraway Waterloo.
Bruce is the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine. He is the hereditary chief of Clan Bruce, a famous Scottish clan. He has long served as honorary colonel of Ontario’s 31 Combat Engineer Regiment, a reserve unit with a squadron in Waterloo.
From his ancestral home in Scotland, Bruce writes: “I have had the most remarkable comradeship with the regiment. If there is a task which has an engineering requirement, whether military or civil, 31 Combat Engineer Regiment the Elgins will show a swift and true reply.”
The regiment has been known as the Elgins since its establishment in Elgin County in 1866.
Bruce’s perspective on military service is shaped by bloody battle and by a 900-year bloodline he is proud to say began with ancestors who travelled from Normandy (now France) to Scotland in 1057 AD.
When he was 20, Bruce took up arms against Nazi Germany. It was the summer of 1944 just after the D-Day invasion. The Allied campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied Normandy was churning toward victory.
Bruce led a troop of three Churchill tanks for the Scots Guard. He faced off against enemy soldiers who approached after setting another British tank on fire. It was Aug. 6, 1944.
“Lord Bruce shot the leader with his revolver,” the battalion’s war diary says. Machine guns fired by British tanks killed the other enemy soldiers as they advanced.
Five days later, Bruce was ordered forward again with his tanks to possibly face a fearsome SS Panzer division. Suddenly “a scorching flame seared through the right-hand side of the turret,” he later recalled in a memoir.
An anti-tank round fired from 20 yards away knocked out Bruce’s tank, the war diary reveals. The attack killed radio operator William Brand and left Bruce severely wounded in his right leg.
“I was crisped down the front and my right hand struck with splinters,” Bruce later recalled.
His leg was smashed from the knee down. Bones stuck out of his trousers.
Bruce and two other crewmen managed to escape the burning tank. While his surviving comrades went for help, Bruce waited for the enemy, for death, or for rescue, immobilized by his wounds.
After some time he was found by comrades who bundled him off to safety. The medical care he received save his busted leg despite the words he later found written on his leg: “WILL REQUIRE AMPUTATION LATER.”
The war diary notes with satisfaction that British fire a few hours later killed the German who fired the bazooka. When the dead German soldier’s pay book was collected, it revealed he had recently been awarded the Iron Cross for bravery.
Bruce recounts his war experience today more succinctly, writing that, 887 years after his Norman ancestors travelled to Scotland, “I returned to the country of my ancestors in a tank which unfortunately, on 11th August, was hit by enemy fire and I was wounded.”
While the earl brings a unique perspective to his military service, every member of the Waterloo squadron has a story.
Cpl. Stephen Mann, 54, realized a lifelong ambition when he signed on to the regiment in his late 40s.
As a teenager growing up in England, Mann considered joining the Royal Air Force. But at 18 he immigrated to Canada, which at that time barred non-citizens from military service. Today, Canada allows permanent residents to serve.
“So life got in the way of things,” Mann explains. “I still had that drive and wanted to join the military. I loved the idea of the camaraderie and serving.”
Almost three decades passed. After he became a Canadian and his work schedule changed to free up some time, he was able to enlist as a part-time reservist.
In civilian life, Mann is a truck and coach mechanic employed as a supervisor with Grand River Transit. Driving the biggest trucks for the regiment is a highlight.
The English native is tickled to have the chief of Clan Bruce as his honorary colonel, knowing how the Bruce clan once fought the English. Robert the Bruce famously led a Scottish army to defeat the English in 1314.
Sapper Dylan Boyd, 19, pursued an emerging ambition when he signed on to the Waterloo squadron at 17.
“I’ve always loved Canada, growing up. It’s been a great country to live in. And I wanted to defend it when I got older,” he explains. “I really wanted to challenge myself, and it has been challenging. But I’ve enjoyed it.”
Last summer while training at a military base, Boyd was tasked with blowing a hole in a wall so infantry soldiers could charge through and shoot at targets. He had to figure out the required force and assess how far people had to be from the blast, calculating safe distances for shock and shrapnel.
“Blowing stuff up is always fun,” he said. In September, he plans to study engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Members of the Waterloo reserve squadron train three hours on Thursday nights from September to June, plus one weekend per month. A corporal might earn more than $9,000 a year and there are opportunities for more summer pay.
Officers are typically engineers or science graduates; enlisted ranks are often tradespeople. Their job is to build bridges, roads and landing strips to help soldiers move.
They also build trenches and obstacles to help slow the enemy. They lay and remove mines, support amphibious operations and use explosives to clear the way or level buildings, among other battlefield tasks.
The historic regiment has adapted well to changing military needs. It began as an infantry unit in St. Thomas in 1866, became an armoured unit in 1942, and then in 1997 became an engineering unit. It has earned battle honours in two world wars. Members of the regiment have deployed to Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latvia, Egypt and also to Ukraine, before the Russian invasion in 2022.
Diane Freeman, professional engineer and Waterloo city councillor, serves as honorary lieutenant-colonel. “I’ve always had a lot of respect and value toward the military,” Freeman says, who had a grandfather who fought in the First World War and an uncle who served in Korea.
“I love working with all of these soldiers who are willing to step forward and say, ‘If Canada needs me in the U.K., I’m ready. If Canada needs me in Ukraine, I’m ready. If Canada needs me in Latvia, I’m ready.’ ”
She adds: “It’s really humbling to see how hard these troops work at their day jobs and then choose to come here every Thursday night and work here, too.”
The squadron trains in rented space in a Waterloo plaza. Recently on a Thursday, members in combat uniforms practised with ropes and knots. They used power tools to build wood shelving and targets while new recruits were shown around.
Bruce travelled to Waterloo in 2009 when the regiment was granted Freedom of the City, a sign of gratitude for military service. Last year, Freeman visited with him in Scotland.
Entering his second century, he still writes sharp letters by hand, but is concerned that his cursive is becoming more ragged. “When I was wounded, my right hand got sprinkled with tiny bits of metal which only now are plaguing me,” he said to Freeman in a recent letter.
He seems as practical as the regiment he serves, signing off to her with the sound advice of a longserving soldier: “May your actions be brilliant and as a result of patient good training.”