Major General James Gardner RIP

Kyt · Dec 4, 2007

globeandmail.com: He served with the British at Tobruk and became major-general in NATO

A charismatic career soldier, James Gardner enlisted in the British Army early in the Second World War because he wanted to fight in a tank corps, but spent most of the war as an incorrigible escaper from German prisoner of war camps. He lived to tell many tales of his escapades behind enemy lines and to serve with great distinction in the peacetime army of the Canadian Forces.

James Charlton Gardner was born in Regina in 1920, the middle child and only son of Norman and Gertrude (née Morgan) Gardner. His father was a businessman and his mother was a nurse. When he was in grade 11 at Regina's Central Collegiate he met Joyce (Joy) Morgan, who was a year younger, and they began dating. After high school, he entered The Royal Military College in Kingston in the fall of 1938 because he had "always wanted to join the military and serve his country."

He was eager to go overseas after the war erupted in September, 1939, and keenly wanted to join a tank corps. Canada didn't have one, so in 1940 he quit RMC and enlisted in the British Army, where he was posted to the Royal Tank Regiment and served in the Eighth Army in North Africa. He saw action and was captured when the Eighth Army crossed from Egypt into Libya in November, 1941, and tried to relieve Tobruk, which was besieged by German forces under the command of General Erwin Rommel.

By all accounts, Lieutenant Gardner was a resolute, athletic and patriotic young man who was determined to escape his German captors and get back to the front lines. After making it back to his regiment, he was captured again.

Stories abound about his escapades as a prisoner of war over the next three years. A skilled bridge player, he was invited to be the fourth in a regular match with three well-heeled British aristocrats. Once, after trying and failing to escape, he heard one of the other players shout, "Gardner, you have ruined our bridge game," as he was marched back into the PoW camp for a stint in solitary confinement.

As the war continued and the Allies, under Gen. Bernard Montgomery, began to make inroads against Gen. Rommel, the Germans decided to transfer their PoWs by ship from Africa to Italy. The prisoners, who included a goodly number of sailors, plotted to overtake the ship once it was at sea. A mole reported the scheme to the Germans, who immediately changed plans to send the PoWs by submarine, according to a tale that Lieut. Gardner loved to tell years later in the officers mess. After that experience, he said he never wanted to sail in a submarine again.

However he made it across the Mediterranean Sea, he was delivered to a PoW camp in southern Italy. He escaped from there and began walking "up the boot" hoping to connect with Allied forces, having heard rumours that they had made large-scale amphibious landings at Salerno near Naples in September, 1943.

Another story has him identified as "an incorrigible escaper" who was being sent by train to Germany to a more secure PoW camp along the lines of Colditz Castle near Dresden. Somewhere south of Milan, he managed to jump off the train onto a truck and slide under its tarpaulin until he could evade his captors.

According to another account, Lieut. Gardner was hiding in woods by the side of a road when a strange vehicle, which turned out to be a jeep, which had gone into full production while he was a PoW, stopped and two English-speaking soldiers got out. They were laying line for an observation post. Recognizing the soldiers by their English accents and their "blue" language, he surrendered, was interrogated and was shipped to a base hospital in Algiers. He was finally transferred to the Canadian forces and sent home in late spring, 1944.

In June, he became engaged to Joyce, his loyal Regina girlfriend, and that November they were married in Winnipeg. They went east to his first posting as a lieutenant at Camp Borden near Barrie, Ont.

Lieut. Gardner was unusual as an aspiring officer in the postwar Canadian military. He had no common experience with the other applicants for the regular army because his active service had all been with the British Forces, said retired Major-General Philip Neatby. "He was an anomaly in that all the other applicants were 'macaroni eaters' in the Italian campaign or else they had served in northwest Europe, but he had done neither," he said. "Therefore his peers had no notion of how good a soldier he had been and what his experience had been, so his reputation, which developed rapidly, was based on his [performance] as a very, very solid, competent staff officer."

He was posted to Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians) and was made second-in-command by 1956. Two years later he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel. "He was a firm believer that soldiers expect to be properly trained, properly led and properly equipped. And by properly led [I mean] by people who are competent, who anticipate what the challenges are going to be and who train the men properly for them and [ensure] that they are never committed to unnecessary risk or unnecessary work," Maj.-Gen. Neatby said. "Everything is purposeful and that is exactly the way he operated."

As the Cold War ramped up in the mid-1950s, the Department of National Defence decided to add a fourth armoured regiment to the regular army. On Oct. 10, 1958, the brass announced that the new regiment, which was called the 1st Fort Garry Horse, would be based at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in the Ottawa Valley under the command of Lt.-Col. Gardner. (The militia regiment in Winnipeg became the 2nd Fort Garry Horse.) The regiment's first Centurion tank rolled past George Pearkes, the defence minister in prime minister John Diefenbaker's government, on Nov. 19, 1958.

"He was a totally dedicated individual and probably one of the finest trainers I ever served under," said Colonel John Roderick, who joined the Fort Garry Horse in 1961. "We were training for war, notwithstanding we were in Camp Petawawa. It was as though we were facing the Russians on the other side of the Ottawa River. It was that level of intensity," he said. "He set the standards for the rest of my career."

Because of Lt.-Col. Gardner's lofty reputation as a military instructor, he was replaced at the Fort Garry Horse in August, 1961, and sent back to RMC, the same school he had left two decades earlier without a degree. There he worked as director of cadets, a position he held for three years.

It was an unusual posting for a former commanding officer, according to Col. Roderick. "He was sent in to put the military back in the Royal Military College. If you wanted something done right you got Jimmie Gardner to do it."

The Fort Garry Horse was disbanded in 1970 in an overall reduction of the armed forces ordered by then prime minister Pierre Trudeau; its remaining members were absorbed into Lord Strathcona's Horse.

After RMC and a brief posting in Ottawa, Lt.-Col. Gardner was one of more than 30 military personnel who went to Tanzania as military advisers as part of Canada's contribution to the newly sovereign country's defence and security forces. He was in Tanzania for about two years from 1964 to early 1966.

Another short posting in Ottawa followed. He was promoted to colonel and sent to Britain to the Imperial Defence College (now the Royal College of Defence Studies), an organization that trains senior officers for executive responsibility by "developing their analytical powers, knowledge of defence and international security, and strategic vision."

After finishing his course work, he was promoted to brigadier-general and sent to Germany as commander of the 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in Soest from 1968 to July, 1970. Canada's NATO Brigade served in Germany from 1951 to 1993 - from the beginnings of the Cold War through the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Again he went back to Ottawa for another two years, then to Brussels in about 1973, serving with NATO until 1975, when he retired from active service with the Canadian Armed Forces at 55 as a major-general.

Lord Strathcona's Horse appointed him colonel of the regiment, a position he held from November, 1978, to 1982. Two momentous events occurred during his tenure. A Canadian Pacific train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals derailed in Mississauga on Nov. 10, 1979. The toxic spill precipitated the evacuation of more than 200,000 people, and Maj.-Gen. Gardner was called in to help plan and execute what was then the largest-ever peacetime exodus. Less than two years later, he and his wife were invited to the wedding of Prince Charles, the regiment's colonel-in-chief, and Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London on July 29, 1981.

Unlike many former soldiers who retired from the armed forces, he had no urge to work in academia or the private sector. His goal was to play golf and enjoy life. He and his wife moved to Barrie in the mid-1970s. After she suffered a stroke in the late 1980s, he became her principal caregiver. In May, 1994, RMC retroactively awarded him a bachelor of military science in recognition of his war service.

James Charlton Gardner was born in Regina on Dec. 6, 1920. He died at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ont., on Oct. 29, 2007. He was 86. Predeceased by his sisters Lois and Klela, he is survived by his wife, Joyce, his son, Bob, his twin daughters, Dianne and Deborah, and his extended family.
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Tralee · Dec 20, 2007

At the officers mess with Major General Gardner

I recall that Major General Gardner was a friend of my fathers when he was at RMC. He and his wife would join us on our boat when we sailed the Rideau and I recall sitting on the patio of the officers mess at RMC with him and my father. I do not recall a lot about him quite frankly but my brother confirmed that it was Major General Gardner in these instances. Neat to read his history here.

Kyt · Dec 20, 2007

Thanks Tralee, it's always nice to find someone who knew one of those who have passed on.

And welcome to the Forum.

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