When General Harry Crerar — the "quiet man who got things done" — died at the age of 76 in Ottawa in April 1965, he was hailed as the most distinguished military leader Canada had ever produced.

A Hamilton native, Gen. Crerar was the first Canadian to be promoted to general while serving at the battlefront and the first to command a full-fledged Canadian army in the field.

The stern-faced, soft spoken general, who left Hamilton in his early 20s, won wide acclaim for the Canadian Army's dramatic drive from Normandy along the Channel coast into Belgium, Holland and Germany during the Allied victory campaign that ended the Second World War.

It capped a military career that began at the Royal Military College in Kingston where he graduated in 1909. He spent several years as a civil engineer with Ontario Hydro, but at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he went overseas as an artillery captain.

He was in the Battle of Ypres where the first gas attack in history failed to crack the Canadian front. Rising rapidly through artillery command posts, he was a lieutenant-colonel and corps counter-battery officer when the Great War ended.

In the interval between the wars, he served in various headquarters roles, attending the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Imperial Conference of 1937. He rose to full colonel in 1938, commanding the RMC in Kingston.

A month after the Second World War began, he was made a brigadier and sent to London to plan for the arrival of the 1st Canadian Division. In July 1940, he returned to Ottawa as chief of the general staff and was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1941.

Gen. Crerar took a step down in rank later that year to go overseas again as commander of the 2nd Canadian Division then training in England.

He explained to a friend: "I must get away from a desk. I must get overseas, for that is where I belong."

Soon he was commanding the 1st Canadian Corps, and back at lieutenant-general in rank. It was the 2nd Division of this corps that carried out the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe, an operation that he always defended as an essential prelude to the D-Day operation of 1944.

In the spring of 1944, Gen. Crerar was returned to England, succeeding Gen. McNaughton as commander of the Canadian Army.

Two weeks after D-Day, Gen. Crerar arrived in Normandy and began forming the 1st Canadian Army for its special task of clearing the coast of northwest Europe. He made his military reputation — and Canada's — in the bitter months of struggle toward Germany.

In the climatic attack across the Rhine in February 1945, he had more than 500,000 men under his command, including eight British divisions sent to bolster the three Canadian divisions. By early March, he had turned the Siegfried Line and cleared the west bank of the lower Rhine in an operation that received high praise from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander.

Eisenhower later described him as a humble leader who was much less flamboyant than his contemporaries, George Patton and Bernard Montgomery: "He was not one to seek the limelight or command headlines. He was one of those great souls whose only ambition was to do his duty to his troops and to his country."

Gen. Crerar once summarized his personal philosophy of generalship: "Lead always, drive rarely, but when you must, drive hard."

On his return to Ottawa in August 1945, thousands welcomed him on Parliament Hill, where, it was reported, he received one of the greatest ovations in the country's history.

About 20,000 people turned out for a civic ceremony and parade in Hamilton in 1946. He is remembered in his home town with a neighbourhood, street and a park named in his honour.

— with files from The Hamilton Spectator archives.

Part 3 of 4

Next week: The Build Up to D-Day

June 6, 2019 will be the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one of the monumental days in human history. It was one that changed the course of the world, signalled the beginning of the end of the Second World War and shaped the image of Canada as a power on the world stage.

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Hamilton will pay tribute to all D-Day veterans with a one-of-a-kind gala at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum on June 1, featuring the World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra.

Today, The Spectator, in conjunction with Newspapers In Education and the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, continues an 8-week countdown to D-Day, with a look at what faced Canadians that day, 75 years ago.