A34924 McFarlane, John Bertram Stuart enrolled in No. 1 District Depot, London, Ontario (Active Force MD1) on 08 October 1940 from his hometown Guelph, Ontario. He served in England, Sicily, Italy, France with the Royal Canadian Engineers, then in Germany and the Netherlands with the 48th Highlanders. He gave his date of birth as 29 Mar 1922 and was single.
The Part II Order to the 1st Battalion’s War Diary of September 1945 shows him in BHQ, classified Bandsman “C” embarking with the battalion from NWE on 4 September and disembarking in the UK on 5 September, as the battalion began its journey back to Canada. Our records have a gap in Germany/Holland as the date he joined the 1st Battalion, 48th Highlanders is missing. However, it is clear that Piper McFarlane was with the 1st Battalion from at least late March 45 and through the battles in Holland. He is shown on 5 May 45 Granted T.P. Pipe “C” Company.
The battalion had left Italy on 12 March for Marseille on 13 March and after crossing France was in Belgium on the 19th. A few days later they moved to Germany, at Kranenburg, in the midst of the destroyed Siegfried Line and the Reichswald Forest. They departed Germany for Holland on 9 April. Operation Cannonshot, the liberation of Apeldoorn, began 12 April with the crossing of the Ijssel River and ended 17 April in Apeldoorn. On the 25th the battalion went out of battle as part of the truce arranged with General Blaskowitz to allow food into the starving Dutch. Blaskowitz threatened to flood the country unless the Canadians stopped fighting. In a photograph taken on 26 April 1945, at the graveside ceremony on the dyke at Wilp where 19 Highlanders killed in Operation Cannonshot were buried, Piper “Mac” McFarlane is shown at attention, before playing The Lament, as LCol Counsell salutes his Highlanders.
The battalion then spent time in Soest, Delft and The Hague (where they acted as gaolers to German SS troops), then returned to Soest before departing for the UK in September.
NOK: Mother, Mrs. Constance McFarlane, 480 Woolwich St. Guelph, On Granted T.P. Piper “C” Coy, 5 May 45
