Canada has little appetite for heroes. God knows we have enough of them, but once their days of glory are past they disappear into everyday life like the wake behind a ship. What a contrast to the United States, which almost deifies its heroes, especially the military ones. No fewer than ten American Generals have gone on to become president and George Washington was even asked to be King as well.

Major General Bert Hoffmeister, who lived most of his life after retiring from the military on Proctor Avenue in West Vancouver, would be hard to beat as a hero and as a successful military leader, but long before his death in 1999 his name was hardly a household word save among Canadian veterans of the Second World War.

Bert Hoffmeister was born on May15th, 1907 in Vancouver, a member of a family which arrived from Ontario in Vancouver’s earliest days, right after the Great Fire of 1886. Young Hoffmeister’s list of uncles included the city’s first major electrical contractor and one of the earliest automobile dealers. His own father however wasn’t one of the rich Hoffmeisters, and after graduating from Kitsilano High School Bert couldn’t afford to go on to University and worked on the green chain at the Rat Portage Lumber sawmill. His workmates were the sort of people he would later lead in battle and he developed an empathy with them that not all Generals have.

At age 11, soon after the end of the First World War, Hoffmeister joined the Seaforth Highlander’s cadets, and in 1926 he went on to join their Militia. His leadership qualities were recognized from the start, and when the Seaforths went overseas in 1939, he was a major and company commander.

The Seaforths’ first major engagement was the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, by which time Hoffmeister, now Colonel Hoffmeister was in command of the regiment. The allies hadn’t yet honed their skills at seaborne invasions – Italy, Normandy, the South of France, and countless American invasions in the Pacific were yet to come. Among these lessons learned in Sicily were:1. Don’t launch such an invasion in high winds, and 2. Don’t direct the planes carrying your paratroopers over your trigger-happy invasion fleet. Notwithstanding, the First Canadian division, which formed part of the British Eighth Army, landed successfully and moved forward rapidly. The Italian troops were discouraged and surrendered in droves. However when the German reinforcements showed up there was hard fighting and the advance slowed. The problem was not always the enemy. At Leonforte, Hoffmeister had just vacated a headquarters when two Canadian shells fell short, killing two officers and two signallers. He claimed to believe he’d never be hit and unbelievably never was. He distinguished himself as a commander in several minor battles and one larger, at Adrano on the slopes of Mount Etna where he commanded the Seaforths in a combined operation with Canadian tanks.

In this campaign, Bert Hoffmeister not only gained experience as a combat commander of his own troops, he was also formed as a commander by observing the peculiarities of his allies. Hoffmeister was essentially a soldier’s commander. His first concern was for the welfare of his troops and in particular for keeping the casualties to a minimum. He was scathing about some of the American generals. “Patton and people like that didn’t give a damn how many people were killed or wounded as long as they got the objective and got there when he wanted them to be there.’ To be fair to Patton, the States had, compared with Canada, an almost bottomless pit of manpower, and came naturally to certain prodigality with casualty lists.

After Sicily, Italy. One glance at the map shows that an army advancing up Italy from the South, as the Allies had to, faced natural barrier after natural barrier. Ranges of mountains split by rushing rivers stretched across from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea. What is more, the possible lines of attack were as obvious to the Germans as to the Allies, and the Germans had plenty of time (and talent) to fortify a series of lines of defence – the Gustav line, the Adolf Hitler line, the Gothic line, and others. The Canadians were generally directed on the Eastern part of these lines, where the rivers flowed the widest and deepest into the Adriatic. Hoffmeister, by now a Brigadier in command of the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade led the assault against Ortona where the Moro River flowed into the sea. The fighting here was particularly savage. Ortona was a town built of stone and each house had been turned into a small fort. The troops called it “little Stalingrad”: the combat was so fierce that the Division Commander authorized a slackening of the attack. Hoffmeister, for all his hatred of casualties, wouldn’t do it. He felt that to quit short of victory would be “absolutely devastating”, to the morale of the Brigade. They finally (after over a month) adopted a system called “mouseholing” whereby they advanced, in shelter, along each row of houses by blowing holes through the interior walls throwing grenades through the holes and dashing after them.

Following the Canadian victory at Ortona, in March 1944, Hoffmeister was promoted Major General to command the 5th Armoured Division. It’s noteworthy that he became the youngest Canadian Division Commander, and also he had come up through the infantry, so the appointment to an armoured command was a singular vote of confidence. At the time, the Division’s morale was at rock bottom, because a recent attack had been a disaster and some troops, for whom this action had been their first, had run away. Hoffmeister’s programme to counteract this was so far reaching that one is surprised he was able to carry it out during a very active phrase of the campaign. But he insisted. He replaced most of Divisional Officers and embarked on a far-reaching series of retraining excecises, notably in the following of a “creeping barrage” of shells during an attack. These “creeping barrages” used live shells and he insisted uponleading each of his twelve regiments personally through at least one of the attacks. In his demonstrations of the need to stay close to the barrage, he was very nearly hit himself by a shell falling short. While all this was going on the closely adjacent British troops were under German fire from Monte Cassino.

By the time of the next assault, these measures had had their effect. On May 23rd 1944 the Royal Westminster Regiment (part of the 5TH Armoured) broke through the heavily fortified Adolf Hitler Line and crossed the line of the Melfa River. They were pinned down under heavy German fire for several hours, but they held, thereby removing a major obstacle to the Allied entry into Rome. Hoffmeister took some criticism for spending to much time in the firing line and not enough headquarters, but it’s hard to argue with success.

The next barrier was the particularly strong Gustav Line, which the Canadians ran up against in lat August and early September 1944. Here the British Eight Army, in overall Allied command, tried a diversion. The Canadians were brought to an area south of Florence for an apparent attack, then moved secretly back to their customary stomping ground on the East coast, there to prepare for a set piece attack. Hoffmeister’s infantry started gingerly patrolling the German positions. Hoffmeister looked at the patrol reports and noticed that one particular bridge while prepared for demolition in the ordinary way, was not as well guarded as he expected. Quick to take advantage of German weakness, he advanced the date for the set piece attack by 24 hours and caught the Germans on the wrong foot. Units of the 5th Armoured Division were able to cross the bridge and get behind the initial Gustav line defences. The Germans were forced to withdraw and the Gustav Line crumpled. But, as always in this campaign, they only retreated to another fortified line, this time near the shores of Lago Commachio. Hoffmeister’s last battle in Italy was a night advance, again by the Westminsters, penetrating the German lines and catching them quite unprepared. The result was a slaughter – 300 Germans dead, 600 prisoners.

After that action, Hoffmeister and the 5th Canadian Armoured were moved from the Adriatic to the North Sea where they took part in the liberation of the Netherlands. By now the war in Europe was winding down and Hoffmeister was told to command the Canadian contingent for operations against Japan. However the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan made that unnecessary, and bit-by-bit Hoffmeister’s involvement switched to politics and business. He was BC’s Agent General in London from 1958 to 61, worked for McMillan Bloedel and the Council of Forest Industries for many years, and an ardent conservationist for the rest of his life.

For a last word about his military career, I turn to Sgt. Ron Hurley of the famous Westminster Regiment:

“His interest was his men, first and foremost. He was extremely well thought of by all his men, and he didn’t have to browbeat anybody. He just had confidence in you. He said “you have confidence in me then I have confidence in you."