The Day Cec Merritt Won the Victoria Cross
August 19, 2017 was the 75 Anniversary of the Dieppe Raid during the Second World War and the scene of one of Canada’s worst military defeats. Lieutenant-Colonel Cec Merritt, the commanding officer of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, was the first Canadian to be chosen to receive the Victoria Cross for valour during the Second World War for his brave actions during the Dieppe Raid. Charles Cecil Ingersoll “Cec” Merritt was born in Vancouver just inside the boundary of Vancouver’s famed Stanley Park on November 10, 1908, the son of Sophie Almon Tupper and Cecil Mack Merritt, both of whom were from distinguished families. Sir Charles Tupper, the Father of Confederation for Nova Scotia, was his maternal great-grandfather. The town of Merritt, BC is named after a relation of Cec Merritt, William Hamilton Merritt III, who brought a railway to the Nicola Valley. Merritt’s own father, Captain Cecil Merritt served with the 16 Canadian Scottish, 1 Canadian Division, during the First World War and was killed at the Second Battle of Ypres in April, 1915 during a counter-attack at Kitchener Wood, following the use of chlorine gas by the Germans. Cecil Merritt Sr has no known grave. His name is enshrined on the wall of the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium.
Merritt had only been a boy of seven when his father was killed. His mother, Sophie, a very beautiful and elegant woman of whom Merritt spoke with the utmost respect and admiration, was left to raise Cec, his younger brother Bill, and a sister. When Merritt apologized to his mother for going overseas in 1939 after she had lost her husband in the First World War and had seen all three of her children enlist in World War II, his mother replied, “I don’t want you to go,
