52 Silver Street

Private Reginald “Reg” Alfred Robbins

Reg was born in October, 1914 and raised in Brantford. He was the son of William and Josephine Robbins. He attended Brantford Collegiate Institute. However, he married (Ethel) Jean Hynds of Paris, and when he enlisted with the Queen’s Own Rifles on September 13, 1943, they were living at 52 Silver Street in Paris and Reg was working as a card stripper at the Wincey Mills.

Reg served with the Dufferin and Haldimand Rifle Battalion (Reserve) as a Private from July 1940 to May 1941. After training at Camp Borden with the Queen’s Own Rifles, Reg signed up and went overseas to join the North Nova Scotian Highlanders, who had suffered serious personnel losses in battle. He reached France on July 28, 1944. This was shortly after the D-Day invasion in June, 1944. While the Canadians and Allied forces achieved their initial objectives, the war was far from over. The Canadian forces continued to fight in Normandy, against fierce and desperate German defences, pushing inland and playing a crucial role in the liberation of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. 

Reg sent a letter home to his wife Jean at Christmas, 1944. In it, he asked his wife to send some soap. He was stationed in farmhouse in a small unnamed town and met a Dutch woman washing her clothes with a scrub board and water from a stream. She said they were not allowed such luxuries as soap. He told Jeanne that providing her with soap was the least they could do. In another letter, he told Jean of seeing a pair of little feet under his bed where Reg had stored a package of chocolates. Reg gave the young Dutch boy all the chocolate.

It was during the liberation of Holland that Reg was wounded, in Uden, Holland. He recovered and returned to battle early in 1945. In the lead-up to the Allied invasion of Germany, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, as part of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, engaged in fierce fighting to cross the Rhine and advance into Germany. Reg was killed in action in Germany on February 22, 1945, apparently in the Allied push towards Cologne and the Rhine River. He was buried temporarily in Bedburg, Germany, which is just west of Cologne, but his body was later removed to the Groesbeek Canadian Military Cemetery in Nijmegan, Holland. He left behind his wife Jeanne and a son, Reginald Wayne, who he never got to see.

(This information was taken in part from the Canadian Virtual War Memorial created by Veterans Affairs Canada)