bottom. The two battalions Crerar selected were both Class C units, both evaluated on the lowest level of fitness for combat. The first unit selected by Crerar was the Royal Rifles of Canada, which was only selected because of lobbying on the part of Associate Defence Minister Power who insisted that the Royal Rifles, full of his relatives and friends, go to Hong Kong. Mackenzie King's diary mentions in passing in December 1941 that "it was Power himself who was keenest on having the Quebec regiment [the Royal Rifles] go, he mentioning at the time that his own son was a member of it". The commander of the Royal Rifles, W.J. Home, was a First World War veteran who had won the Military Cross and served as a Permanent Force officer in the interwar period. Shortly before World War Two began in 1939, Home had been dismissed from the Royal Canadian Regiment as "unfit for command", but was given the command of the Royal Rifles in September 1939 owing to the lack of experienced officers. Having selected one Class C unit to go to Hong Kong, Crerar felt the pressure to choose another Class C unit to avoid accusations of favoritism. He chose the Winnipeg Grenadiers entirely to maintain the appearance of regional parity as he mentioned in a letter to Ralston that having selected one Class C unit from eastern Canada, he wanted another Class C unit from western Canada to go overseas. In addition, having selected a unit from Quebec that was 35-40% French-Canadian, Crerar wanted an English-Canadian Class C unit to go to Hong Kong in order to make the political point that English-Canadians and French-Canadians could work together. The commander of the Winnipeg Grenadiers was L. Col. John Louis Robert Sutcliffe (August 29, 1898, Elland, England - April 6, 1942, Hong Kong), who during the First World War had seen action in France, Belgium, Russia, Persia and Mesopotamia (Iraq). Crerar selected Brigadier-General John K. Lawson to command C Force. Lawson was formerly the director of military training and through he had seen action in World War One, he had never commanded a unit higher than a company. As both battalions had were graded unfit for combat, it was felt that Lawson was best qualified to raise their level of training. Lawson's headquarters picked up volunteers as it made way across Canada to Vancouver, coming to comprise