Hertzy (Halfdan Hertzberg)

First appears at dinner with Birkett in September 1916, then recurs through the last four months of 1917: dinner and a lift to Bully in September, talk of possibly swapping jobs with Rolston in October, seen at Divisional HQ in November, and by December slated to become C.R.E. of the 1st Division. Named again in January 1918, in a Times list of D.S.O. awards alongside Pep. Written "Hertzberg," "Hertzy," and "Hertz" in the diary, sometimes within the same entry: treated here as the same person.

A wartime seniority list among Robertson's papers carries two Hertzbergs, distinguished only by initials: "Hertzberg, H.F.H., M.C." (Major, 1st Field Company) and "Hertzberg, C.S.L., M.C." (Lieutenant, posted in England). Robertson's diary (a Major in France, promoted to C.R.E. of the 1st Division, decorated with the D.S.O. that January) matches H.F.H., not C.S.L. This is Halfdan Fenton Harboe Hertzberg (1884-1959): the rank, posting, and decoration line up exactly with his own record, which continued after the war to a colonelcy, the British Army Staff College, and eventual command as Commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada (1940-1944) and Major-General. His brother (Charles Sumner Lund Hertzberg, C.S.L. on the same list) was also a Canadian Engineer officer and later a general himself (the two are reportedly the only pair of brothers to hold general rank simultaneously in the Canadian army), but he is not the diary's "Hertzy": in late 1917 he was a Lieutenant in England, not the Major turning up at Robertson's dinners and Corps HQ in France.