Brave Battalion (52 page)

No Man's Land on the Somme, a landscape so devastated and exposed that collection of the dead proved impossible.

By June 1916, Armagh Wood had been reduced to a wasteland.

A trench on the Somme.

A tank lumbers forward during an advance in the Somme.

The first of four Canadian Scottish Victoria Cross winners, Piper James Cleland Richardson.

Lance Corporal William Metcalf 's courage at the Drocourt-Quéant Line garnered him a posthumous Victoria Cross.

Pozières Ridge.

By 1916, it was hard for wounded soldiers like these ones not to grin if their “blighty” meant a long, or even permanent, escape from the battle lines.

In the lead up to the Canadian Corps assault on Vimy Ridge, powerful naval guns were used to batter the German defences.

April 9, 1917. Canadian troops advance under fire toward Vimy Ridge.

William Johnstone Milne's bravery at Vimy Ridge resulted in a posthumous Victoria Cross.

Machine-gun posts in the muddy quagmire of Passchendaele.

Major James Scroggie was also one of the most indomitable Canadian Scottish officers.