English: Canadian troops storming fortifications at Valenciennes, France, during World War I. Canadian soldiers running through a debris-strewn wasteland towards the walls of Valenciennes. In the foreground, the leading soldier scrambles over barbed wire barricades. Even from the photograph the manoeuvre looks perilous, and it is difficult to imagine how nerve-racking it must have been attempting it while under heavy machine-gun fire.

In the Canadian assault on Valenciennes on November 1st 1918, a young sergeant, Hugh Cairns single-handedly captured a German machine gun and killed its crew of five, before leading the capture of eighteen more German soldiers. He was killed the following day and posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
[Original reads: Canadians of the first platoon to enter Valenciennes from the west, dashing towards the Canal, which they crossed on the remains of the lock gates, and remains of the bridge across river, under very heavy machine-gun fire.']

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