Thain MacDowell

Thain MacDowell was born in Quebec in 1890 and would go on to become one of Canada's greatest war heroes, proving himself as a balls-out asskicker during his service to the crown in World War I, where he knocked kraut faces in two of the most pivotal battles of the war and racked up more bling than a multi-platinum rapper and his entire entourage combined.

In a bloody war where the average life span for an Allied Infantry officer was roughly equivalent to the amount of time it takes him to yell "over the top!", Captain MacDowell gallantly led a company of the 38th Canadian Battalion in its quest to find a bunch of German people and make them become death as quickly as possible.  At the Battle of the Somme in 1916, which at the time was the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, he won the Distinguished Service Cross for bravely sprinting up to three separate German machine gun nests along the Desiré Trench, face-kicking the shit out of the gunners with a steel-toed boot embossed with the words "Fuck the Kaiser", and then subsequently capturing fifty-three prisoners who surrendered to him immediately after seeing him rabbit-punch a German machinegunner in the neck and explode his entire head into a fine red mist like a really disgusting water balloon.  During the fighting, he got shot in the hand but he didn't even give a shit.  He sucked the bullet out of his wound and spit it with such velocity that it ended up killing three guys, changing direction mid-flight like the Oswald bullet that killed JFK.

While he wanted to go on with his quest to impale German soldiers with their own stupid pointy helmets, MacDowell's officers told him he should head back to London and get some medical attention for the gaping gunshot wound he had received at the Somme.  After a brief stint there, he quickly returned and resumed command of his company of the 38th Battalion, just in time for the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which would turn out to be one of the turning points of the war.

E-mailer Greg sent me a succinct and badass account of what was to be the Canadian Military's finest hour:

For the first couple years of the war, the Allied Powers were generally getting stomped by the Germans and having an all-round crappy time thanks to stuff like the introduction of chemical warfare.  One of the toughest strongholds along the German defensive line was at Vimy Ridge.  The Germans had the area fortified with barbed wire, tunnels, three lines of trenches, machine gun nests and a ridiculous amount of artillery.  Both the British and the French failed multiple times to take and hold the ridge, including one ill-fated attempt where the French lost 150,000 men, including 3000 Foreign Legionnaires.  Meanwhile, the CEF (Canadian Expedentiary Force) had been gaining a reputation amongst the Allies for being extremely hardcore, despite having very few professional soldiers in their ranks and craptacular gear and weaponry (thanks to some douchebag general back home giving all of the government contracts to his rich buddies).  So the Brits called up one General Arthur Currie, commander of the CEF, and asked him to take a shot at Vimy.  Currie accepted and proceeded to gather up all 5 divisions of the CEF into the Voltron-esque Canadian Corps. 

The Corps spent months preparing for the battle by digging tunnels and rehearsing the battle on a scale replica of the ridge (!).  When the time finally came, the Corps kicked things off with the largest artillery barrage in history up to that point that lasted an entire week, interspersed with trench raids at night.  Over 1,100 cannons of every kind imaginable kind including crappy little field artillery dragged by mules, naval guns mounted on train cars and probably 16th century trebuchets and bottle rockets shelled the ridge so much it could be heard over a 100 miles away in England.  The Germans aptly dubbed this "The Week of Suffering."  After Currie decided the Germans had had enough Howitzing, infantry was sent in to storm the ridge.  The Canadian infantry employed a number of new tactics for the time including platoon-based orders, aerial reconnaissance, and a creeping barrage, which means the Canadian had to run around killing Germans while trying very hard not to get splashed by their own artillery.  Thanks to extensive planning and coordination, friendly fire was minimal.  After 2 hours the ridge was taken with 2 to 1 casualties inflicted on the Germans plus 4,000 prisoners taken.  The Germans were heavily demoralized and a big hole was punched in their defensive line, contributing greatly to the Allied victory.