MacDowell, Thain Wendell
Thain Wendell MacDowell was born in Lachute, Que., in 1890, and moved to Maitland, near Brockville, as a child. He thrived at the University of Toronto, starring on the hockey and rugby teams, and graduated with a B.A. in 1915. The strapping 24year-old enlisted for overseas service with Ottawa’s 38th Battalion that February.
In November 1916, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for leading a trench attack at the Somme. But that was just a preview of a more audacious feat a few months later at Vimy Ridge.
On April 9, 1917, MacDowell and two runners became separated from the rest of their unit amid the chaos at Vimy and found themselves near a German trench containing a large dugout. MacDowell threw hand grenades to take out two German machine guns, then entered the dugout, followed it into a tunnel, turned a corner and came face to face with 77 Germans. Instead of panicking, he looked back up the tunnel and shouted to an imaginary battalion. The Germans, con- vinced that a legion of Canadians were on their way into the trench, surrendered.
But how do you bring in prisoners when you’re out numbered 77 to three? “Once again he made an on-the-spot decision to send the Germans up in groups of a dozen,” his great-nephew, Charles Dumbrille, wrote in a biography. “The first Prussians to reach the top realized they had been tricked. When one grabbed a discarded rifle, he was fired at by one of the runners, thus ending any further attempts by the Germans to retake their position.”
MacDowell continued to hold the position for five days, despite heavy shelling and a wound to his hand, helping his battalion capture Vimy’s Hill 145. His efforts that day earned him the Victoria Cross, “for most conspicuous bravery and indomitable resolution.”
MacDowell was a hero, but he was haunted. That June, he was sent to hospital in England with trench fever, then a few weeks later shipped home to Canada to recover from “war neurasthenia,” or shell shock. He complained of insomnia, heart palpitations, headaches, frequent sweating and difficulty focusing. He spent three months in a Brockville hospital. His sister, a nurse, had to hold him down when he suffered flashbacks. It wasn’t until early 1918 that MacDowell returned to England. He spent the rest of the war working at Canada’s Overseas Military Forces headquarters, and never returned to the battlefield. After the war, MacDowell became a private secretary to Canada’s Defence Minister, then became an executive in the mining sector. He died of a heart attack in 1960.