Acting Major Frederick Tilston crashed onto the sodden soil in front of the Hochwald Forest. Shrapnel had torn a four-inch gash through his hip, the 38-year-old officer’s second injury in almost as many minutes after sustaining a nasty-looking ear wound. Blood trickled down his neck and from the hole in his leg, while all around him the First Canadian Army’s Essex Scottish Regiment continued fighting. It was 1 March 1945, and amid an Allied push to neutralise the last formidable German bastion on the west side of the Rhine River, Tilston had just entered his first and last day of combat.
Nevertheless, it had been far from an easy ride up until that point. Born in 1906, the Toronto native had spent a stint in Chicago before his father died in a car accident. He, his mother and two sisters had then moved back home, where the family struggled to make ends meet. Tilston ultimately put aside