Details
Lyall was born in Manchester and joined the Royal Navy to study mechanical engineering. However he was discharged from the Navy after suffering an ear infection. He emigrated to Canada, settling in Welland, Ontario, then moving to Chippawa, where he worked for a Power Company. He enlisted in the Canadian Militia in August 1914.
Lyall was 26 years old, and a lieutenant in the 102nd (North British Columbians) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War at the battle of the Canal du Nord when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.
On 27 September 1918 north of Cambrai, France, Lieutenant Lyall led his platoon in the capture of a strong-point, together with 13 prisoners, one field-gun and four machine-guns. Later, leading his men against another strong-point he rushed forward alone and captured the position single-handed, taking 45 prisoners and five machine-guns. The completion of his final objective resulted in the capture of 41 prisoners. On 1 October in the neighbourhood of Blecourt, he captured a strongly defended position which yielded 60 prisoners and 17 machine-guns. During both these operations, on attaining his objectives, Lieutenant Lyall tended the wounded under fire.
Read more about this topic: Graham Thomson Lyall
Famous quotes containing the word details:
“If my sons are to become the kind of men our daughters would be pleased to live among, attention to domestic details is critical. The hostilities that arise over housework...are crushing the daughters of my generation....Change takes time, but men’s continued obliviousness to home responsibilities is causing women everywhere to expire of trivialities.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request. One must seem to hear the unreasonable demands of the petulant, unmoved, and the tedious details of the dull, untired. That is the least price that a man must pay for a high station.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Then he told the news media
the strange details of his death
and they hammered him up in the marketplace
and sold him and sold him and sold him.
My death the same.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)