One wounded man. Sixty-two prisoners. A quarter-mile of enemy trench. Here's how an Edmonton farmer pulled it off, and why it was genius, not luck.

On 16 September 1916, on the Somme, Private John Chipman "Chip" Kerr of Edmonton's 49th Battalion was clearing a German trench with a bombing party that was running out of grenades.

So, with a finger freshly blown off, he climbed out onto the parados, ran along the open ground above the enemy, and opened fire from behind them. Believing themselves surrounded, sixty-two Germans surrendered. It earned him the Victoria Cross.

We rebuild the deed from the ground up: who Kerr really was, how the 49th was raised in Edmonton (and gutted at Mount Sorrel), how trench fighting actually worked and why Kerr's move wasn't just brave, it was brilliant.

Much of the research behind this episode lives in the building that carries the 49th Battalion's lineage: the Loyal Edmonton Regiment Military Museum, inside the historic Prince of Wales Armouries in Edmonton.

Walk through the Griesbach Gallery, stand in front of Cecil Kinross's miniature Victoria Cross, and see everything we talked about today in the cases and on the walls. I'm currently doing my university practicum there, so if you're in Edmonton, come and find me. Let's talk history.

Canada entered the First World War without an air force; not a small one, not a token one; none.

Yet, somehow produced some of the most extraordinary fighter pilots of the entire conflict.

This episode tells the stories of five of them: Billy Bishop, whose Victoria Cross action may have been embellished; Raymond Collishaw, who outscored almost everyone and came home almost unknown; William Barker, Canada's most decorated serviceman, now largely forgotten; Wop May, the rookie from Edmonton who accidentally outran the Red Baron; and Alan McLeod, who climbed onto the wing of a burning aircraft at five thousand feet to save his observer's life.

Featuring archival audio from actual veterans of the air war, recorded while they were still around to tell their stories.

On July 30th, 1915, at a ruined château called Hooge, the German Army turned flamethrowers on British troops for the first time. Within minutes, a battalion broke. Not from shells or gas: from fire.

In Episode 27, we trace the full arc of the flamethrower in the First World War — from Hooge to the mud of Passchendaele and the German Spring Offensive of 1918. At the centre of the story is the Canadian Corps, which faced German flamethrower teams in some of the most brutal engagements of the war, and had to learn fast how to fight back.

It's a story about a weapon. But more than that, it's a story about adaptation, primal fear, and how even the most terrifying technology eventually meets its ceiling.