Francis Pegahmagabow peers out from a crater
in the middle of No Man’s Land. Barbed wire and dead bodies cover the ground
all around him. Pegahmagabow brings up his Ross rifle and
peers through the scope. He spots a German helmet poking up from the
enemy trench. Pegahmagabow takes a twig form his satchel
and places it in his mouth. He chews slowly, knowing that the twig will
give him protection like it did for his Ojibwa ancestors. He takes a deep breath and holds it to steady
his aim. He squeezes the trigger. The German soldier falls to the ground. It is the Second Battle of Ypres, and Francis
Pegahmagabow’s first battle. This was not his first kill, or his last though,
because Francis Pegahmagabow is the most deadly sniper in World War I. After getting another confirmed kill he crawls
back to the allied trenches. He relays information on the location of the
enemy troops that are across the battlefield. Suddenly, Pegahmagabow and the commanding
officers hear screaming from further down the trench. They run to see what is happening. Yellow colored gas fills the ditch. The men who were yelling now lay dead in the
mud, poisoned by a weaponized gas. Pegahmagabow and the other members of the
First Canadian Infantry Battalion look on in horror. This is the first time the allied forces have
seen mustard gas and its deadly effects. The battalion evacuates the trench and relocates
to a less deadly area of the battlefield. The Second Battle of Ypres rages on. Pegahmagabow continues to scout and relay
vital information to his commanders. He crawls through the blood covered ground
of No Man’s Land to ensure that the Allies have the most up to date information on the
enemy. While scouting he picks off any German soldier
that he spots with his rifle. His kill count rises. Unfortunately, his battalion loses almost
half its men in just three days. War is hell, and Pegahmagabow is finding out
quickly that the only way to win the war is through detailed reconnaissance and the deadly
accurate shots from his rifle. In his next battle Francis Pegahmagabow adds
to his confirmed kill count. He also begins to capture enemies for information. If he can take the enemy alive, then the allies
can use the information extracted from enemy soldiers to plan for their next attack. In June of 1916 Pegahmagabow fights at the
Battle of Mount Sorrel. He is recorded as capturing dozens of prisoners. Over the course of the entire war it is estimated
that Pegahmagabow captured approximately 300 prisoners in total. Using tracking and hunting skills he learned
from other Ojibwe members before the war, Pegahmagabow can practically disappear. He sneaks into No Man’s Land under the darkness
of night, and buries himself in debris and dirt. He patiently waits until an unknowing German
crosses his path and captures them. Pegahmagabow can also use his tracking skills
to figure out the routes enemies are using to cross the battlefield and ambush them. He uses his superior marksmanship skills to
fire a warning shot at an enemy’s feet. The bullet impacts the ground just ahead of
the German soldier spraying dirt up into the air. There would be no doubt in the enemy’s mind
that they had two options, either return with Pegahmagabow to be interrogated, or be shot
by the deadliest sniper of the war. However, what Pegahmagabow does next makes
capturing 300 enemy soldiers look like child's play. Several months later Pegahmagabow is deployed
to the Battle of Somme. Here he is engaged in heavy fighting. He has set up in a sniper position and is
picking off enemy German soldiers left and right. He starts to reposition when he is shot. Pegahmagabow is knocked down by the impact
of a bullet through the leg. He has to crawl back to the trenches through
fallen allies and muddy earth. Bullets whiz over his head. He makes it back to the trench, drops down,
and receives medical attention. As soon as he recovers from his gunshot wound,
Pegahmagabow immediately requests to be returned to the battlefield. His request is granted much to the dismay
of the enemy. His next battle after recovering from his
gunshot wound is where he receives his first Military Medal. After his recovery Pegahmagabow is deployed
to the Battle of Passchendaele in November 1917. The allies desperately need to capture the
Passchendaele ridge for a strategic advantage. Around 20,000 allied soldiers crawl from crater
to crater. The soldiers need to be coordinated so that
the attack on each flank can happen at the appropriate time. Francis Pegahmagabow sprints across the battlefield. He dives behind cover whenever possible and
crawls through the mud to reach the next crater. Grenades detonate in every direction. Shrapnel flies through the air. The bullets from entrenched machine guns cause
the ground to explode all around him. But Pegahmagabow is on a mission. He has to relay information on enemy troop
movements to his commanders. He runs from one side of the battlefield to
the other, stopping only to gaze into his scope and note important information on the
enemy. He risks his life to make sure that the allied
forces have the reconnaissance necessary to win the battle. Pegahmagabow only stops to observe the enemy,
but if an opportunity presents itself he takes the shot. Each time he lets loose a bullet, he adds
one more kill to his total body count. But sniping is secondary on this mission. He needs to get his observations back to the
commanders. He stops, takes a shot. Crouches behind the remains of a truck, takes
another shot. Dives into a crater, peers out, takes a final
shot. Each one hits its mark. Eventually Pegahmagabow makes it back to the
command post with all of his vital information. The Allies take Passchendaele ridge, but not
before losing 16,000 out of the 20,000 allied soldiers in the battle. After Passchendaele, Pegahmagabow is awarded
his first medal with a citation saying that he did excellent work to keep in touch with
the flanks, and advising command of units he had seen. He also played a pivotal role in guiding relief
support across the battlefield. Reinforcements were supposed to be sent to
one of the flanks, but a mistake had been made and the soldiers were out of position. Pegahmagabow took it upon himself to lead
the reinforcements to the correct area of the battlefield, which helped secure victory. Unfortunately after all his hard work Pegahmagabow
is awarded something other than just a medal. He comes down with Pneumonia. Pneumonia, mixed with the inhalation of small
amounts of poison gas, causes Pegahmagabow to be hospitalized in England at the end of
1917. He suffered from chest pains the rest of his
life. But a little pneumonia and poison gas won’t
stop the deadliest sniper of World War I. As soon as he is well enough to return to
duty, he asks to be re-deployed. Pegahmagabow is sent back to battle to rack
up more sniper kills. He finds himself at the Battle of the Scarpe
in August 1918, where he receives the second bar to his Military Medal. This part of his story is especially crazy,
because it involves the Allies firing on their own men. Pegahmagabow is providing sniper support to
the rest of the allied forces at Scarpe. This will be his final battle of the War,
and after it is over, Pegahmagabow will be confirmed as the deadliest sniper of World
War I. The allied forces push forward to the enemy
line, but they are running dangerously low on ammo. If they run out of bullets, they will either
be pushed back and the battle will be lost, or surrounded and massacred. Pegahmagabow does the only thing he can, be
a hero. Pegahmagabow recognizes the danger of being
surrounded by the enemy. He knows if the battalion does not secure
more ammunition, it will be over for all of them. He takes it upon himself to make sure this
does not happen. Pegahmagabow goes over the top of the trench,
barely avoiding the spray of heavy machine gun and rifle fire. He moves from dead soldier to dead soldier
collecting ammunition. He secures rounds from both allied and German
soldiers. Pegahmagabow knows that the battalion needs
ammo, and a lot of it, so he is not picky about where he is grabbing it from. Miraculously, he is able to bring back sufficient
ammunition to allow the battalion to push forward, and capture the enemy line. Before Pegahmagabow’s battalion can celebrate,
tragedy occurs. Artillery starts detonating all around them. Except this is not enemy artillery, it is
allied friendly fire. The artillery barrage is supposed to be supporting
the battalion as they move up the battlefield. The idea is to blow the enemy to smithereens,
not the allied forces. Unfortunately, the artillery does not receive
word that the allied forces have reached and taken the enemy line, so shells continue to
rain down on Pegahmagabow and his battalion. Pegahmagabow runs back to his commanding officer,
dodging friendly artillery shells along the way. The C.O. can not get in contact with the artillery
line, and therefore, the firestorm continues. In a moment of clarity Pegahmagabow knows
what he has to do. He sprints back towards his battalion, passing
into the firing zone again. He later recalled watching his “comrades
going up in pieces, shell after shell.” Pegahmagabow makes it to the middle of the
battalion and pulls out a flare gun he had secured. He fires the white burning flare into the
air. It arches like a shooting star across the
sky. Moments later the artillery fire stops. The flare signaled the allied artillery that
the German line had been secured, and they could cease firing. After the battle was over Pegahmagabow had
secured the last of his 378 confirmed kills. We know his hunting and camouflage skills
helped him become the most deadly sniper of World War I, but was there more to his story? He had not been trained specifically as a
sniper by the Canadian Army, so what made him so deadly? Well, maybe it had something to do with the
supernatural. Pegahmagabow carried spiritual items with
him during battle. One of these items was a medicine bag given
to him by an elder Indian woman before the war. Pegahmagabow stated that the bag was made
of “skin tightly bound with a leather throng. Sometimes it seemed to be hard as a rock,
at other times it appeared to contain nothing. What was really inside I do not know. I wore it in the trenches.” Word of his connection to the spirit realm
spread throughout his battalion. He was sometimes asked to call on the spirit
world of the Ojibwe people. One occasion that he was asked to call on
the Ojibwe spirits was when his battalion was trapped in the trenches, and mustard gas
was closing in on all sides. Soldiers began to pray and write letters home
to loved ones as death seemed imminent. If they tried to go over the wall they would
be shot by the enemy. If they stayed where they were, they would
be poisoned by mustard gas. It was recounted that a general gave Francis
Pegahmagabow a cigarette, and knowing he had called on the supernatural before in dire
situations, asked if he could do anything to save the men. Pegahmagabow lit the cigarette and invoked
the spirits of the wind. Tabaco was often used by the Ojibwa for ritualistic
purposes, in this case communicating with the wind gods. He asked the wind spirits to swiftly blow
the advancing gas away. To everyone’s surprise the winds changed,
and the gas was blown back towards the German trenches. This was not the only story of the supernatural
that was associated with Francis Pegahmagabow. On a different mission rain and bad weather
had halted an Allied advance. Before they could attack the German lines,
they needed dry conditions that would allow the soldiers to cross into No Man’s Land
without slipping or getting stuck in mud. Some of the other members of the battalion
asked Pegahmagabow if he could call on the Ojibwa spirits to improve the weather. One of the officers gave Pegahmagabow some
tobacco. He used it to invoke the sky spirits, asking
them for pity and to improve the weather for him and his comrades. Accounts from other soldiers say that moments
later the rain slowed and the sky brightened. It would seem the gods favored Pegahmagabow,
perhaps that is one of the reasons he was such an effective sniper. It never hurts to have the gods on your side. World War I came to an end and Francis Pegahmagabow
returned home as the most highly decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian military history. But his greatest legacy may be what he did
after the war. Upon coming back to Canada, Pegahmagabow became
a vocal advocate for Indiginious peoples’ rights. He was elected chief of what is today the
Wasauksing First Nation and became a strong advocate for his people. He worked with the federal government to move
towards equal rights and treatment for Indiginous peoples. He passed away in 1952 at the age 64, and
although he didn’t live to see all of his dreams for the Indigenous people of Canada
come true, he was vital in laying the groundwork for equality. Now check out another deadly sniper in our
video The White Death - The Best Sniper Known To Man. Or maybe you are more interested in what it
takes to become a sniper so watch How to Become a US Army Sniper.
