Enemy mortar and ma­chine gun fire on the In­fan­try form­ing-up areas was in­tense.  Capt. G.E. Mad­den and his OPA Gnr. Mc­Nair were both woun­ded by shell frag­ments while wait­ing to go for­ward with Dog Com­pany Perths.  On the S.L. Char­lie Com­pany Perths de­ployed with two pla­toons for­ward, Capt. G.A.C. Steer be­ing with the Com­pany Com­man­der.  Bad luck came early when a burst of ma­chine gun fire knocked out the 38 set which L/Bdr Lar­ence was car­ry­ing on his chest.  Lar­ence was un­in­jured but Capt. Steer was hit a few min­utes la­ter, the bul­let tear­ing off his glas­ses and spray­ing his eyes and cheeks.  No re­place­ment was forth­com­ing so Capt. Steer stayed with the Com­pany.  He fi­red an UN­CLE tar­get on a road junc­tion on the Com­pany Com­man­ders set but was left with­out com­muni­ca­tions when this set failed shortly after­wards.  The Com­pany Com­man­der was la­ter kil­led and Capt. Steer evac­ua­ted.  Capt. J.H. Mit­chell was woun­ded by ma­chine gun fire in the foot and also had to be evac­ua­ted.  Capt. F.D. Brooks went for­ward to re­place Capt. Mad­den but was un­able to lo­cate the com­pany for some­time.  He fi­nally found them pin­ned down and suf­fer­ing fairly heavy cas­ual­ties from en­emy sni­pers, mor­tars, and ma­chine guns over­look­ing them from the next crest which was the com­pany ob­jec­tive.  He reg­is­tered a tar­get on the ob­jec­tive and sub­se­quently en­gaged it as a MIKE tar­get scale 90!  The In­fan­try were still un­able to get for­ward and with­drew to the re­verse side of the slope.  The same MIKE tar­get was then fired as a VIC­TOR tar­get 20 min­utes rate nor­mal.  Char­lie Com­pany moved for­ward again to find en­emy posi­tion com­pletely neu­tral­ized ex­cept for one ma­chine gun which Capt. Brooks knocked out with a Link Shoot.  Capt. Brooks showed re­mark­able cool­ness and de­ter­mina­tion through­out this ac­tion al­though he was un­der al­most con­tinu­ous fire at all times.  Des­pite the fact that he had lost con­tact with the In­fan­try ow­ing to a change of plan, he con­tin­ued to go for­ward and en­gage the en­emy and was one of the first to reach the ob­jec­tive.  An amus­ing in­ter­lude oc­cur­red when Capt. Suth­er­land, who was with the Cape Bre­ton High­lan­ders, sent down “Smoke the Valley” and the sig­nal­ler ack­now­ledged with “Close down till re­veil­le”.