During the First World War, Black volunteers to the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) were at first refused, but in response to criticism, the Defense Minister, Sir Sam Hughes declared in October 1914 that recruiting colonels were free to accept or reject Black volunteers as they saw fit. Some recruiting colonels rejected all black volunteers while others accepted them; the ability of black men to serve in the CEF was entirely dependent upon how prejudiced and/or desperate for volunteers the local recruiting colonel was . Officially from 1916 onward black Canadians were only assigned to construction units to dig trenches on the Western Front. The Reverend William White, the chaplain of the all-Black Number 2 Construction Company of the CEF, founded on 5 July 1916, was named an honorary captain and thereby became one of the few Black men to receive an officer's commission in the CEF. However, the Canadian historian René Chartrand noted that in the 1918 painting "The Conquerors" by Eric Kennington showing the men of the 16th Canadian Scottish battalion (which was recruited in the Toronto area) marching through a ruined landscape in France, one of the soldiers wearing kilts is a Black man, which he used to argue that sometimes Black volunteers were assigned as front-line infantrymen. Despite the rules restricting Black Canadians to construction companies, about 2,000 Black Canadians fought as infantrymen in the CEF and several such as James Grant, Jeremiah Jones, Seymour Tyler, Roy Fells, and Curly Christian being noted for heroism under fire. Jeremiah "Jerry" Jones of Truro, Nova Scotia, enlisted in the 106th Battalion of the CEF in 1916 by lying about his age. Jones was recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his heroism at Vimy Ridge, where he captured a German machine gun post and was wounded in action, but he never received it. Later in 1917, Jones was badly wounded in the Battle of Passchendaele and was invalided out of the CEF in early 1918. In 2010, Jones was posthumously awarded the Canadian Forces Distinguished Service Medal for his actions at Vimy Ridge. James Grant, a black man from St. Catherine's, won the Military Cross in 1918 for taking a German artillery gun while under heavy fire.