The One-Eyed Soldier Who Liberated a City Alone.
On the night of April 14, 1945, Canadian Private Lรฉo Major and his friend Corporal Willy Arsenault crept toward the occupied Dutch city of Zwolle on a two-man reconnaissance mission. Their job was simple: scout the German garrison so the Allies could shell the city the next morning. Then Arsenault was killed by machine gun fire at the city's edge.
Major had already lost his left eye to a phosphorus grenade earlier in the war. He'd refused evacuation, telling his commanders he only needed one eye to sight a rifle. Now, alone and furious, he picked up his dead friend's weapons and walked straight into a city defended by roughly 1,000 German soldiers.
For the next six hours, he sprinted through Zwolle's streets firing his machine gun and hurling grenades in rotating patterns, making it sound like a full-scale Canadian assault was underway. German soldiers stumbled from their beds into chaos. Major captured groups of them at gunpoint, marched them to a holding area, then doubled back for more. He single-handedly set fire to the local Gestapo headquarters and linked up with Dutch resistance fighters who helped spread confusion through the garrison.
By dawn, the Germans had fully withdrawn from Zwolle. The city was liberated without a single Allied shell being fired, its buildings, its people, intact. Major was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, one of only three Canadians to ever receive it twice. The second came six years later in Korea, where he captured a critical hill from 20,000 Chinese soldiers with a force of just 20 men.
A street in Zwolle is named after him. Most Canadians have never heard of him.