Leo Major, the One-Eyed Ghost of Zwolle

The Germans thought they were under attack by an entire force. In reality, the chaos came from a lone Canadian moving through the dark.

by Jose Campos

The Germans heard him before they saw him. Grenades detonating one after the other in the dark, machine gun fire, the crackle of flames. Somewhere in the middle of it all was a lean young Canadian sniper with a patch over his left eye and grenades strapped across his chest, moving through the streets of Zwolle.

It was just past midnight on April 14, 1945. Private Léo Major, 23 years old, entered the Dutch city alone. His orders had called for a two-man reconnaissance team consisting of him and his closest friend, Willy Arseneault, to enter the city. They were assigned to assess the German garrison and link up with the Dutch underground resistance.

Less than an hour into the mission, a German sentry shot Arseneault dead. Major carried him to the side of the road, laid him down, and kept walking.

Zwolle had been dying on a slow fuse. Allied command had scheduled a full artillery bombardment for that morning. The recon team was meant to gather intelligence. Major turned it into something else entirely.

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He found a group of German officers inside a pub, stripped one commander of his sidearm, and calmly informed them the city was surrounded. He then prowled the streets, throwing grenades into buildings, firing bursts from a submachine gun.

Léo Major, date unknown.

Major ambushed a staff car, killed four officers, and dragged a fifth, a senior German commander, into custody. When the prisoner escaped in the confusion, Major went back to work. The noise he made in those narrow Dutch streets was a rolling one-man cacophony. The German garrison took is as the opening volleys of a massive Canadian assault. They did not wait to verify. By the time the first light of dawn touched the rooftops, the Germans were gone. Major walked out of Zwolle and reported that the city was clear.

The eye patch that became part of Major’s legend came from an earlier battle. During the Normandy campaign after D-Day, a phosphorus grenade exploded near him, destroying his left eye. Army doctors wanted to pull him from combat duty, but Major refused evacuation. He argued that a sniper needed one good eye, and he had one. He returned to his unit. He continued to serve as a scout and sniper through the remainder of the war in Europe.

After the war, Major returned home to Montreal and largely avoided public attention. His family knew little about what had happened in Holland until years later, when Dutch officials traveled to Canada to present him with a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his role in liberating the city.

War found him again in Korea.

Major deployed with the Royal 22nd Regiment, the Van Doos. In November 1951, he took part in the fighting around Hill 355, a heavily contested position north of Seoul that became the scene of repeated assaults and counterattacks between United Nations and Chinese forces.

Léo Major, date unknown.

During one of the battles for the hill, Major led a nighttime assault against Chinese positions under intense fire and in brutal winter conditions. Snow, mud, artillery blasts, and close-range trench fighting turned the ridgeline into chaos. The position changed hands multiple times during the campaign, but Major’s actions during the fighting earned him a second Distinguished Conduct Medal.

The award placed him in exceptionally rare company. Only three soldiers in Commonwealth history received the Distinguished Conduct Medal twice in separate wars. Major was the only Canadian among them. He picked up a nickname, “The Rambo of Quebec.”

The liberation of Zwolle became one of the most famous actions involving a Canadian soldier during the Second World War. The Dutch never forgot it. For decades, residents of Zwolle commemorated the night their city was spared destruction by a lone Canadian moving through the streets in darkness.

In later years, the people of Zwolle continued inviting him back to the Netherlands for liberation ceremonies. The city remembered the young Canadian soldier with the eye patch who had walked into Zwolle alone while German forces still occupied the streets.

Léo Major died in 2008 at the age of 87.

Jose Campos writes frequently for Soldier of Fortune.