April 14th, 1945 015 a.m. The downtown streets of Zvola, Netherlands. Lao Major, a private with the Canadian Lori Mandela, is currently pressing against the shadows of a cold brick wall. A black patch covers his left eye. His right eye scans the darkness. Two Stin MK2 submachine guns hang across his chest.
His web gear is packed with magazines. Zvola, an ancient city of 50,000, remains under the iron heel of the German Vermacht. A few hundred meters away, German machine gun nests emit the faint rhythmic metallic clinking of equipment. According to the Allied high command’s plan, in just a few hours, massive artillery batteries will begin an indiscriminate bombardment of the city to cover the advance of following troops.
Lao Major single-handedly pulls the safety pin on an M36 grenade. He is not waiting for the main force. Instead, two hours ago, he made a decision that defied his orders. He would enter the heart of enemy territory alone. He intends to force the German surrender with the strength of a single man before the artillery can level the city.
Before this, his comrade and best friend, Willie Arseno, had been gunned down by a German machine gun on the outskirts, his blood staining the icy river water. Rage has completely eclipsed fear. Lao Major rolls over a stone wall, the skeleton stocks of his submachine guns tucked firmly against his hip.
Then the first staccato burst from a sten gun tears through the midnight silence. This was a madness destined to be etched into military history. A disabled soldier with a missing eye was declaring war on an entire battalion of German defenders. German commanders bolted awake to the shrill scream of alarms. Their radio reports were flooded with accounts of gunfire and explosions erupting from every corner of the city.
In the logic of these Nazi officers, only a full-scale assault by an Allied division could generate chaos on such a scale. This man known as the oneeyed ghost, how did he transform from a rebellious French Canadian youth into an omnipresent nightmare for the Germans? And why would he later refuse a medal personally presented by Field Marshall Montgomery? To understand, we must go back to the summer of 1940.
Lao Major was born to a French Canadian family in Massachusetts and moved back to Quebec at age 1. His childhood was devoid of warmth. A cold family life and a strict, overbearing father forged a personality as hard and stubborn as granite. In 1940, 19-year-old Leo Major walked into a recruitment center with a single objective to escape the suffocating dinner table and find the most violent battlefield in Europe.
He joined Limon de Leodier, a unit known for its brutal training regime. At a training camp in Scotland, Lao Major displayed a terrifying talent for scouting. He could move through swamps in total silence like a predator. His marksmanship was so precise it unsettled his instructors.
But he was no rule follower. He held a deep contempt for officers who merely recited manuals, a trait that saw him spend many weekends in the brig. June 6th, 1944, Normandy, Juno Beach. When the ramp of the Higgins boat slammed onto the sand, Lao Major was the first man out. Bullets whizzed past his helmet.
Amid the chaos of the beach head, he did not seek cover like the others. Instead, he worked his way alone to the flank of a German bunker. Minutes later, a stunning sight emerged. A Canadian soldier walked out of a trench. The tip of his bayonet pressed against the throat of a German officer. Lao Major had not just captured the officer.
He had hijacked a German halftrack loaded with top secret documents. This was his debut, a near suicidal yet surgically precise solo assault. However, the favor of the god of war came with a brutal price. On the fourth day after the landings, during a forward reconnaissance patrol, Lao Major encountered a squad of Waffan SS.
He quickly neutralized two enemies, but a white phosphorous grenade burst nearby. The searing chemical spray splattered into his left eye. In a field hospital, the combat surgeon unrolled the bloodied bandages and shook his head. The left eyeball was completely destroyed. The optic nerve was severed.
The doctor issued a repatriation order. Private, your war is over. You can head back to Montreal and collect your pension. Lao Major said nothing. He tore a strip of cloth from the bed sheet, tied it tightly over his left eye, and spoke with an eerie calmness. You are wrong. I still have my right eye.
I only need one eye to look through a sniper scope. From that moment, the oneeyed ghost was born. He escaped the hospital under the cover of night, returning to his unit like a spectral assassin. Not only had he not lost his combat effectiveness, but the restricted field of vision had made him hyper sensitive to every sound and shift in the air.
Time jumps to the autumn of 1944. The Battle of the Shelt. In a rainstorm capable of breaking anyone’s spirit, Lao Major was ordered to find a lost reconnaissance squad. In a muddy region known as Zealand, he stumbled upon a resting German unit. He did not call for backup. He did not even drop to a prone position.
He checked the magazine of his Bren gun and took a deep breath. Icy rain mingled with the salt stench of the North Sea. The battle of the Shelt had reached its most grueling phase. Lao Major was waiting alone through ankle deep mud. His mission was to find a missing squad of Canadian scouts. Beneath his eye patch, the wound still throbbed with pain, but his right eye caught the silhouette of a German outpost in the faint moonlight.
It was a reinforced brick farmhouse. Two German centuries were huddled under the eaves, smoking, the embers of their cigarettes glowing in the dark. Lao Major put away his Bren gun and drew his heavy combat knife. Like a weightless fog, he hugged the slick wall and moved behind the centuries. The sound vanished instantly.
The knife precisely severed the throat of the first German. Lao’s other hand clamped over the man’s mouth to prevent a thud as he went down. Before the second German could even turn his head, the cold muzzle of a gun was pressed against the back of his skull. Lao did not pull the trigger. In broken German, he whispered an order.
“Take me to your commander or I will blow your head off right now.” Using the terrified prisoner as a shield, Lao kicked open the farmhouse door. Inside, a dozen Germans were huddled around a fire. Seeing the figure at the door, the soldiers instinctively reached for their KR98K rifles. Lao immediately pulled the pin on an MK2 grenade and let out a roar.
To the French-speaking German officer, this mudcaked Canadian soldier with an eye patch did not look human. He looked like a demon crawled out of hell. Lao blared that a platoon of Canadians had the building surrounded and if they did not surrender, everyone would be shredded by heavy machine gun fire.
It was pure psychological warfare. The German officer folded. He ordered his men to drop their weapons and line up outside. What followed was the most absurd spectacle on the Shelt battlefield. Lao Major walked at the back of the line, hurting dozens of German soldiers toward the Canadian lines like a sheep dog with its flock.
When the bizarre column reached open ground, nearby SS units realized their soldiers were surrendering. SS machine gunners hidden in the treeine immediately opened fire, not just at Leo, but directly at their own surrendering comrades. Lao Major did not panic. He dove for cover, using the German prisoners as a human shield while frantically gesturing toward a Canadian Sherman tank observing from the rear.
The tank commander understood the signal, a 75 mm shell screamed out, obliterating the SS machine gun nest. Ultimately, when the group reached the lines of the third Canadian division, the headcount stunned everyone present. 93 German prisoners. Lao Major, one man, one gun, had brought in nearly an entire company of Jean Fu.
The news spread through the Allied ranks like wildfire. However, when this feat reached the Allied High Command, it triggered an unprecedented clash. Because of Lao’s heroism, British Field Marshall Montgomery decided to personally award him the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the DCM. In the Commonwealth forces of the time, this was an immense honor, second only to the Victoria Cross.
Lao Major’s response was a stone cold refusal. He told the notifying officer, “Montgomery is an incompetent commander. He got thousands of soldiers killed during Operation Market Garden. He has no right to give me a medal.” In the rigid hierarchy of the military, this was practically a mutiny. Lao Major refused to meet Montgomery and refused to wear the silver medal representing his heroism.
He believed that rank did not equate to intelligence and honor should not come from a man he despised. Ultimately, the medal was filed away in a box and Lao returned to the front lines with his submachine gun. February 1945, 3 months before the end of the war, Lao Major was in the passenger seat of a Dodge 34 ton truck.
He had just finished helping a chaplain load the remains of a dozen fallen comrades on a smoke choked battlefield. The truck was driving along a snow-covered road where a lethal threat lay hidden beneath the surface. With a roar that could shatter eardrums, the truck’s front wheel triggered a heavy anti-tank mine.
The massive shock wave flipped the truck instantly. The chaplain and the driver were killed on the spot. Lao Major was thrown over 10 m from the vehicle. The impact fractured his spine in three places, broke four ribs, and shattered both ankles. He was unconscious in a field hospital for 2 days.
When he woke up, the doctor told him he would never walk again. You should be glad you are still breathing,” the doctor wrote. “Permanently unfit for combat” on his chart. “You will be heading back to Montreal in a wheelchair.” But the doctor underestimated Lao Major. One week later, in the dead of night, Lao ignored the agonizing pain and used a bed sheet to bind his numb waist.
He climbed out of the seconds story hospital window and using only his hands and raw willpower crawled over the hospital wall. He went into hiding with a family in Na Megan, Netherlands, who had benefited from his kindness in a previous battle. For the next 20 days, Lao performed a self-rehabilitation using the family’s food and the crudest medical supplies.
He practiced walking against the wall everyday in a near masochistic routine until he regained control of his feet. In March 1945, Lao Major miraculously appeared at the assembly point of Limon de Lashodier. When the company commander saw this soldier, who should have been in the rear recovering, but was instead standing there scarred and leaning on his rifle, he could not muster a single word besides a string of curses.
At this time, the unit was facing the final hard nut to crack before the wars end. The Dutch city of Zva. The Germans had deployed over a thousand defenders in the city, including the notorious Gestapo. Lao Major found his friend Willie Arseno. The two sat in a temporary bunker sharing a cigarette. Lao pointed at the distant church spires of Zvola and said in a raspy voice, “Willie, if the divisional command orders a bombardment tomorrow, this city is gone.
We need to go in first and see if we can get those crowds to clear out on their own.” Willie blew out a smoke ring and nodded. They did not report to their superiors. They did not ask for support. On the night of April 13th, 1945, two shadows vanished into the railway tracks on the outskirts of Zola. But they did not know that death was waiting in the thicket at the end of the line.
April 13th, 1945. 23 ya railway embankment outskirts of Zul. Lao Major gripped the metal handle of his st gun so hard his knuckles turned white. Beside him, Willie Arseno was crawling across an open stretch of gravel. Their objective was a German outer outpost a 100 meters ahead. Suddenly, a streak of orange tracer light tore through the dark.
The buzzsaw sound of a German MG42 machine gun erupted instantly. Willie Arseno slumped heavily beside the tracks. The bullets had hit his chest. His body armor was useless at point blank range. Lao Major watched his best friend stop breathing in seconds. Lao did not scream. He rolled rapidly to the left, pulled the pin on a grenade, counted to three, and threw it precisely into the German machine gun nest.
The machine gun’s fire cut out in the blast. Leo stormed the position using the sten gun semi-auto mode to finish off the two surviving German soldiers. He moved Willy’s body to a temporary resting place at a deserted farm. Then he reloaded his magazines and hung every grenade he had in the most accessible spots.
At 01 sour, he crossed the Zo Canal Bridge alone. The operation had begun. Lao Major was not just infiltrating. He was staging an invasion. He would unleash a burst of fire at one end of a street, then sprint through an alleyway to open fire again at a crossroad two blocks away. He hurled grenades at the gates of German barracks.
The thunderous explosions echoed through the dense buildings, creating the illusion that Allied spearheads had breached the city center. The German command structure began to collapse. Radios were flooded with false reports of enemy contact from every direction. At 0130 a.m., Lao ambushed a German staff car at a corner.
He pressed his muzzle against the driver’s head and ordered him to lead the way. Then a surreal scene unfolded. This oneeyed soldier escorting a prisoner walked boldly into a bar crowded with German officers. In the alcohol- soaked air, Leo Major racked the bolt of his submachine gun. He noticed one officer was from Elsass and spoke French.
Lao looked him dead in the eye, his voice icy. I am a liaison for the Canadian Advance Force. At 06, the artillery outside will level this place. You have 4 hours to evacuate or this whole city becomes a graveyard. Lao handed the Sten gun back to the terrified officer. This was an act of supreme psychological dominance.
The German officers watched him vanish into the night, and not a single one dared to fire. At 02 a.m., Lao Major found the Gestapo headquarters in Zola. He set the secret archives on fire, the flames lighting up half the sky. In the chaos of the fire, he ran into a Waffen SS patrol.
Utilizing the Sten gun’s superior close quarters fire, he killed four enemies in less than 10 seconds. The rest, believing they were being ambushed by a large force, dropped their heavy weapons, and fled. For 5 hours, Lao was like a steel ball rattling inside a drum. He repeatedly captured groups of German soldiers, escorted them to the Allied handoff point outside the city, and then turned back to dive back in.
The Dutch resistance in the city was galvanized by the series of explosions and gunfire. They began to take to the streets, coordinating with Lao to create noise at key intersections. 4:30 a.m. Unable to judge the scale of the enemy and fearing they would be annihilated in the impending bombardment, the German garrison commander finally issued a general retreat order.
As the first rays of sunlight hit the spire of the Zola Cathedral, the last German supply soldier had already retreated across the canal. Lao Major sat by the canal exhausted, washing the gunpowder grime from his face. He found the leader of the Dutch resistance and through an English teacher delivered a message of extreme simplicity. The city is free.
The bombardment is cancelled. At 094 AM, the vanguard of the Third Canadian Infantry Division entered Zvola. They met no resistance, but saw shattered guard posts and charred Nazi insignias throughout the streets. Lao Major returned to camp, refusing all cheers. He simply walked back to that deserted farm, picked up Willie Arseno’s body, and placed it on a stretcher.
The Battle of Zola. zero Canadian casualties besides Willie, heavy German losses, and the loss of a strategic city. Lao Major formally received his first distinguished conduct medal. But this was not the end of his legend. After the Second World War, he returned to Montreal and became a simple pipe fitter.
Lao Major sits in a sweltering pipe repair shop. He is looking down, inspecting a rusted valve. In the corner of the shop, a radio announcer is reporting news of the war breaking out on the Korean Peninsula in an urgent tone. Lao puts down his wrench. His old spinal injury still aches on rainy days, but he looks at the dusty pair of combat boots in the corner.
Two months later, 30-year-old Leo Major appeared at the recruitment station. This time, he was no longer the youth desperate to prove himself. He was a senior NCO in the Royal 2 Regiment. the famous Vanus. His mission was to lead a specialized reconnaissance sniper platoon. November 1951, Marangan area, Korea. The temperature has dropped to minus20° C.
The frozen ground is as hard as steel. The soldier’s breath freezes into crystals in the air, and artillery lubricant has become viscous from the cold. Hill 355, known by the Americans as Little Gibralar, is shrouded in thick smoke. It sits at a critical junction of the UN lines, overlooking kilometers of supply routes.
A few days ago, the US Third Infantry Division was forced to withdraw under a tidal wave offensive. The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army occupied the summit and began constructing dense defensive fortifications. If Hill 355 could not be retaken, the entire Canadian line would be exposed to direct fire.
The Canadian Brigadier issued an ultimatum. The hill must be taken back. Lao Major stood before the map in the command post, his right eye locked onto the contour circle representing the hill. He proposed a plan that silenced everyone in the room. He did not need the support of a battalion. He would only take his 18 scouts.
November 22nd, 195122. The foot of Hill 355. Lao Major checked the bolt of his Sten gun. The metallic click was exceptionally sharp in the frozen night. The 18 members dawned white camouflage suits over their winter gear, their faces smeared with charcoal black. Each man carried an excessive load of grenades and magazines.
There was no pre- battle speech, no extra instructions. Lao raised his right hand and made the move out signal. They were like a pack of white foxes hunting, silently climbing the steep slopes. Lao utilized the instincts he honed in World War II to bypass enemy outer centuries. He could judge if an ambush lay ahead simply by the subtle shift of the wind through the treetops.
These 18 French Canadians communicated entirely by hand signals in the dark. They crawled over tree trunks shorn by artillery and over slopes pockm marked with craters. 14,000 Chinese soldiers were stationed in this area. At the summit of Hill 3 to 55, dense bunkers housed drumfed machine guns and numerous mortars.
Lao Major’s squad had already infiltrated the core of the enemy defense. 0.45 a.m. One of Lao Major’s boots stepped onto the loose gravel at the edge of the position. He did not hesitate. He pulled the pin on an offensive grenade and hurled it into the nearest foxhole. The violent explosion instantly shattered the silence of the summit.
18 submachine guns opened fire simultaneously. Lao darted between the trenches, his stin gun firing in short, lethal bursts. Every time a muzzle flash erupted, another enemy soldier fell. The Chinese forces fell into total chaos in the first 10 minutes. Because Lao’s squad opened fire from the center of the position and constantly shifted locations in the dark.
Combined with the unfamiliar sound of Lao barking orders in French, the commanders mistook the raid for a full-scale night attack by a US division. 0120 a.m. The highest point of Hill 355 was taken by Lao, but he knew the real meat grinder had only just begun. As signal flares went up, the Chinese forces realized this was only a tiny harassment unit.
Subsequently, two full divisions began to mass toward Hill 355. We have the hill, Lao reported calmly over the SCR3000 radio. Now we hold, repeat, we hold. The command post at the other end of the radio went silent. They could not fathom how 18 men could withstand a counterattack by 20,000. Leo ordered everyone into the deep bunkers left behind by the enemy.
For the next 3 days and two nights, Hill 355 became a literal hell. Chinese artillery began to roar. 122 mm howitzers and Katusha rockets rained down like hail on the summit. Lao Major leaned against the dirt wall of the trench. Every explosion sending a violent jolt through his spine. He refused the order from the rear to withdraw.
In the lulls between barges, waves of enemy infantry charged up the slopes. Lao Major displayed marksmanship that was nearly superhuman. Even with only one eye, he could precisely pick off enemy officers from 400 m away. When ammunition pouches ran low, Lao called in danger close artillery support. Canadian 25p pounder batteries began to range.
The shells landed mere meters from Lao, almost brushing his head. The massive pressure waves threw the charging enemies directly off the edge of the bunkers. Mud and debris sprayed into the trenches. Lao Major stood at the edge of death, constantly adjusting the fire coordinates. This brutal tugofwar lasted for 3 days. The evening of November 24th, 1951, reinforcements finally reached the foot of hill 355.
When the follow-up troops reached the summit, they saw a staggering sight. The entire top of the hill had been shaved down by 2 m. The 18 Canadian soldiers were still manning their positions. Lao Major sat on a scorched rock wiping down his submachine gun with a filthy handkerchief. He became the only man in Canadian history to earn the DCM in two different wars.
This record is extremely rare in Western military history. But for Lao, medals were just heavy pieces of metal. In 1952, he officially discharged and returned to Montreal. He declined all media interviews and put back on his grease stained workclo. He worked quietly in the city for 30 years. The citizens of Zvola had invited him to settle there, but he chose to stay in Quebec.
He was a warrior. He was only whole amidst the smoke. In peace time, he chose to lock the oneeyed ghost away in his memory forever. In October 2008, Lao Major passed away in Montreal at the age of 87. As his casket was slowly lowered into the ground, the bells of the Zo City Hall in the Netherlands told for the hour.
Every child in that city knew his name. Lao Major left the world not just a legend of courage, but an answer to the essence of war. War is not just the clashing of steel, but the contest of wills. Even with only one eye, even with only one soldier left, as long as the will remains, the ghost will forever haunt the nightmares of the enemy.
