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Topic: In Korea with Norm Christie (Read 439 times)
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RHQ has been informed by Capt E.J (Ed) Mastronardi, MC, CD (Ret'd) that the "Bloody Hills" episode of the historical documentary series "In Korea" will air on History Television as follows:
9 Nov - 2000 hrs
11 Nov - 1600 hrs
From the History Television website comes the following synopses on the series and the Bloody Hill episode:
In Korea with Norm Christie documents the acclaimed historian’s journey to uncover the story of Canadian participation in the Korean War. He is accompanied by veterans Dave Crook, Ed Mastronardi, Georges Ferris, and Terry Meagher, each of whom returns to the battlefields upon which they fought – battlefields that very few Canadians have had the opportunity to visit since the war’s end. Interweaving live action scenes, shot in high definition, with computer-generated sequences and rare archival footage, Norm Christie and the Canadian veterans travel through Korea, bringing to life their personal memories of the “forgotten war.”
Bloody Hills
Norm traces the origins of the Cold War and its influence on the outbreak of the Korean War. We meet two South Koreans who witnessed the beginning of the conflict: war correspondent Kap Chong Chi and veteran Tae Seok Kim. Chi describes the North Korean invasion of Seoul, while Kim details the bloodshed at Pusan, when it seemed South Korea would fall to communist aggression. Norm details the arrival of the Canadian soldiers and, with veteran Dave Crook, explores life on the frontlines of the UN-led counterstroke, including the remarkable Canadian defense of Kap’yong and the fighting at Hill 419. Norm discovers remnants of actual Canadian defensive positions that have never been revisited.
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Mike Blais
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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Thank you...... sir!
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
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Thanks very much for the info Sir; and i will watch at least one of the programs.. i had 3 uncles there, two in Arty and one on the Cayuga, so have a personal reason to watch, along with my crazy thirst for history knowledge... thanks again ranrad
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RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
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george burrows
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This is an excellent article . I enjoyed it very much. Thanks again for publishing it.
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Jocelyn Major
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Regarding the show In Korea with Norm Christie. There is one thing that is disturbing me. My father "Léo Major" (the only man to have liberated alone an entire city --Zwolle in the Netherland on april 14th 1945) is the one responsible for the capture of the Hill 355 in Korea. The General Dextrase (Colonel on that time) told my father that he never loose a battle and ask my father if he could do something regarding hill 355. My father told him that if the colonel let him choose his men he will capture the hill that night (on the condition that the rations of rhum go to those men after the battle). The Colonel accept and my father choose his men (about 16) and none of them was a Georges Ferris. So how come this man will appear on that show as one of the men that fought on the hill 355 when he was not even there? My father remember all the men that fought beside him and Georges Ferris was not one of them.
So what is appening?
For the story of this battle here is the link to the Canadian Army Historical Site
http://www.forces.gc.ca/hr/dhh/downloads/Official_Histories/Korea1956_e.pdf
and for my father story in WW2
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=fbcc446c-231f-4781-940a-3ebc3dee9f94
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Mike Blais
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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Hi Jocelyn. This is very interesting and I hope that someone can answer your question as to what is happening, They should have interviewed your father!
Who was one hell of man!
Thanks.
Divergent portraits of war
Canadian heroes relive their battles: One-eyed private single-handedly rid Dutch town of Nazi occupiers
Tony Atherton
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, May 07, 2005
ZWOLLE, The Netherlands - If you saw him sitting in a hotel restaurant along the Stationweg in this old walled city, your gaze likely wouldn't linger.
Just another old man warming himself over a cup of tea, an insubstantial collection of brittle angles in a shapeless overcoat.
But take away 60 years and add 60 pounds. Stand him up on the straight, clean limbs of a 25-year-old and dress him in fatigues. Strap three machine-guns on his back, put a sack of grenades in one hand and a patch over one eye, and what have you got?
Anyone who ever read a Marvel comic in the 1960s would have a ready answer: Sgt. Nick Fury, American G.I. Blood-'n'-guts, veins-in-his-teeth Nick freakin' Fury who, according to the historic revisionism of Stan Lee, liberated Europe pretty much single-handed back in '45.
Except the guy were talking about isn't an endomorphic cartoon with a word-bubble over his head. And he isn't a sergeant -- or at least he wasn't 60 years ago. And he is emphatically not an American.
Best not to get him started on that pearl-handled Yankee glory-hog, George Patton. However, Pte. Leo Major, the kid from Montreal who became a sniper, a scout -- and a legend -- with the Regiment de la Chaudiere, comes as close as any soldier to matching in the flesh what Fury was in the funny papers.
You can get details from just about any school kid in Zwolle, where Mr. Major is as big a celebrity as there is this side of royalty and rap stars. He's been the subject of a slew of newspaper articles and TV documentaries since he arrived here in mid-April so the city could make him an honorary citizen and the city's synagogue could confer upon him a ponderous chunk of ceremonial bling-bling.
He and his wife, Pauline, are flying home today with an armload of similar testimonials and trinkets from the grateful people of Zwolle.
What's not to honour? We're talking about a guy who lost an eye within a few days of hitting the beach at Normandy and flat-out refused a medical evacuation. We're talking about a guy -- check that, a one-eyed guy -- who captured 93 German soldiers during the Battle of the Scheldt in southern Holland and then refused to be decorated on principle.
We're talking about a guy -- the only Canadian, mind you, and one of only three soldiers in the British Commonwealth -- who would go on to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal (second only to the Victoria Cross for enlisted men) twice in separate wars.
And we haven't even got to the part that makes the good people of Zwolle cheer vigorously whenever he comes back for a visit, as he has seven times since the 1970s.
You see, Leo Major is their city's liberator. Not one of the liberators. Not the best-known liberator. He is the liberator. As in the one and only. "No American has done that, free a city," he said with satisfaction recently, sipping his tea, and pulling his overcoat close despite the mild spring weather.
"You know, I can endure below-zero weather in Montreal where I live, but here I feel cold at night. It's too humid."
They're ironic words from an old soldier who spent most of the cold winter of '44-'45 in sneakers instead of combat boots so he could move quickly and quietly in the shadows.
"I was young," he says with a Gallic shrug. "I could take it." The 8th Infantry Brigade had a pretty good idea of the mettle of Pte. Leo Major by the time D-Day rolled around; he was a crack shot and cool under fire. But after he flushed out some SS troops on patrol in Normandy, lost his right eye to the heat of a phosphorous grenade, and then told his colonel he would not return to England, he began to attract broader attention.
The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had a tough fight through France and Belgium, Mr. Major recalls, honing their skills against SS as well as the far less dangerous regular German army.
The 2nd Canadian Division's war was just as gruelling, and they acquitted themselves just as well, he says. But on the world stage, Canadian moxie took a back seat to American hype.
"Who has the credit for that? Patton. He had all the credit," says Mr. Major. He is even less charitable to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who headed up British and Canadian forces.
Field Marshall Montgomery's ill-fated thrust deep into occupied Holland in the fall of 1944, a paratroop attack on river crossings, was an utter failure and undertaken at the expense of a broad steady advance. That delayed the the liberation of the country's biggest cities, Mr. Major figures, and condemned their populace to slow starvation through the infamous "Hunger Winter" that took the lives of 20,000 Dutch civilians.
Pte. Major had an opportunity to express his displeasure with Field Marshall Monty soon afterward. It was during the battle for Scheldt, an estuary guarding the Belgian port of Antwerp.
Pte. Major was asked by his brigadier to go on the kind of mission for which he and his equally unflappable buddy, Cpl. Willy Arsenault, a Lac St. Jean lumberjack, had earned a reputation in the months since June 6. An company of mostly raw recruits sent across a canal to capture a town had simply disappeared. Pte. Major was asked to slip over and find out what had become of them.
And since Cpl. Arsenault had fallen ill a few days before, Pte. Major went alone, picking his way across the remains of a destroyed bridge.
It didn't take long to realize that the whole company had been captured; their communications equipment and some rifles lay abandoned in a field. "It was raining and cold," Mr. Major recalls. "I entered a house and went upstairs to get warm, and outside I saw two Germans on guard, walking along a dike. So I said to myself, they will not walk very long."
He surprised one, used him as bait to snag the second, and marched both to their commanding officer. When SS troops in a nearby huddle of houses saw the army officer apparently surrendering to a Canadian, they opened fire on the dike, garrisoned by close to 100 men, says Mr. Major. The precipitous SS action sealed the deal says Mr. Major.
"They could either come with me as prisoners or stay and be shot." Indeed, some were killed on the way back, but he managed to march 93 German soldiers into Canadian hands. The exploit was supposed to win him a field decoration directly from the hands of Field Marshall Montgomery, but Pte. Major couldn't bring himself to accept.
"He had made an awful mistake. I didn't like him at all."
Still, capturing 93 soldiers is not something that goes unnoticed, and the feisty young private from Montreal was still top of mind among division staff when the 1st Canadian Army eventually began to move north in the spring, crossing into Germany and fording the Rhine before coming back into Holland for the final push to the North Sea.
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Bernard Diepman was 17 when the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division established a hard-won bridgehead at his father's canal-side farm, 12 kilometres southeast of Zwolle. Along the road that bordered the farm, he watched the advance of heavy artillery that would be deployed outside the handsome Dutch town, threatening its centuries-old architecture.
Along this same road, the soldiers of the Regiment de la Chaudiere would later march, among them Pte. Leo Major, the man who, in one night's work, would remake a destructive artillery barrage unnecessary.
Mr. Diepman, 77, now a retired Agriculture Canada economist from Billings Bridge, was back in the tiny village of Hoonhorst recently to revisit scenes of the battle that kept his family of 11 -- and two Canadian soldiers -- huddled in a cellar the size of walk-in closet for two nights in mid-April, 1945.
Mr. Diepman was no more than a boy when the German occupation began. On market days in Zwolle, he would stare open-mouthed at the brash German soldiers stationed in the city, marching and singing about how they were headed for England.
But most days, there had been little to remind him of the war until the final winter and spring, when the Germans set up launching sites for V2 rockets in the nearby woods. He recalls skating on the canal that winter and watching the rudimentary missiles roar menacingly overhead, bringing death and destruction to the Allied-held port of Antwerp.
Once, as he and family members watched a rocket climb relentlessly into the sky, something went wrong. Jets sputtered, and the rocket was no longer climbing but falling, directly toward the thatched roof of the family's traditional Dutch farm house. It veered in its decline and crashed about 500 metres from the house.
The explosion blew out two windows and left a sizeable crater in the pasture land, says Mr. Diepman. By late March, the rocket launchers and the troops who manned them had abandoned the town, quietly and without warning, and Mr. Diepman knew the war was almost upon them.
A neighbour reassured him, he says, insisting a quick, efficient liberation was at hand.
"He said, 'We are lucky because the (soldiers) that come through here are from Canada ... and they always have fire in the belly.' " For two days, Canadian troops commandeered the Diepman farm house as artillery fire was traded back and forth, and infantry fought to secure Hoonhorst and surrounding farms. Nobody could have guessed that the battle for this canal-crossing on Zwolle's doorstep would be more heated than the city's own liberation.
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On April 13, as Bernard Diepman watched a steady stream of Canadian tanks, artillery and troops pass along the road toward Zwolle, Pte. Leo Major and Cpl. Willy Arsenault were being briefed on a mission from which there was every likelihood they would not return. The division wanted to know the extent of the German presence in the city and, if possible, to make contact with the Dutch resistance. Pte. Major and Cpl. Arsenault had volunteered but secretly, Pte. Major had something else in mind. "I said to my friend there ... we'll do something, we'll try to liberate a city (by ourselves)."
After dark, the pair made their way to a farm house on the outskirts of the city. Hendrik van Gerner welcomed the "Canadese" soldiers and did his best to tell them where the Germans were dug in along the railway tracks.
Mr. van Gerner, now in his 90s, had a happy reunion with Mr. Major recently. "They talked all evening, even though they weren't able to understand each other," Mr. van Gerner's grandson, Hein, said afterward
As it turned out, Mr. van Gerner would be the last person, other than Pte. Major, to see Cpl. Arsenault alive.
He was cut down by a German machine-gun emplacement soon after the scouts left the farm. An outraged Pte. Major picked up his comrade's machine-gun and rushed the Germans, killing two and setting the rest to flight.
Determined more than ever to complete the mission he and Cpl. Arsenault had set for themselves, Pte. Major worked his way toward the town centre, pausing when he saw a soldier at the wheel of a German staff car outside a tavern.
Leaping from the shadows, he gave the driver a heckuva fright, he says. "Because I had only one eye, I looked like a pirate."
He went inside with his captive and disarmed the officer, who was drinking with the tavern keeper. The officer did not respond to English, so Pte. Major switched to French. "And gee whiz, he spoke much better than me." The officer was from Alsace-Lorraine, a region near France that was not terribly committed to Adolf Hitler's rabid designs. Pte. Major took a risk.
"I gave him back his gun. I said the war is almost finished and I am a member of the advance party -- I didn't say I was alone. I said it's a lovely town and I didn't want nobody to destroy that town.
"I think he understood me," he says. Pte. Major spent the next few hours running through the streets of Zwolle, engaging patrols whenever he could and setting off grenades where they would make noise, but do little damage.
"I killed a few, but most I tried to scare, to send them in panic." He chanced upon the SS headquarters and surprised eight of the elite force inside.
"They pulled a gun on me," Mr. Major says. "But you know, with one eye, I can see better than most people at night. I killed four of them; the other four ran away."
He searched the bodies for any information useful to the division. "Inside their uniforms, they had names of Dutch people. You understand?" says Mr. Major with a meaningful look.
"I should have killed the eight of them, but I couldn't."
By four in the morning, Pte. Major realized the Germans had vanished from the town. A garrison -- which some would later estimate in the hundreds -- had vanished.
He set about luring the townsfolk into the open, which proved almost more difficult than routing the Germans. Even the resistance was unsure of the one-eyed soldier who now had a German machine-gun on his back, as well as Cpl. Arsenault's and his own.
He went back to the railway with members of the resistance, picked up the lifeless body of Cpl. Arsenault, and was back with his regiment by 5 a.m. The Canadians advanced on the liberated city to the sound of cheers instead of gunfire.
The first of Pte. Major's two Distinguished Conduct Medals was awarded for this night's work (the second would come after he led a company to recapture a key hill during the Korean War).
Later, the Regiment de la Chaudiere would create a trophy in his honour, awarded annually to the company that performs best in competition.
But none of the honours heaped upon him over the years warm him as much as the friendship he has developed with the people of Zwolle, particularly the family of Hendrik van Gerner, for whom the old Canadian soldier was an honorary grandfather long before he was named an honorary citizen.
As for his military exploits, he sums them up succinctly: "I fought the war with only one eye, and I did pretty good."
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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Gerry Connors
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Superb story! This hero soldior should have had a movie made of his exploits!
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1RCR Duke's Coy '82 - '87; Cyprus '84 / '85
LOTPed medic 1988; CFH Halifax '88 - '90
119 AD Bty medic, CFB Chatham '90 - '95
2RCR medic '95 - '00; SFOR Bosnia, 2RCR Roto 4 '99;
42 Hlth Svc Gagetown '00 - '02
CFRC Gagetown / Fredericton '02 - '06; 'retired' Aug '06
HMCS Jolliet, Sept-Iles QC, medical staff / 'tiffy' (reserves)
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ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
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Hi Jocelyne, Mike and Gerry: Very nice to find this and i thank you Jocelyne for bringing this to the site. I cannot comment about it now, i have copied thearticle about your Dad and will read it over the next day or so,but just a glance thru leaves m e with whoa, and wow, now thats a soldier.. put pleas allow me to read it first to let my brain digest all properly. I do not know if you are new to the site, but another member has brought to our attention slight discrepancies in the book ' The D Day Dogders' so errors are bound to happen, but with your Dad this is a real oversight. Which should be put straight, It sounds as tho your Dad is still alibve. Is that so??There are not many who were awarded one DCM , let alone two.. Do you know that it ranks next to the VC for courage underfire?? I will get reading, and again thank you, ranrad
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RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
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Jocelyn Major
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Hello Mike, Gerry and Ranrad,
Thank you for your reply! Oh by the way it is Jocelyn not Jocelyne  When I talk with english people they always think that I am a girl but No I am still a guy. Ok back to the story by Norm Christie.: He interview my father last spring and I was present on that day and he told my father that he was making a movie on Korea and he talk with my father about the hill 355. So he knew that my father choose all the men that will fight with him on that night and also he knew that most of them where french Canadian. He ask my father if he remember those men and my father told him that he does and he when on giving the name of those great men. I remember that none of them where Georges Ferris. So Norm Christie knew that this man did not participate in that fight so why did he bring that guy there and why did he included him to that show if he knew that this guy was a liar? On the history television there are some clip of the show and I show to my father the one where Norm Christie is talking with this Ferris and my father told me that this man never fight on hill 355. Is it the same kind of thing that appended on zwolle on april 2005 when the Canadian Government sent "Veterans" that "participated" on the battle around Zwolle in 1945. The problem is that my father did not recognise any of them because the men that fought beside my father where all french and those guy where all english speaking. When my father talk with them he found out that most of them where to young to have fought in WW2, all of them where members of the Legion and all of them have their trip to Zwolle paid by the Canadian Government (My father had to pay- The Netherland Commities refund him his ticket later). When my father returned home he called some of his old comrades and ask them if they where invited to go to Zwolle and none of them where. A few of them call the veteran's affair before april to ask info and they info they got was that they had to pay to go in zwolle. When my father knew that the Veteran's affaiir where paying to send Veterans he was told that he must fill papers that must be received no later that march 15th 2005. He called in february and received those papers the 9 of april. So my father fought the german in 1944-45 and from those day he fought against the Canadian Goverment. You probably know that a few day after d-day he lost an eye in a fight with a SS. Several month later he broke his back when the Bren Carrier he was in explode on a mine(that was before he capture Zwolle). So with all those injuries we would expect a full pension because he could not work anymore. So he received a big 10% pension. It is only in 1992 when a doctor from the veteran affair told my father that he cannot get a pension raise because his left eye have no problem at all. So my parent had to see independent Oculist told my father that his eye is simply dead and wrote a letter recommending my parent to bring the Veteran's Affair to court that they finally gave him a full pension. My father knew a man who never went to war but have his little finger broken during a baseball game. This guy received the full pension because he was totally "blind" The problem with that is that this man was a truck driver for CP-Rail and an active member of the Liberal Party of Canada. So my question is : Is that Ferris guy sent to Norm Christie by the Veteran's Affairs and is this guy a member of the Liberal Party? I don't know but it do bring lot of questions...
Jocelyn
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Mike Blais
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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Well, budz, let me tell you!
The way your ole man was treated by DVA really PISSES ME OFF!!!!!!!
Really! Freaking bureaucrats!
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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Gerry Connors
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Really truly freakin' amazing that this Gentleman or any vet has had to deal with this horses**t!
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1RCR Duke's Coy '82 - '87; Cyprus '84 / '85
LOTPed medic 1988; CFH Halifax '88 - '90
119 AD Bty medic, CFB Chatham '90 - '95
2RCR medic '95 - '00; SFOR Bosnia, 2RCR Roto 4 '99;
42 Hlth Svc Gagetown '00 - '02
CFRC Gagetown / Fredericton '02 - '06; 'retired' Aug '06
HMCS Jolliet, Sept-Iles QC, medical staff / 'tiffy' (reserves)
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ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
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Hi Mike gerry and Jocelyn: Well, well, maybe finally we have a case that is going to crack the cement at Vet Aff. I have worked with different guys over the years and i must say most were treated the same way. And today Vet Aff has a denial rate of 90% on claims made by Veterans. To me and most ,that is entirely unacceptable. I do not know what is wrong at DVA, it is an entity of deep secrecy, no one gets "inside"the magical ring that makes decisions. It is the main reason that the Legion has pushed for years for a Veterans Ombudsman.. which i understand has been approved... now who ,how one is to appointd is up for debate.. another 5 yr debate???I can only say that it is evident that a grave injustice has been done with Mr Major, and it behooves us all to help get this straight,to do that i think we need that vet. ombudsman to get thru that "cement" at DVA.. good stuff here, hope we all stay on it to get this fixed, ranrad
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RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
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