Military legend Léo Major is best known for single-handedly liberating the Dutch city of Zwolle. The multiple retellings of his story have portrayed him as a true hero.
Léo Major is most likely the best-known military servicemember from Quebec, with many street names, stamps, statues and memorials in both Canada and the Netherlands—where his legend was forged—created to honour his memory. His story has been chronicled in popular history in professional documentaries as well as YouTube videos that have amassed millions of views.
His truly impressive prowess indeed transformed his military exploits into a veritable myth. While it could be easy to get carried away by his remarkable story, we must be careful not to distort historical reality or, above all, ignore the true experience of the man behind the legend. Read on to rediscover the story and achievements of Léo Major.
Major as a child
The eldest of thirteen children from a typical French-Canadian family, Léo Major was born in Massachusetts in January 1921. At the time, many Quebec families had migrated to parts of the northeastern United States, such as New England, in search of work. Léo’s father therefore moved his family for an initial temporary railroad job. However, as they were still in a very poor situation, his father brought them back to Montreal in search of steadier employment, and they arrived just before Léo’s first birthday.
In Montreal, Léo’s childhood was not very stable. His father worked out of the house for long hours, leaving his mother to raise the children by herself. Léo often experienced various forms of abuse from his mother, prompting him to leave home at the age of 14. For several years, he stayed with various family members, one of whom lived on a farm, before returning to Montreal to find work.
As he came from a poor Francophone family with many children and had a tragically difficult relationship with his parents, Léo’s childhood may unfortunately have been very familiar to an entire generation of Quebeckers. Although his humble beginnings may seem at odds with his future military success, they are probably why many Quebeckers felt a certain connection with him. In fact, when he left for Europe, Major was not really that different from many other Quebec recruits.
Liberating France
In 1940, Léo joined the Canadian Army at the age of 19. Although he began with the Royal 22e Régiment, the most well-known French-Canadian unit, he decided to transfer to Le Régiment de la Chaudière, as he thought they would be sent to Europe first. Like many Canadian troops, Private Major arrived in Great Britain in 1941 and continued his training there. Although eager to see combat, he was not deployed with other soldiers to either Dieppe in 1942 or Italy in 1943. He therefore bided his time and worked on improving his skills.
When D-Day came on June 6, 1944, he finally deployed with Le Régiment de la Chaudière, the second Canadian unit after the Queen’s Own Rifles to land on Juno Beach. Once there, Major sprang directly into action by destroying a bunker, rescuing a group of Queen’s soldiers trapped under German machine-gun fire, and capturing a transport vehicle during a reconnaissance mission—all in a single day!
Overall, Major had a very similar mission compared to the other soldiers in his unit. After the initial landing, the Canadian Army (accompanied by the American and British armies) began liberating Normandy. The fighting was fierce against the German forces, who were both battle-tested and determined not to cede the Allies an inch. Although Major stood out at this time, he also followed the same path as thousands of other Canadian and Quebec soldiers.
After Juno, the Canadian troops kept up their advance from the Normandy coast, and the majority engaged in fighting near the city of Caen. This was when Major and his comrades intercepted an SS patrol. In the resulting skirmish, a German soldier set off a phosphorus grenade that seriously injured Major and left him with the permanent loss of sight in one eye. However, this did not keep Major from continuing to serve as a scout platoon sniper.
Major makes a mark in the Netherlands
The Canadian Army arrived in the Netherlands in September 1944. The Battle of the Scheldt was fought in the province of Zeeland from October 2 to November 8, 1944. Since the goal was to liberate the port of Antwerp to establish supply routes for all Allied armies in the region, this battle was one of the most significant of the campaign. During the fighting, Major and his friend Wilfrid Arsenault were sent on a reconnaissance mission to locate a group of missing British soldiers. When Arsenault fell ill along the way, Major was left on his own. As legend has it, this was when he single-handedly captured 93 German soldiers.
However, pinning down the actual truth of what happened is difficult due to a lack of reliable sources to confirm different parts of the story. The Library and Archives Canada Blog places this event during the Battle of the Scheldt, but does not provide a specific date. Veterans Affairs Canada also describes the event but does not provide any dates either. Online sources from the Wikipedia entry for this event date it to October 30 to 31, 1944. However, since Le Régiment de la Chaudière’s war diaries do not begin until November 1944, it is hard to verify what was claimed at the time, especially since the final edition does not mention that a large group of soldiers was captured the day before. The only source seems to be Léo Major himself in an interview he gave to the Ottawa Citizen in 2005. As he recounts:
“It was raining and cold. 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.” (source)
He captured the first soldier and used him as bait to capture the second. With these two prisoners in tow, he forced the commander of an SS company to surrender and captured about a hundred more soldiers in the process: “They could either come with me as prisoners or stay and be shot.” (source)
While under the protection of a Canadian armour unit as he took fire from German troops, Major escorted the prisoners back to his lines, losing a few along the way. According to some sources, this act earned him the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Major reportedly declined the honour, as he considered General Montgomery too incompetent to award such a distinction. However, this reaction has been disputed. According to an article in the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw, Major blamed his absence at the ceremony on a mechanical problem while he was on leave in Belgium: “My small car wouldn’t start. So I got back late, and worse still, I wasn’t able to receive my award from Montgomery.” (Translation: Source)
His second act of bravery during the Netherlands campaign was the liberation of Zwolle. After the Battle of the Scheldt,Le Régiment de la Chaudière continued its advance through the Netherlands and, in April 1945, it approached the city of Zwolle. On April 13, Major and Arsenault volunteered to go on a reconnaissance mission. To size up the German positions, the pair hid out in a farm house. Unfortunately, their location was revealed, and they were attacked by enemy soldiers. Arsenault was killed. Once again, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in what happened next. As the story goes, Major went on a rampage like “Rambo”—to use the nickname he was given after the war—and criss-crossed Zwolle to directly confront the German troops. He reportedly fired on enemy patrols, threw grenades at their positions, forced a German commander to surrender, took another one hostage to bring him back to the regiment, and set the headquarters on fire. He shot in all directions to make it seem like a full army and not just one man was attacking the city. Before dawn, Zwolle was liberated from the German forces, and Major then contacted the Dutch Resistance.
The factual events underlying this story, however, are not so cut and dried. For example, during the night of April 13 to 14, the German army was already preparing to leave the city. The troops that Major faced, and who killed Arsenault, were the rearguard of an army already on the retreat. It is also very likely that the Germans were the ones who set fire to the headquarters in Zwolle. This was a common practice of theirs that let them destroy records and any other compromising information. The Dutch media were also more restrained in their coverage of the event. After Arsenault’s death and an initial skirmish with his killers, Major reportedly made his way to Zwolle, which by then had been abandoned by the Germans. Once there, he found the Dutch Resistance, who brought him back to his unit to share the news. The war diary of Le Régiment de la Chaudière includes the following entry on April 14, 1945:
“Private Léo Major returned from patrol with information that the enemy has evacuated Zwolle. [Corporal] Arsenault died at the start of the patrol, but this did not prevent Private Major from completing his mission. As a direct result of this patrol, the Commandant ordered the companies to occupy the city.” (Translation: Source)
These two different versions of the story should not be seen as an indication that one party is lying. War is a very emotional experience, and facts may change over time to take on a life of their own. In any event, after risking his life to complete his mission, Major was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1945. Even today, Léo Major is considered a hero in Zwolle, where he is celebrated every year as the city’s liberator.
A new mission in Korea
When the hostilities of the Second World War ended, Léo returned to Montreal, where he made a living as a plumber. During this time, he met his wife, Pauline, and stayed in touch with many of his former war comrades. Yet, he still felt a strong need to answer the call of war.
When the Korean War broke out a few years later, he had another opportunity to join the fighting. In 1950, Canada took an active role in the United Nations’ very first major mission, which was to prevent North Korean and Chinese communists from taking control of the entire Korean peninsula. To prepare for the deployment of the Royal 22e Régiment in spring 1951, a number of Quebec veterans from the Second World War were asked to enlist. One of these veterans was Léo Major, who joined the elite scout and sniper platoon of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal 22e Régiment.
Major’s battalion arrived on May 4, 1951. In November, they were sent to a location close to what is now the border between the two Koreas. The First Battle of Maryang-san, fought from October 3 to 8, 1951, culminated in victory for the United Nations. Although the Chinese troops were driven from key positions, they returned a month later and succeeded in retaking them. It is unclear what role Private Major played during the battle. We do know that his unit was the last to reinforce the region before the fighting began, and he may have seen action at the time.
However, in late November, the Royal 22e Régiment came under direct threat after the Chinese army captured Hills 227 and 355. To relieve the pressure, Major was sent to lead an elite 18-man team to dislodge the Chinese position at Hill 355, also known as Little Gibraltar. In the middle of the night, he and his men took the Chinese soldiers by surprise by infiltrating the enemy lines and opening fire. In the ensuing panic, the Chinese withdrew, leaving the position to Major’s commando unit. For three days, the Quebecker and his men fiercely defended the hill against enemy attacks. They were only called down after a provisional ceasefire was signed. For his actions in Korea, Major was awarded his second Distinguished Conduct Medal.
The man behind the legend
After his military career, Major left the army for good and returned to civilian life. He married Pauline on November 1, 1953, and the two started a family and went through the typical challenges that come with family life. In this sense, Major’s civilian experience was no different from that of thousands of other Canadian veterans. His years of deployment were followed by many years of anonymity. Despite his achievements in France, the Netherlands, and Korea, Major maintained a low profile. While his wife and children knew he had been in the army, they had no idea that he had accomplished so much! Major ended his career with two Distinguished Conduct Medals and one bar as well as a very high reputation among his comrades.
The story of Léo Major has all the makings of a legend: a humble man from a modest background who perseveres, accompanied by a loyal friend whose tragic death spurs him on to great deeds. Given that the conscription crisis put a damper on Quebec’s participation in the Second World War, Léo Major’s story captured Quebeckers’ imaginations, and he almost came to represent the province’s entire involvement. While we should continue to study and pass on his exploits to future generations, we must also be careful to separate the legend from historical truth. Léo Major was indeed extraordinary, but he was still a man and not a myth.
Article written by Aglaé Pinsonnault, and updated by Julien Lehoux, for Je Me Souviens. Translated by Marina Smyth. Originally published on March 17, 2023, this article was updated and republished on June 24, 2026.
Sources:
- This CBC article offers a very interesting perspective on the life of Leo Major and his reputation in Quebec. There are also many beautiful photos!
- If you are interested, the Defining moments Canada site also has a very well constructed interactive article on Leo Major’s military career.
- One of Léo Major’s children, Jocelyn Major, wrote a very comprehensive article about his father’s life, titled “N’oublions jamais” for HistoMag’44 (in french).
For a more academic approach:
- Luc Lépine, Léo Major, un héros résilient, Montréal, Hurtubise, 2019, 256 p. (in french).
- Robert Fowler, “Leo Major, DCM and Bar“, Canadian Military History, vol. 5, no. 1, 1996, pp. 79-84. Also published with Canadian Army Journal.
This article was published as part of our exhibition on D-Day: When Daylight Comes. Visit our exhibition to learn more about the history of the Canadian who landed in Normandy!
