armed forces
Recounting the amazing heroics of the ‘Pied Piper’ of Saipan
He had learned Japanese on the streets of East LA where he shined shoes as a street-smart kid
It was the summer of 1944, and World War II’s Pacific campaign reached a turning point on the Japanese-occupied island of Saipan.
Soldiers and civilians alike fought to the death to defend it, since U.S. victory there would crack Japan’s outer defences and place American bombers within striking distance of Tokyo.
Fighting became especially brutal and prolonged around Mount Tapotchau, Saipan’s highest peak, and Marines gave battle sites in the area names such as “Death Valley” and “Purple Heart Ridge.”
Desperate Japanese soldiers, trapped with their backs to the sea, had charged into U.S. lines just before dawn, on July 7, 1944.
It would be World War II’s largest Japanese banzai suicide attack, and the bloodiest.
Savage hand-to-hand combat capped three weeks of the crucial, bloody Battle of Saipan that ultimately killed about 5,000 Americans and 23,000 Japanese troops.
Banzai attacks were frantic mass infantry charges, human waves intended to overwhelm an enemy. Often used a last-ditch tactic, they usually resulted in devastating losses.
Nearly all of the 4,000-plus Japanese soldiers in the final suicide charge that day died.
Soon after the 2nd Marine Division and U.S. Army forces landed on Saipan in mid-June 1944, Gabaldon began sneaking into enemy territory at night, mostly alone, to find caves and buildings where the Japanese were hiding.
He caught guards by surprise, shot them if necessary or forced them out with smoke bombs. If that didn’t work, he threatened those inside with flamethrowers he didn’t have. He sometimes held a guard at gunpoint while telling another in Japanese to get those inside to come out to just talk.
He had learned Japanese on the streets of East Los Angeles where he shined shoes as a street-smart kid. He moved in with two friends, first-generation Japanese American brothers, and learned the language and culture from their family.
Shortly after the family was forced into a Japanese American internment camp, Gabaldon, just 17, joined the Marines. Knowing Japanese helped get him in.
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The first time Gabaldon sneaked out past enemy lines, he returned with two prisoners. Threatened with court-martial and chastised for acting like a prima donna, he still went on the hunt the next night and returned with 52 more.
Seeing that he was getting results, his commanding officers gave their blessing to their “lone wolf” to keep it up.
Once he started the late-night hunts, Gabaldon said, he could not let up. Taking more prisoners than any American in any war became his “driving ambition,” he wrote in his book, hoping to surpass World War I hero Alvin York, who had captured 132.
Many of them were armed, leaving Gabaldon in a dicey spot at times.
“It was either convincing them that I was a good guy, or I would be a dead Marine within a few minutes,” he said.
He promised the desperate and wounded soldiers and civilians food, water and medical care. America’s top military brass, he told them, did not want to kill or hurt them—and would return them to Japan after the war.
He chatted to his prisoners about their families and hometowns. (His nickname among other Marines? “Gabby.”)
He told them about having lived with a Japanese American family whom he loved. He shared his American cigarettes. Within an hour, 50 or so more came over the crest of the cliffs. Hundreds more followed.
After shocked Marines saw the white skivvy flag, they sent reinforcements to help corral all the prisoners and bring them back to base.
All told, he single-handedly convinced some 800 enemy combatants, instilled with the code of “death before surrender,” to emerge from hiding and give themselves up.
Earning him the nickname “the Pied Piper of Saipan.”
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All the more amazing, because of the Japanese military’s strict Bushido code that made soldiers honour-bound to show unwavering loyalty to their nation and their emperor by taking their own lives rather than to surrendering to a wartime enemy.
One of Japan’s commanding generals on Saipan, Yoshitsugu Saitō, committed ritual suicide in a cave not long after the failed banzai attack. Many combatants threw themselves — as well as local Japanese civilians — off a steep cliff.
“Thank God I got 1,000 of them out alive,” he said in an interview with the University of Texas Voces Oral History Center.
When Gabaldon was awarded the Navy Cross in 1960, the Navy and Marine Corps’ second-highest honor, Secretary of the Navy William B. Franke cited his “extreme courage and initiative” in entering enemy caves, buildings and pillbox guard posts amidst hostile fire to capture “well over 1,000” troops and civilians.
His exploits, the secretary wrote, contributed to America’s success and “a definite humane treatment of civilian prisoners was assured.”
Gabaldon’s military days ended when bullets hit his right arm in an ambush back on Saipan in 1945.
In 1960, his exploits on Saipan hit movie screens in Hollywood’s Hell to Eternity, an embellished script with 6-foot-tall blue-eyed Jeffrey Hunter playing the 5-foot-4 Mexican American from East L.A.
— with files from History.com
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“Be steady, kill and don’t give way!”
— Lieut.-Col Jim Stone’s order to his troops on the eve of battle
Korean peninsula, April 1951.
It’s spring in Korea, and things are warming up from the preceding brutal cold.
You are tired and hungry, and full of fear.
Your only friend, is a standard issue Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1. A reliable bolt-action rifle in use for over a half century, and it’s got a mean kick.
But that badge on your shoulder, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment (2PPCLI) gives you confidence.
So does commander Lieutenant Colonel Jim Stone, a Second World War veteran.
And you are one mean mother-fucker, to put it nicely. Spoiling for a fight.
Instead, North Korean forces have been pushed across their border back into the North. It looked like an easy stint, garrison duty no less.
The thought of meeting one of those nice Korean girls wasn’t far away, and maybe having one of those weird Korean beers.
Man, was that about to change.
While gung-ho US General Douglas MacArthur repeatedly refused to heed Chinese warnings and US intelligence reports, China launched a massive surprise counteroffensive with approximately 300,000 soldiers, catching the overextended UN forces completely off guard.
MacArthur’s misjudgment was a critical error that prolonged the war for another two and a half years.
And a fellow named Hub Gray, a Canadian from Winnipeg, would end up in the maelstrom.
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What was at stake? Hill 677, which controlled the entrance to the Kapyong River Valley north of Seoul. Beyond that, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping the advancing communist forces from retaking Seoul.
The hill was a critical last stand.
The Aussies took it on the chin, first.
The 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR), bore the brunt of the initial attack and after heavy combat were forced to withdraw, with 155 casualties.
Captain Reg Saunders, the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army, was Officer Commanding C Company, 3 RAR.
After the battle, he said: “At last I felt like an Anzac, and I imagine there were 600 others like me.”
While the Australians fought bravely, Stone ordered his Canadians, about 700 troops, to dig in on Hill 677 and prepare to repel a large brigade of massing Chinese forces, estimated at nearly 5,000-strong.
After attacking the Australians, the Chinese turned their attention to the PPCLI.
Death was on the menu, not a picnic. In waves.
The Canadians risked being wiped out. Outnumbered and outgunned.
As expected, on the night of April 22, 1951, an entire Chinese communist division swarmed them, hoping to take Seoul, only a few miles away. 2PPCLI was surrounded, and on its own.
It was a terrifying night of positions lost and retaken, hand-to-hand fighting in the dark, with bayonets, grenades, rifle butts and shovels.
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Private Wayne Mitchell, despite being wounded, charged the enemy three times with his Bren gun. He earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his efforts.
The relentless waves of Chinese soldiers almost overran the position of D Company.
With his men securely entrenched below ground, company commander Captain J. G. W. Mills, desperate and overrun, called for an artillery strike on the position of his own 10 Platoon — what the Americans called “Broken Arrow.”
He relayed the request from Lieutenant Mike Levy, who was hunkered down with his men in shallow foxholes on the hill.
A battery of New Zealander guns obliged, firing 2,300 rounds of shells in less than an hour, destroying the Chinese forces on that position.
Though the barrage landed just metres from Levy’s position, he and his men were unscathed.
“I remember sitting down there in that trench one time during that fight and I was shaking and I was thinking, ‘What the f–k are doing here, you dumb shit?”‘ said Ernie Seronik, a member of the 2PPCLI’s D Company.
“You really can’t tell people about it, can’t describe it. You can’t know what it’s like until you’re there, the fear you have, and it stays with you. I was scared all the time.”
“When you sit in the dark and are looking for and waiting for them to appear, every stump that is out there is a person, the enemy,” recalled Seronik.
“At that time, the real terror comes from not knowing what’s going to happen to you. At any time a bullet can come out of nowhere and you’re dead. It happened a lot.”
At one point, a Chinese officer yelled, “Kill the American pigs,” in Chinese.
Levy, a platoon commander who understood the dialect, yelled back:
“We are Canadian soldiers, we have lots of Canadian soldiers here.”
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Desperate, the Chinese attacked battalion headquarters from the rear. Hoping to break the Canadian lines.
If HQ fell, the Canadians would be driven off the hill and the road to Seoul would be open. It did not fall, in part thanks to Hub Gray.
He was in charge of a small mortar-machine gun unit. Coming at them: about 500 battle-hardened Chinese.
With the enemy almost on top of them, Gray’s men opened fire, the Chinese attack stalled, and then fell apart, described by one Canadian as “like kicking the top off an ant hill.”
Through it all, Stone refused to allow his men to withdraw, as he believed the hill was a critical strategic point on the UN front. He was right, it was.
Veteran David Crook, remembered the battle all too well.
“From sheer boredom to sheer terror. At times it didn’t stop. And then you’d get lulls where the enemy would be regrouping for another attack so we’d get a bit of a breather to think a little bit. But, most times it was just non-stop,” he said.
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While they defended the hill, the Canadians were cut off and had to be supplied via air drop.
As Canadian soldier Gerald Gowing remembered: “We were surrounded on the hills of Kapyong and there was a lot of fire. We were pretty well out of ammunition and out of food too. We did get some air supplies dropped in, but we were actually surrounded… that was a scary moment, let me tell you.”
The Canadians were down to their last bullets when the Chinese advance finally broke. Hub’s machine guns had saved HQ.
Kapyong did not fall. Nor did Seoul. The Canadians held firm their positions.
The 2PPCLI were eventually relieved on the front line by a battalion of the 1st US Cavalry Division.
The battle contributed significantly to the defeat of the Chinese offensive, protecting the capital city of Seoul from re-occupation, and plugging the hole in the UN line to give the South Koreans time to retreat.
Both the Canadians and the Australians received the United States Presidential Unit Citation from the American government.
Five men in other units were (rightly) decorated for bravery that night. Hub Gray was not among them.
Levy wasn’t recognized for his bravery until 2003, when Governor General Adrienne Clarkson granted him a coat of arms.
In later years Hub Gray wrote his own account of Kapyong (Beyond the Danger Close) with a vivid account of the fighting, but made no mention at all of his own vital role. You’d scarcely know he was there.
But he was. A true Canadian hero. Along with all the rest.
Every child/student in Canada, should know their names, and what they did.
Hubert Archibald Gray known as “Hub” to all his friends, passed away peacefully in his sleep on Nov. 9, 2018, in Calgary, with family at his bedside. He was 90.
— with files, from the National Post
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Any single suicide is an unspeakable tragedy. But public health officials should be especially alarmed when the numbers of suicides among a particular population spike. Between 2019 and 2023, the suicide rate across Canada fell from 12.3 per 100,000 to 9.5 per 100,000. U.S. numbers aren’t that different (although they’re heading in the other direction).
Holding public officials and institutions accountable using data-driven investigative journalism.
Against this context, the suicide rate among active Canadian military personnel is truly alarming. Data included in a 2021 Report on Suicide Mortality in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) showed that the three year moving average annual rate for suicides in all services of the CAF was 23.38 per 100,000 – around twice the national rate. Which, of course, is not to ignore the equally shocking suicide rates among military veterans.
This isn’t specific to Canada. All modern military communities have to worry about numbers like those. Officials in the Israel Defense Force – now hopefully emerging from their longest and, by some measures, costliest war ever – are struggling to address their own suicide crisis. But there’s a significant difference that’s probably worth exploring.
Through 2024, 21 active duty IDF soldiers took their own lives. This dark number has justifiably inspired a great deal of soul searching and, naturally (it being Israel), finger pointing. But the real surprise here is how low that number is.
It’s reasonable to estimate that there were 170,000 active duty soldiers in the IDF during 2024 and another 300,000 active reservists. If you count all of those together, the actual suicide rate is just 4.5 per 100,000 – which is less than half of the typical civilian suicide rate in Western countries!
Tragic. But hardly an epidemic. Those soldiers have all lost friends and faced battlefield conditions that I, for one, find impossible to even comprehend. And those 300,000 reservists? They’ve been torn away from their families, businesses, and normal lives for many months. Many have suffered devastating financial, social, and marital pressures. And still: we’re losing them at lower rates than most civilian populations!
Is there any lesson here that could help inform CAF policy?
One obvious difference is sense of purpose: IDF members are fighting for the very existence of their people. They all saw and felt the horrors of the October 7 massacres and know that there are countless thousands of adversaries who would be happy do it again in a heartbeat¹. And having a general population that overwhelmingly supports their mission can only help that sense.
But there are some other factors that could be worth noting:
- The IDF is unusual in that it subjects all potential conscripts to mandatory psychological screening – resulting in many exemptions.
- Small, stable units are intentionally kept together for years. In fact, units are often formed from groups who have known each other since their early school years. This cohesion also helps with post-service integration.
- Every IDF battalion has a dedicated officer trained in brief interventions and utilization rates are high.
Is there anything here that CAF officials could learn from?
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