In the summer of 1941, Matthew H. Halton, a Toronto Star war correspondent, arrived in Solum, an Egyptian village near the Mediterranean Sea, just east of the border with Libya.
On Dec. 7, 1941, in a co-ordinated strike without equal in the annals of war, the Japanese wrought havoc on units of
the United States Pacific Fleet in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, invaded the Philippines and Hong Kong, assumed control of Saigon and the rest of French Indochina, landed invading forces at two points on the northeast coast of Malaya, and bombed Singapore. Other units headed for key invasion points in Sarawak, North Borneo and the Dutch East Indies. Using bicycles as their principal means of transport through the Malayan rubber plantations, the Japanese advanced swiftly and silently, outwitting and outdistancing the British, Australian and Indian defenders. These co-ordinated attacks gave Japan control of the Indian Ocean and severed the artery of the Allied rubber supply.
From his trench barrack on the front line at Avion near Vimy Ridge, Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Molson ripped a piece of paper from his notebook and began writing his eldest son. “When this war is finished, when the battle has been won,” he resolutely stated on July 25, 1917, “I will return to Canada to fight an enemy which is as tyrannical as the Kaiser.” Herbert Molson would not be alone, however, in his fight against his Canadian enemy—the prohibitionists. As they had in the trenches during the First World War, his brothers in arms would stand beside him. Together, they proved a potent force.
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