As a young second lieutenant leading 8 Platoon, ‘C’ Company, 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian LIght Infantry, in Korea, Chris Snider of Oakville, Ont., earned a Miltary Cross for valour. At 92, he still attends Remembrance Day ceremonies at Sunnybrook Veterans’ Centre in Toronto. [Stephen J. Thorne/Legion Magazine]

“We were going down this long, long trench,” Snider said in a video made by students at Crestwood high school in Toronto. “I kept hearing these buzzing noises.

“I said to the guy with me, ‘what’s this buzzing noise?’ He said, ‘those are enemy rounds; they’re firing at where they think we might be; they don’t know where we are because it’s dark.’ I thought, ‘gosh, bullets are coming our way.’ And the odd one would come a little lower and maybe hit somebody, but not normally.”

The U.S.-born, Oakville, Ont.-raised son of a Canadian Boer War and WW I veteran would become almost immune to the tracers and the whiz of rifle and machine-gun rounds zooming past and resigned to the randomness of mortar shells dropping in.

He’d signed up at 19. By his early-20s, he was commanding 8 Platoon, ‘C’ Company, 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.

On the night of April 25, 1953, he was leading a 10-man patrol when they came under fire from Chinese mortars ensconced in the hills facing them. Snider had already detected opposing troops in the no man’s land that formed the border between the Koreas.

The patrol was hunkered down between the berms of a rice paddy. The rest of the battalion was well behind them. The artillery batteries were farther back still.

“I said to the guy with me, ‘what’s this buzzing noise?’ He said, ‘those are enemy rounds; they’re firing at where they think we might be.”

“With great coolness this officer continued to observe the enemy’s movement and directed very accurate artillery fire onto the main body of twenty to thirty enemy soldiers,” said the citation for the Military Cross that Snider eventually received.

The Chinese continued their advance until the coalition artillery’s 25-pound rounds, fired from more than two kilometres back, were falling within 22 metres of Snider’s position, at which point the enemy retreated.

“A bit close,” Snider, now 92, acknowledged in an interview with Legion Magazine, “but we were used to that.”

The Chinese mortars continued to pour in, increasing in volume.

“Without regard for his personal safety, Lieutenant Snider moved throughout his patrol area checking on the safety of his men and reassuring them,” said the citation “When the mortar fire slackened he took one man and searched the area for enemy dead or wounded.”

All they found were bloodied bandages, said Snider, now a resident of Toronto’s Sunnybrook Veterans Centre. They returned to the patrol position and withdrew.

“Due to this officer’s courageous action no casualties were suffered by the standing patrol and the enemy were unable to accomplish their aim.”

Snider with John Wanless Junior Public School students and members of 400 Tactical Helicopter Squadron, RCAF, and other participants following the Remembrance Day ceremony at Sunnybrook Veterans Centre in Toronto.
[Stephen J. Thorne/Legion Magazine]

“Due to this officer’s courageous action no casualties were suffered by the standing patrol and the enemy were unable to accomplish their aim.”

It was several days after this eventful night, while Snider sat in the platoon headquarters, that enemy mortars opened up on their position. A nearby American monitoring post had counted some 1,100 rounds by the time it stopped.

“They drove all of us underground,” said Snider. “We had a bunker suite. Some were really ratty and others were prefab, made of B.C. fir.

“I lost a guy that night, but he wasn’t from my platoon.”

The soldier had been wounded on patrol. Snider had just been out to check on him when the onslaught began.

“He was lying on a stretcher outside my platoon headquarters and…a mortar shell landed directly on him—blew him apart, actually. It took several days for us to pick up the pieces.

“My platoon stretcher bearer had gone out to put a fresh bandage on him. And while he was wrapping this bandage around him, the mortar shell came in and landed on [the wounded man]. The stretcher bearer, who came from Toronto, staggered into our bunker dripping with blood—not his blood; [the victim’s] blood. He didn’t have a scratch on him.”

There would be more exploits leading to Snider’s Military Cross, awarded to warrants and officers at or below the rank of captain for “gallant and distinguished services in action.”

“A mortar shell landed directly on him—blew him apart, actually. It took several days for us to pick up the pieces.”

Seven weeks later, on June 13, 1953, Snider ventured out on another nightly patrol, ordering his troops to take up firing positions and keep a sharp watch while he scrambled out front to single-handedly rescue three soldiers caught in a mortar attack. All the while, a Chinese patrol was approaching.

“There were about 10 of us, as I recall,” 13 counting the ones he brought in, Snider said. “There were between 20 and 25 of them. They would have been Chinese at that stage; some of them could have been North Koreans.”

With mortars falling around and among them, and at risk of being overrun by a superior enemy force—“not without a fight,” he assured—he called in another artillery strike.

“He repeatedly exposed himself in an attempt to draw enemy small arms fire and personally searched the suspected area of the enemy,” said his citation, which included both patrol actions. “The enemy were observed moving back to their own lines and he directed artillery and mortar fire on them.

“This officer’s prompt, efficient and aggressive handling of all situations was responsible for the lack of casualties and the continuation of the domination of No Man’s Land. Lieutenant Snider at all times operated according to the highest standards of the infantry and was an inspiration to his men.”

“This officer’s prompt, efficient and aggressive handling of all situations was responsible for the lack of casualties.”

The next month, on July 27, 1953, fighting on the Korean peninsula formally ended. There was an armistice, but no peace treaty was ever reached. Technically, the war is still on.

More than 26,000 Canadians served on land, at sea and in the air during the three years, one month and two days UN forces fought the Soviets, Chinese and North Koreans over and around the 38th parallel; 516 died, 1,235 were wounded or declared missing in action, 33 were captured and later released.

After Korea, Snider weighed his options. They came down to returning home and working as a gas jockey at a Shell service station back home or continuing to climb the officer ranks in the Canadian army. It was no contest.

A Patricia all the way, he went on to serve in Cyprus, West Germany, England, Pakistan, and as the last military attaché to the Canadian ambassador in Afghanistan before the Soviets invaded in 1979.

He was a soldier for 36 years, retiring in 1987 a brigadier-general.

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For more, see ‘Lifetime of service’ in the Jan/Feb issue of Legion Magazine.