ON THIS DATE IN CANADIAN MILITARY HISTORY

Norman Bethune 1890-1939 medical doctor, born on this day at Gravenhurst Ontario in 1890; dies in 1939 in China. Bethune started medical studies at McGill, served as a stretcher bearer in a field ambulance unit of the Canadian army in France in 1915, then after a bout of tuberculosis, studied thoracic surgery and joined the surgical team at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital. Disillusioned with medical practice - many of his patients grew sick again when they returned to squalid living conditions - he visited the Soviet Union in 1935, and secretly joined the Communist Party. He opened a health clinic for the unemployed in Montreal, then served as a battlefield doctor in the Spanish Civil War (1936), where he innovated mobile field hospitals (the picture shows him in the uniform of the Mackenzie-Papineau Batallion). He went to China in 1938 to help fight the Japanese invasion, devised a mobile medical unit that could be carried on two mules, but died of blood poisoning in 1939 due to the lack of penicillin. He is regarded as a hero in China and is called Pai-ch'iu-en - White Seeks Grace. His boyhood home in Gravenhurst is now a museum.

Also James Doohan 1920-
WW II military pilot, actor, was born on this day at Vancouver BC in 1920. Doohan has played chief engineer Commander Montgomery Scott (Scotty) in Star Trek; Damon Warwick in The Bold and the Beautiful , and Pippin in Homeboys In Outer Space.

1942 England - First combat flight of the Canadian-built Avro Lancaster bomber.         

1945 Pacific - US wins Battle of the Bismarck Sea over Japan

1943 Corregidor Philippines - US & Philippines forces recapture island fortress of Corregidor.