Military service
Burial/memorial information
Baptized Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur, he served under the name Maurice Ladouceur.
Son of Armand Ladouceur and Malvina Desnoyers, of Pointe-St-Charles (today Montréal, Québec).
Brother of Jean Paul, Raymond, Alban, Albert, Geraldine Nadeau, Gisele Moreau, Jeannine Vallières et Thérèse Raymond.
He enlisted in the Canadian Army Special Force on September 9, 1950, and was transferred to the 1st Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment later that month. He was then assigned to the 3rd Battalion on May 15, 1951, until his departure for Japan on June 5 of that year. He arrived in Pusan, South Korea, with the 2nd Battalion on September 13 and was assigned to the 1st Battalion on April 23, 1952. This battalion was tasked with defending the left flank of a front stretching between the destroyed villages of Paujol-gol and Kojanhari-saemal. During the night of September 5–6, Chinese artillery rained down no fewer than 400 shells on Companies B and C, killing four men and wounding five others. As the wounded men were preparing to return to the battalion’s lines, their leader, Corporal Ladouceur, realized that a gap his patrol had cut through the minefield they had just crossed had not been closed. He therefore retraced his steps to correct this oversight. It was then that he was taken prisoner by the Chinese and later killed while attempting to alert the men who had come to his rescue. Four days later, during a patrol of the minefield, his dog tag and tracks on the ground were discovered, suggesting that he had been dragged out of the area. He was initially declared a prisoner of war, then missing, and finally presumed killed in action. His body was never found. For this act of bravery, he was mentioned in the regimental Order of the Day (MID) on November 21, 1953.
His name was inscribed on the cenotaph of the Korean War Memorial in Meadowvale Cemetery, Brampton, Peel, Ontario, erected in 1997 to commemorate the 516 Canadians killed in action between 25 June 1950 and 27 July 1953, as well as on the Korean War Memorial in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. An identical monument can be found at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Pusan (South Korea).
Commemorated on the Wall of Remembrance.
Digital gallery of Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
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Photo of Maurice Ladouceur
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Newspaper clipping
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Newspaper Clipping
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Newspaper clipping
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Memorial
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Inscription
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Memorial
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Memorial
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Memorial Plaque
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
Digital gallery of
Corporal Joseph Gaston Maurice Ladouceur
In the Books of Remembrance
Commemorated on:
Page 37 of the Korean War Book of Remembrance.
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COMMONWEALTH MEMORIAL (BUSAN) South Korea
For more information, visit Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
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