1st Bn The Winnipeg Grenadiers
General Information | ||
| Rank: | First Name: | Second Name: |
|---|---|---|
| Private | Louis | Ludwig |
| From: | Enlistment Region: | Date of Birth (y-m-d): |
| Lac Du Bonnet MB | Manitoba | 1917-02-21 |
| Appointment: | Company: | Platoon: |
| A | Coy HQ | |
Transportation - Home Base to Hong Kong
Members of 'C' Force from the East travelled across Canada by CNR troop train, picking up reinforcements enroute. Stops included Valcartier, Montreal, Ottawa, Armstrong ON, Capreol ON, Winnipeg, Melville SK, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Jasper, and Vancouver, arriving in Vancouver on Oct 27 at 0800 hrs.
The Winnipeg Grenadiers and the local soldiers that were with Brigade Headquarters from Winnipeg to BC travelled on a CPR train to Vancouver.
All members embarked from Vancouver on the ships AWATEA and PRINCE ROBERT. AWATEA was a New Zealand Liner and the PRINCE ROBERT was a converted cruiser. "C" Company of the Rifles was assigned to the PRINCE ROBERT, everyone else boarded the AWATEA. The ships sailed from Vancouver on Oct 27th and arrived in Hong Kong on November 16th, having made brief stops enroute at Honolulu and Manila.
Equipment earmarked for 'C' Force use was loaded on the ship DON JOSE, but would never reach Hong Kong as it was rerouted to Manila when hostilities commenced.
On arrival, all troops were quartered at Nanking Barracks, Sham Shui Po Camp, in Kowloon.
Battle Information
We do not have specific battle information for this soldier in our online database. For a detailed description of the battle from a Canadian perspective, visit Canadian Participation in the Defense of Hong Kong (published by the Historical Section, Canadian Military Headquarters).
Wounded Information
No wounds recorded.Hospital Information
No record of hospital visits found.POW Camps
| Camp ID | Camp Name | Location | Company | Type of Work | Arrival Date | Departure Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HK-NP-01 | North Point | North Point, Hong Kong Island | 41 Dec 20 | 41 Dec 22 | ||
| HK-AS-01 | Argyle Street | Kowloon, Hong Kong | 41 Dec 22 | Dec 26 | ||
| HK-SA-01 | Shamshuipo | Kowloon, Hong Kong | Capture | 42 Jan 22 | ||
| HK-NP-02 | North Point | North Point, Hong Kong Island | 42 Jan 22 | 42 Sep 26 | ||
| HK-SA-02 | Shamshuipo | Kowloon, Hong Kong | 42 Sep 26 | 43 Jan 19 | ||
| JP-To-3D | Tsurumi | Yokohama-shi, Tsurumi-ku, Suyehiro-cho, 1-chome, Japan | Nippon Steel Tube - Tsurumi Shipyards | Variety of jobs related to ship building | 43 Jan 19 | 45 May 13 |
| JP-Se-1B | Yumoto | Fukushima-ken, Iwaki-gun, Yumoto-cho, Mizunoya, Japan | Joban Coal Mining Company | 45 May 13 | 45 Sep 15 |
Transport to Japan
| Draft Number | Name of Ship | Departure Date | Arrival Date | Arrival Port | Comments | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XD3A | Tatuta Maru | 43 Jan 19, left Shamsuipo Camp, 0500 hrs; left Hong Kong 1300hrs | 43 Jan 22, 0400 hrs | Nagasaki, Japan | Boarded train, arrived in Tokyo on 43 Jan 24 at 0700 hrs, boarded electric train for 10 mile ride to camp | Tony Banham |
Transportation SE Asia to Home
| Transport Mode | Arrival Destination | Arrival Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
No other or additional related information found. Please submit documents to us using the contact link at the top of this page.
Post-war Photo
No other or additional related information found. Please submit documents to us using the contact link at the top of this page.
Other Military or Public Service
No other or additional related information found. Please submit documents to us using the contact link at the top of this page.
Death and Cemetery Information
| Date of Death (y-m-d) | Cause of Death | Death Class | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984-06-06 | Post War | ||
| Cemetery Location | Cemetery | Grave Number | Gravestone Marker |
| . | Cremation | ||
Gravestone Image
Obituary / Life Story
Ludwig (Lou) Arthur Specht - Suddenly on June 6, 1984 at the Misericordia Hospital, Lou Specht, aged 67 years, beloved husband of Marion.
Lou was born in Winnipeg in 1917. He served overseas and was also a Hong Kong Vet. Lou was a member of the Khartum Temple Flag Patrol.
Surviving besides his wife are three daughters, Lori and her husband Grant of Mississauga, Ont., Lynn of Port Coquitlam, B.C. and Wanda and her husband Mike of Burnaby, B.C.; three grandsons, Graham, Jeffrey and Steven; four brothers, John, Steve, Cass and Carl; five sisters, Stella, Vicki, Lillian, Irene and Bernice.
Following cremation a memorial service will be held on Saturday, June 9 at 11:00 a.m. in Thomson Funeral Chapels, Broadway at Furby, with the Rev. E. E. Baskier officiating. The service will terminate at the chapels.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Shriners Rehab Centre, 633 Wellington Cresc. Courtesy parking west of the funeral chapels. Winnipeg Free Press June 8, 1984, Page 67
Links and Other Resources
There may be more information on this individual available elsewhere on our web sites - please use the search tool found in the upper right corner of this page to view sources.
Related documentation
- Our HKVCA Vault (Google Docs) may contain additional information, newspaper clippings, and documents which have been saved for this soldier. To access this information, click on the vault link and a Google Docs folder list will open in a separate tab. Use the first letter of the soldier’s service number, found at the top of this report, to open the correct folder. Each sub-folder is identified by service number. Scroll down until you reach the one of your interest.
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General Comments
Diary of Grenadier Records Monotony by Louis L. Specht
Winnipeg Free Press October 26, 1945, page 5
Rice and Soup—Over and Over
"Dinner. Rice and vegetable soup." This is the most frequent entry in the diary of Louis L. Specht, 28, of Lac du Bonnet, a member of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. Day by day for five months he recorded in a little book the menus given to Canadian prisoners of war in Camp 3D, Yokohama. He kept the diary hidden from the Japanese in the earth under his barrack hut and has brought it home.
Thursday afternoon, at the Winnipeg Grenadiers' headquarters, 194 Main Street, he commented on certain entries. "Dinner. Rice and vegetable soup.' The words recur with monotonous regularity.
When he wrote "rice," this did not mean it was all white rice, Louis explained. It referred to a mixture. Eleven kilos of white rice were mixed with 33 kilos of Korean red grain (which was stock feed) and 33 kilos of rolled barley. This amount was supposed to be enough for 200 men for one meal.
"Vegetable soup" was also very 'different from the beverage served "under that name at home, he indicated. "When vegetables were low, they would boil some grass in hot water and give it to us as soup. . . . Sometimes they gave us a sort of seaweed, something like moss, which they found in the rocks along the shore, as a vegetable. They gave it to us dry. We poured boiling water on it. It was very hard to take."
Louis should know about the food because he worked as a cook part of his time at the camp.
Great Delicacy
"About once every two weeks they brought in a horse's insides and hooves for us to eat as a delicacy. Once, three of the horses’ hooves had shoes on. They also brought the bones of a horse's head to put in the soup. During the daytime there was always a Jap there to see we didn't waste anything, so we had no option but to cook these things”
Louis’ diary starts Oct. 14. ,1943, and ends March 20, 1944. Here's the entry for Oct. 21: "Breakfast, three small potatoes and watery soup. Dinner rice and soup. Supper, rice, soup and one cup seaweed. Two buns for 10 men at 7 p.m."
A hot bath is recorded on Oct. 28. Baths were taken in a square concrete bath, about 12 by eight feet in a bathroom, he stated. About 40 men had to get in the bath at one time because only 20 minutes were allowed for 50 men to go through the bath.
At that time, Louis recalled, he was working in a hammer-gang at the Nippon Kokan shipbuilding plant at Yokohama. His entry for Dec 25, 1944, is as follows in part: "Merry Xmas. Received a Red Cross parcel between five men and also one (eight-ounce) tin of bacon between two men and one-quarter of a 12-ounce tin of bully beef be tween four men. From the Nippon Kokan factory we were gifted with two candies and four oranges. A short concert. Church service morning and evening. A very pleasant day."
Items which appeared occasionally on the menu during those five months included a powder made largely from ground-up seasoned fish-heads; kanyaku, a tasteless sort of jelly made from ground-up bone and miso, a paste made from mashed beans. Louis reported.
In May of this year, Louis and some comrades were transferred to Camp No. 1 in the Sendia area of northern Japan, where the food was worse. "There we were fed a mixture of rice, barley and yellow beans—a very hard menu to digest. For the last few months all we had for vegetables were pumpkin leaves, carrot-tops and potato-leaves. Any grass that the Japanese saw was green they gave us. We even had to cook stinkweed."
Copies of messages from American fliers who dropped supplies to the Canadians in the weeks immediately before liberation have been transcribed in the concluding pages of the diary.
First came the Grummen fighter planes from the United States aircraft- carrier Lexington; then the heavy bombers.
To Say Hello
Here's one of the messages, dated Aug 31: "To the guys below. When, this is being written, I am in Sai Pan and preparing for the 16-hour ride to your location. Hope we find you all right as our gas supply is a problem. Don’t know how soon you will be out of your hell-hole, but, believe me, our sole purpose is to drop you supplies and say Hello in one form or another Hope I don't open too low and blow your shingles off. If some of you are in the States soon, I would appreciate a card. My address is: Lt. Reeves N. Byrd, 1713 Green Leaf Drive, Royal Oak, Mich. U.S.A. I am the pilot of this job and would like to hear from more than one of you. On behalf of our group, my crew and myself, I hope you are well and home soon. God bless you. This box is from the gang in the B-29.”End of Report.
Report generated: 27 Apr 2025.
Additional Notes
(These will not be visible on the printed copy)
- Service numbers for officers ("X") are locally generated for reporting only. During World War II officers were not allocated service numbers until 1945.
- 'C' Force soldiers who died overseas are memorialized in the Books of Remembrance and the Canadian Virtual War Memorial, both sponsored by Veterans Affairs Canada. Please use the search utility at VAC to assist you.
- Some birthdates and deathdates display as follows: 1918-00-00. In general, this indicates that we know the year but not the month or day.
- Our POW camp links along with our References link (near the bottom of the 'C' Force home page) are designed to give you a starting point for your research. There were many camps with many name changes. The best resource for all POW camps in Japan is the Roger Mansell Center for Research site.
- In most cases the rank displayed was the rank held before hostilities. Some veterans were promoted at some point prior to eventual post-war release from the army back in Canada. When notified of these changes we'll update the individual's record.
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