The Canadian soldier who defected to East Germany

Guy Boucher formerly
 of East Germany

   Private Guy Bouchard, 22, of Montreal, was serving in the 3rd Battallion 22nd Regiment when he defected from his post in West Germany to Communist East Germany on 16 September 1959.
   Bouchard was the second Canadian soldier to defect to the East, as East Germany announced in January 1960 that it had granted him political asylum. 

   Bouchard was found 4 years later in October 1963 shopping in West Germany. He was brought back to Canada and court martialed, given a year in military prison for desertion.
  He explained that he had fallen in love and moved to East Germany to live with his sweetheart to take classes at trade school. This wasn't good news for his girlfriend in Montreal Monique Dravigne.
   The love affair died and he found himself working in factories in the Eastern Bloc.

   At one point in East Germany he wrote his parents asking them to send him textbooks. 

Lavigne

   **

   The longest Canadian military defection to East Germany was that of Private Ralph Cross from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, who left his wife and three kids for Marta Schoroder. "The beautiful spy," as he called her, was four years older and had two daughters.  

   Cross was one of nine children of a veterinarian. He dropped out of school in grade 5. 

Ralph Cross and wife and kids

  Cross said in a 1984 interview that he attended a party with Marta on 2 May 1955 and got drunk.  She was a Russian spy, it turned out, and brought him to East Germany. 

  Martha took off after nine months, leaving Cross with her daughters as he worked a split shift on a farm from 3 am to 7 am and then from 3 pm to 7 pm.  

    He then worked at a factory and met Lisa Schenk, a plump woman six years his senior. T

  hey lived together from 1958 to 1972 and had a son Lutz, in 1962. 

  Cross served a year in an East German prison for beating up two people, including a police officer. Prison authorities gave him shock treatment in an attempt to extract information.  

  Cross joined an underground spy ring led by a Dutchman and would count tanks and planes while riding around on his bicycle. 

Cross in 1984

   Cross was treated for alcoholism and mouth cancer and became addicted to cocaine after doctors prescribed it to help his pain. 

   On 22 September 1982 Russian soldiers found him spying on a military facility and a judge sentenced him to a year for espionage. Prison interrogators broke his arm and then broke it again once it healed. They subjected him to intense steam heat for eight hours on end and put him in a room designed to flood and drown him if he didn't pump the water out. 

  On 9 November 1983 authorities brought him to the border to West Berlin and left him there. 

  He returned to Canada where he was setnenced to 60 days for desertion but was permitted out early and became free on 27 February 1984. He settled in Pierceland Saskatchewan. 

Strobl

   **  

 John Strobl, 19, of Ceylon, Sasktchewan, who served in the 1st Battalion Queens Own Rifles, was the third of three Canadian soldiers who defected to East Germany, making the leap in November 1960. Strobl, who was of Dutch origin, was brought back by Canadian authorities a mere 60 days later. He was not married and had enlisted in the Armed Forces earlier that same year. He defected only five days after arriving in Germany to help with the Canadian infantry.