Red Friday

The Price of Peace Monument to Canadian Soldiers in Ortona, Italy

Last week marked the 66th Anniversary of the beginning of the Battle for Ortona, Italy.

Canadian contributions to World War II are often associated with the Liberation of the Netherlands, Flanders, Juno Beach, and Dieppe.  Ortona, however, was one of the most difficult and bloodiest battles of the Italian Campaign, and was once a well known battle.  Canada lost +/- 1,200 troops in Italy in December 1943.  For our generation, it may have been glossed over, with focus on the "more famous" battles.  But during the war, everyone knew of the Battle for Ortona.  Last year, on the 65th Anniversary, my cousin (a teacher) was selected to take some of his students to help represent Canada at the commemoration event in Italy.

The Canadian Troops fighting there (mainly Loyal Edmonton Regiment, Seaforth Highlanders, and PPCLI) were relieved in small numbers on Christmas Day and taken into the homes of the remaining villagers for a Christmas meal, and a few moments of "peace":

"What a strange clutter of humanity it was. There were some five or six Canadian soldiers, there were old women and there were children innumerable. A painter of genius-Goya, perhaps-might have done justice to the scene. I felt no verbal description could do so. In the half-darkened room the pasta for the midday meal was simmering over the fire in the corner. Haggard, prematurely aged women kept emerging shyly one after another from some inner chamber where an old man, the grandfather of the numerous children, was dying... Another old man was uttering maledictions against Mussolini. Then his wife surprisingly produced a jeroboam of Marsala and half a dozen glasses and moved around among the soldiers, filling and re-filling their glasses. The children clambered around the Canadian soldiers and clutched at them convulsively every time one of our anti-tank guns, located only half a dozen paces from the door of the house, fired down the street in the direction of one of the remaining German machine-gun posts. Soon each one of us had a squirming, terrified child in his arms. And the old lady went on distributing Marsala."
- Christopher Buckley, Road to Rome, 1945.

For more info on the Battle for Ortona, please see The Juno Beach Center, or Canada at War

Lest We Forget