Ortona, Italy, December 30, 1943.
© Library and Archives Canada, Terry F. Rowe, PA-114032 |
One of the memorable images of Canadians in the Second World War is of soldiers eating Christmas dinner in a bombed-out church in the town of Ortona on Italy's Adriatic coast. On Christmas day 1943, small groups of troops crept back a few hundred metres from where they were fighting to the church of Santa Maria di Constantinopoli in the town's outskirts. There they were served a full Christmas dinner. One of them played carols on an organ. After dinner the soldiers went back to the fighting. The bizarre tableau was re-enacted in the same setting at Christmastime 1998 by veterans of the battle. The significant difference 55 years later was that there was no fighting. Instead, German veterans joined their former Canadian foes for dinner.
The march to Ortona had been an arduous one. After the Canadians assaulted the Italian mainland at Reggio di Calabria on September 3, 1943, they began a long trek north, through difficult, easily-defended terrain, as part of the Allied forces. For three months, the fighting was a continuation of their Sicilian operational experience - small units advancing through mountains against Germans who scorched the earth behind them as they withdrew north.
The Canadians took the lead of the Allied advance along the Adriatic coast in December. Their goal was Pescara and the main road from there to Rome. However, between them and their objective were several deep river valleys, made almost impassable by autumn rain, and German defenders entrenched along the gulleys and in Ortona.
Ortona has become legendary in Canadian military history. The battle was in three acts. In the first, infantrymen and tanks carved a bridgehead over the Moro River a few kilometres south of Ortona. In the week-long second act they crossed a deep plateau beyond and a second deep ravine. In the final act, small groups of soldiers cleared Ortona, piazza by piazza, street by street, house by house, until the Germans withdrew two days after Christmas.
Related Links:
The 1st Canadian Infantry Division's commander, Major General Christopher Vokes, said later that all the fighting before then had been a nursery tale in comparison. An anticipated day's march lasted three grisly weeks. Opportunities for breaking the stalemate loomed occasionally through fog and confusion, but could not be grasped in the harsh realities of combat. Men were sucked piecemeal into the quicksand of darkness, cold, rain, mud, and unforgiving fatigue.
The award of the Victoria Cross to Captain Paul Triquet of the Royal 22e Régiment for his personal courage speaks eloquently to the collective achievements of all those who suffered and endured. The Canadians paid a cruel price. More than 2,000 of them were killed, wounded, or missing, and another 1,600 were hospitalized due to sickness.
The significance of Ortona to Canada comes not from the intrinsic military importance of the battle, but as a tribute to the men who fought there and the women who volunteered to nurse them under shellfire. The fighting was unredeemed by anything but the courage and endurance of the ordinary Canadians who did extraordinary things when, by chance, they happened for a time to be soldiers.