World Battlefronts: For Canada

On the narrow road that winds toward the coastal town of Ortona in eastern Italy, a Canadian division was in its fiercest fight. General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery had secretly switched his Canadians out of the Apennines to make them part of the spearhead he thrust towards the key Adriatic port of Pescara. For the first time since Sicily, the Canadians were being regularly mentioned in Allied communiqués. Those fighting on an eight-mile front were battlewise veterans of Sicily. They had been with the Eighth Army in its 500-mile march across the heel and up Italy’s Adriatic coast. In their rear were reinforcements soon to be merged in a new Canadian Corps under its own commander.