Spending D-Day with the D-Day Dodgers
I followed my grandfather’s footsteps through the Italian Campaign. This is what I learned.
Last June, I spent almost two weeks travelling through Italy with my dad. While much of the trip was spent eating good food, seeing all the sites, and thinking nonstop about the Roman Empire, we had a very important reason for going this year in particular.
June 25, 2023, marked 100 years since my grandpa Bernard Pelletier was born, and July marked an anniversary for possibly the most consequential chapter of his life — the 80th anniversary of the start of the Italian Campaign of the Second World War.
Like most war vets, Bernie did not speak much of his time as a machine gunner in the Saskatoon Light Infantry. But it showed in other ways, such as the stories of my grandpa shouting orders in his sleep, or his tendency to jump up to attention when one of us closed a door too loud in the house. In addition to the trauma from battles in Italy and Holland, Bernie carried the generational baggage of his father, a First World War artillery soldier who was repeatedly exposed to mustard gas. When my grandpa was eight, his father was taken to a mental hospital and diagnosed with what we would now refer to as schizophrenia. As a result of this separation, the two would never meet again. Were it not for the Royal Canadian Legion, Bernie may have never opened up about what he saw during his childhood and young adult years.
Fortunately, as he aged, Bernie became far more connected with groups that worked to preserve the memories and lived experiences of those who fought. In addition to volunteering with the Legion in Bells Corners, he participated in several commemorative trips and spoke with documentarians about his life as a D-Day Dodger— a tongue-in-cheek term used to describe veterans of the Eighth Army.
Because of Bernie’s willingness to open up in his later years, my dad and I were able to connect with the guides and military history enthusiasts who met him during his tours. Through that, we were able to get a truly eye-opening tour of where his unit was involved in the campaign — especially during the battles of Ortona (December 1943) and the Liri Valley (May 1944).
My grandpa was part of engagements that took him from Sicily to Northern Italy over the course of 18 months, but he always made special mention of the Battle of Ortona when talking about the horrors of war. The chapter of the war was later referred to as the “Italian Stalingrad” for the ferocity of the fighting between Canadian infantry and elite German paratroopers. And while Ortona is now a lively coastal town on the Adriatic Sea with amazing food and endless bike paths, the scars of December 1943 remain evident.
My grandpa was not directly involved in the fighting within the town itself because the Saskatoon Light Infantry supported advancements in and around Ortona — in particular the crossing of the Moro River and the capturing of Vino Ridge. While many of the official accounts of the fighting around that time were lost, we have reason to believe that Grandpa Bernie may have shot down a German Messerschmitt ME-109 fighter plane that was strafing their unit at Vino Ridge on December 4, 1943. An Italian tour guide who knew Bernie started looking into this, and we hope it can lead to some sort of official recognition.
Canadian casualties from the Moro River Campaign exceeded 2,200 — more than half of them occurred in the eight days it took to capture the town of Ortona itself. However, the town does an exceptional job of recognizing this history with an informative battle museum, a town square dedicated to the Canadian Heroes, and a Canadian cemetery nearby.
Unfortunately for my grandpa and his comrades, the Moro River Campaign was not the end of their fighting. Six months later, the Canadians found themselves advancing through Cassino and the Liri Valley as part of the broader campaign to capture Rome.
The main Allied push centred around the city of Cassino, which is halfway between Rome and Naples. However, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division was responsible for taking some of the surrounding towns. In particular, Canadian troops were tasked with breaking the Adolph Hitler Line — a complex web of defensive positions that had been reinforced by prefabricated concrete bunkers.
It was part of this engagement that my great uncle Harry Alvin Lamb lost his life on May 24, 1944, in the town of Aquino at the young age of 24. My grandpa actually met Harry the day he was killed — long before he would eventually meet and fall in love with Harry’s sister Judy (my grandmother). In a recorded conversation, he talked about their interaction, and why he played Amazing Grace at Harry’s grave at the Cassino War Cemetery.
Beyond the Cemetery, there are countless monuments scattered around the area to honour those who paid the ultimate price for freedom. Some are hidden like the memorial commemorating the Melfa crossing, some are tucked near busy train stations like the memorial to the 28th Māori Battalion from New Zealand, and some stand tall like the Polish forces’ monument at the summit of Monte Cassino. This battle was a world war in itself, with soldiers from nearly every continent fighting on the ground or from the skies above.
A special highlight for my dad and I was visiting a recently uncovered German machine gun bunker along the Hitler Line which is now situated on a farmer’s property. While it did not look that impressive at first glance (full of grown-in vegetation and old broken bottles), the guides are hoping to have it cleaned up to show what it would have looked like before the Hitler Line was broken. We were told that we were the first Canadians to have set foot at this bunker — at least the first since Canadian soldiers captured the position in May 1944!
We spent two days travelling up the Adriatic Coast to see where the Canadians fought in late 1944, especially around Florence, Rimini, and Cesena. While this part of our trip was more self-guided, it helped us appreciate the historical and current perspectives of civilian life along what was then referred to as the Gothic Line. We took a trip to the Republic of San Marino — somewhat for a lark, but also to get an understanding of how close this little, politically neutral country in the mountains got caught in the crossfire of Axis and Allied positions. Canadian and Greek soldiers took the neighbouring seaside town of Rimini before crossing the Savio River to continue the advancement up the coast. It was here that Ernest Alvia “Smokey” Smith, Canada’s last living Victoria Cross recipient, earned his fame as a hero who could have easily been written as a character for an 80s action movie.
It is fitting that today you can now cross the Savio river using the United Europe Bridge — an optimistic symbol of lasting peace in this corner of the world.
The trip opened my eyes to how diverse and multinational the allied forces truly were — something of which we should be more mindful. Social media narratives make it too easy for us to lose sight of both what it meant for the individuals who enlisted for this fight and the lasting legacy of their sacrifice. The wars we have seen instigated by rogue states in the past few years show just how easily we can slip back into dark times if we choose to forget the carnage of war.
To me, this is why days like Remembrance Day matter. War does not just kill, maim, or cause PTSD. It causes painful generational trauma to people like my late grandpa and his father. But choosing remembrance over ignorance helps those scars heal, even eight decades onward. While it is unfortunate that some narratives still exist to downplay or subvert the role of Remembrance Day, it is a testament to the sacrifices of our forefathers that we live in a society so free and peaceful that such debates can even take place.
It costs very little to buy a poppy and it takes only two minutes on the 11th of November to reflect on what this sacrifice meant for Canada, for places like Italy, and for the rest of the world. For those who did not live to see a Remembrance Day of their own, let us take a few minutes next Saturday to think of them.
“Look around the mountains, in the mud and rain, you’ll find the scattered crosses, some that have no name.
Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone, the boys beneath them slumber on.
They are the D-Day Dodgers who stay in Italy.”
