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The Italian Campaign: The 'hills of hell'
A full year before the D-Day landings in Normandy, there were the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy. Canada played a major role in the Allies' first breach of Hitler's "Fortress Europe" in 1943 and 1944. Canadian soldiers defeated entrenched German forces but paid a terrible price. Seaside towns and mountain passes became places of horror: Ortona, Cassino, Rimini. But with the events of D-Day and the Allied push across Europe, the Italian Campaign became a forgotten front, a deadly sideshow that cost nearly 6,000 Canadian lives. Sixty years later, their bravery is remembered.
. The Battle of Monte Cassino was a series of Allied assaults on this part of the Gustav line on the way to Rome. The British Eighth Army joined the stalled U.S. Fifth Army at Cassino, one of the final obstacles before Rome.
. The ancient monastery of Monte Cassino was founded in about the year 529 AD by St. Benedict of Nursia. He was the founder of the Benedictine Order and is considered the patriarch of western monasticism.
. The monastery became one of the great centres of Christianity, and is the site where, in about 540 AD, St. Benedict wrote his famous Rule outlining the main principles of religious life.
. The site of many battles, Monte Cassino was sacked by the Lombards (an ancient Germanic people) in about 581 and the Saracens (medieval Arabs) in 883. In 1349 it was destroyed by an earthquake, and it was flattened during the Second World War. It was rebuilt each time and reconsecrated in 1964.
. In the 11th century the monastery had a scriptorium which produced many famous illuminated manuscripts. When the Second World War broke out, the great library at Monte Cassino was transferred to the Vatican.
. In early 1944, Allied planes bombed the monastery into ruin, but a German garrison was entrenched in the rubble. The Allies made three assault attempts at the heavily fortified position, but failed each time at a cost of over 50,000 lives. On May 18, Polish troops finally took the monastery.
Program: CBC Radio News
Broadcast Date: May 14, 1944
Guest(s):
Reporter: Peter Stursberg
Duration: 4:35
Photo: Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
Last updated: September 4, 2012
Page consulted on March 20, 2013
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One soldier's plea for Canadians to remember their men in Italy.
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