wulfir
Posts: 3091
Joined: 9/11/2001
From: Sweden
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Read this I you feel like taking a break from bitching about version 7 and remembering some of those for who World War II was anything but a game.
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"If it wasn't hell, it was the courtyard of hell. It was a maelstrom of noise, and hot splitting steel…
CBC correspondent Mathew Halton
A CHRISTMAS AT THE FRONT
The soldiers of the Canadian 1st Infantry Division had come ashore in Sicily in August 1943 and fought a number of fierce but rather small-scale battles against a retreating enemy. Later they were sent to continue the fight on mainland Italy where the enemy kept falling back while the Canadians kept advancing liberating, town after town. For some it was a time of adventure, a time where they could sense some of the glory of war.
By the first week of December 1943 it all changed. The Canadian 1st Division had reached less then seven kilometres from the town of Ortona and they expected it would take one more day of fighting before the town was in their hands. Little did they know they were about to crash right into the German Winter Line and some of the best troops the enemy could field. Two weeks later, after some heavy fighting, the Canadians could begin the attack on Ortona itself. Waiting for them inside the town were the Fallschirmjäger of the First Parachute Regiment. Some very savage fighting ensued, fighting that seemed to be reaching the peak of murderous intensity on Christmas day.
"And that's the kind of Christmas you have to carry around for the rest of your life. The people at home can't get me excited about Christmas on the 23rd and 24th. It doesn't work. It's as though I am dead on those days.“
German soldier Hugo Bauer on his experience at Ortona.
The Canadians on the other hand had the fortune of a short glimpse into the sort of Christmas they had known before but forgotten in the savage fighting at Ortona, as they were rotated, company by company, from the fighting in the city to the Santa Maria di Constantinopoli church for a hasty Christmas dinner. With the battle raging a few blocks away they, in a desperate search for normality, sang Silent Night. Wilf Gildersleeve, who played the organ that day, describes the mood as they sang:
"For that moment we were able to live in another world…almost in tears, I think, to sing those words."
An hour or so of calm followed by the inevitable return to the battle and whatever fate that awaited them.
For some the Christmas meal in the church had been their last.
Slowly, bit by bit, the Canadians were able to dislodge the German hold of the town. Then sometime on December 27 the Canadians intercepted an enemy wireless message; asking if companies knew their orders and areas while referring to “Operation Ortona”. The details implied a counterattack. This did not develop however, and on Tuesday, December 28, 1943 the Canadians stood as victors in the rubble of the badly shot up town. The Germans had withdrawn under the cover of darkness.
Because of the intensity of the battle at Ortona it is sometimes remembered as “Canada’s Stalingrad”.
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Old news for some, perhaps, not for me. Material for a campaign…hmmm…
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Semper in Primis
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THE COURTYARD OF HELL - 
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