Chapter Four

The Liri Valley: First Gallop, First Blood

March and April 1944 were months of more experimentation, preparations, and deception melded together to get the most out of a massive Allied regrouping for the spring offensive code-named Operation Diadem. General Alexander’s plan was designed to take advantage of the German decision to hold on in Italy south of Rome, apparently at almost any cost. The aim was to smash the Gustav Line’s defenders while breaking out of the Anzio bridgehead to encircle the western flank of Army Group “C.” To repair the damage in Italy, German divisions in the west would have to rush in, further weakening their reserve available for France. After German forces at Anzio and Cassino were smashed and the northern reserves destroyed, the glittering prize of Rome would fall, preferably prior to the landings in Normandy.

The new Allied armoured divisions assembling and reorganizing in Italy were central to this ambitious plan. It was a blessing and a curse that Allied methods for organizing and fighting armoured formations were still evolving in March 1944. There was no “perfect” standard to train to because no one was certain what that should be. On the other hand, most members of 5th Armoured Division were open to new ideas and change. Ever since the war began, the 8th Hussars had been part of a grand experiment in how to wage mechanized, radio-linked, fast-moving mobile warfare. Now only two months remained to refine its methods. After that, warm May sunshine would firm the ground beneath the Hussars’ tank tracks and clear the skies for Allied airpower, and the grand Allied late spring offensive, first in Italy, then Normandy, would open.

The first step was to slip out of the line at Ortona and drive back to the Apulia region. The 8th Hussars took up residence in the hamlet of Masseria Trotta, on the north end of Castelnuovo della Daunia, in Foggia province. Their new camp lay at the eastern foot of the Daunia mountain range, beside the massive and still expanding Foggia air base complex. The well-drained uplands of the Foggia Plain provided an ideal tank-training area given the still wet spring conditions. The camp was also a reasonably short drive away from the Gulf of Manfredonia. There, at the ancient port of Mattinata, 5 Canadian Armoured Brigade established a landing craft school to which Lieutenant Hunter Dunn was detached to serve as gunnery instructor. Two Royal Navy L.C.T.s (Landing Craft, Tank) and crews were spared to run each squadron in 5 Brigade through the paces of practice tank assault landings onto beaches under live “enemy” machine-gun fire. “Frenchy” Blanchet arrived with “A” Squadron for their turn on March 16. Amphibious training fed rumours that they would be used in another Anzio-type hook in the spring. Certainly, Allied senior leadership wanted the Germans to believe that.

The soldiers and sailors involved at Mattinata were kept in the dark about the real purpose of their work. Hunter Dunn took his job as gunnery instructor seriously, seeking out ways to employ the Shermans’ firepower aboard the L.C.T.s to soften up enemy beach defences. The landing craft’s high bow ramp made it impossible to fire straight ahead, but the lower gunwale only came to the top of a tank’s hull, so Dunn and the Royal Navy officers commanding the craft experimented with using tank main guns to fire diagonally over the gunwale at cliffs overlooking the landing beach. Dunn waited until his own regimental brothers arrived at the school to try out his idea. Two “A” Squadron troops of three tanks were loaded onto each L.C.T. Dunn remembers that the day was still and clear and the sea like glass when the assault force came about for its assault run. “After about two rounds from the three tanks on one side of the L.C.T., the navy lieutenant was on the back of my tank yelling ‘cease fire.’ He said we were sinking. I told him to go full speed for the beach as I didn’t want to be responsible for the loss of six 8th Hussar tanks!” The L.C.T.’s seam welding had split under the torque force created by the tank guns firing over the side. Thankfully, all hands made it to shore safely, and the landing craft limped empty to the Royal Navy forward base at Barletta for repairs. It was an important lesson to learn for the Allies readying in England to invade Normandy, although Hunter Dunn discovered on leave in Bari some weeks later that “the name Dunn was held in some disrespect in the Royal Navy.”

While the 8th Hussar squadrons filed one at a time through the landing course, the real focus of “spring training” was to get ready for “all-arms” battle. Radio skills, already at a high standard between tanks, had to reach the same levels with the infantry, artillery, and engineer units working closely with them. The 8th Hussars practised for weeks by shutting down field telephone networks and conducting all communication by radio until the regiment could think collectively on the net. Battle experience also revealed that tank squadrons needed more radios to be able to talk to the infantry, so squadron commanders’ tanks were fitted with an extra No. 19 set wired to an infantry No. 38 set, as well as a spare backpack No. 18 infantry set.

By late March, most of 5th Armoured Division’s 11 Infantry Brigade had rejoined 5 Armoured Brigade, allowing infantry battalions and armoured regiments to experiment together. That month, newly promoted Major-General Bert Hoffmeister took command of 5th Division and its preparations for the coming battle. As in England, Hoffmeister paired each armoured regiment with an infantry battalion. The 8th Hussars formed a Maritime battle group with the Cape Breton Highlanders, with each squadron matched up with an infantry company. The force was joined by an artillery battery from the 8th Field Regiment. The goal was to make all arms appreciate that victory and survival meant thinking and fighting as one. Gone were the days of training to fight separate parts of the same battle. Wireless exercises were practised at regimental, brigade, and divisional levels to improve the efficiency of processing information from lead tanks and infantry companies back at higher headquarters and of issuing orders by radio.

New vehicles arrived at last to outfit Lieutenant Herb Snell’s Reconnaissance Troop: eleven M3A3 “Honeys,” the latest version of the US-built Stuart light tank modified especially for “recce,” their turrets removed to reduce both weight and the vehicle’s profile. Still possessing the radial aircraft engine that gave them speed and allowed them to go anywhere, the new Honeys were the perfect tracked vehicle for scouting. In the absence of a turret and main gun, the open top was ringed with machine guns, including a heavy .50-calibre Browning to take on enemy light armoured cars or lay down cover fire to get out of trouble if they bumped into more enemy than they could handle alone. The main purpose of Snell’s troop was not to fight but to be the fast eyes and ears of a regiment on the move. As well, the 75mm main guns of two command tanks in Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson’s R.H.Q. Troop were replaced by wooden dummies that, with the large breach mechanism and ammunition bins removed from the turret, made room for an additional No. 19 radio set and a small desk at which the battle adjutant, Captain Ab Shepherd, could monitor radio traffic and keep track of friendly and enemy locations on a map.

As March turned to April, each Sherman in the “sabre” squadrons went into No. 70 Light Aid Detachment’s field shop for overhaul and especially to have extra armour plate welded to the vulnerable sides of the hull. Each also had numerous cast-iron loops welded on for attaching fresh-cut brush as camouflage and to provide handholds for infantrymen riding onboard. The refit also included a fresh coat of “soft brown” paint to match the foliage and fields of the Italian spring. As well, to shield Allied intentions from the prying eyes of enemy agents who had infiltrated major population centres and road junction towns behind Allied lines, tactical symbols were painted over to prevent their identification during the move to the Cassino front.

“A” Squadron Sherman crew joking around in a concealed olive grove near Caserta, April 1944.

Hal Skaarup Collection

In their spring 1944 training and experimentation, Canadian armoured divisions moved away from romantic notions of bashing through the muddy front into the great green fields beyond, where they would sever the enemy command head from the fighting body. Instead, they focused on gluing tank, infantry, and artillery units together into teams that could seek out and destroy German units outright wherever they were found. Like any fundamental change in an organization’s philosophy and sense of purpose, new ideas brought confusion and disagreement. Some “got it,” but others did not. 5th Armoured Division’s commander, Major-General Bert Hoffmeister, had fought the Germans in every type of battle since he had landed in Sicily and got it better than most. So did George Robinson. In April, he told the 8th Hussars assembled together on parade that “We will soon be called upon to do the job for which we joined the army and that is to kill Germans. It will not be an easy task but it will be one that we will do well. I have no worries as to our abilities. Nothing can stop us — and nothing will!”

On April 19, the regiment loaded tanks onto railway flatcars at Bovino, southwest of Foggia, and for the second time since arriving in Italy crossed the country’s spine. Secrecy and concealment were imperative. The 8th Hussars staged first to a camp near Dugenta, northeast of Caserta, overlooking the Volturno River. Squadrons dispersed among vast olive groves, stringing camouflage nets in treetops to hide the vehicles from German reconnaissance aircraft. Once assembled in the “hide,” the tanks moved only when necessary for range practice to keep gunnery skills tuned. Traffic kept carefully to an assigned “track plan” so ruts and paths in fields could not give away their location to observers in the sky. The Recce Troop cleared mines left over from the Volturno battles of 1943, making the river safe for bathing and swimming to keep the soldiers fit.

A few weeks later, the 8th Hussars moved to a new staging area at Pignataro Maggiore, closer to but still well behind the front just off the ancient Highway 6 (Via Casalina) north of Capua. The closer the regiment got to the front, the more essential it was to conceal its presence. Camouflage nets were again strung from the treetops, now supplemented with fresh-cut branches that were replaced whenever the leaves began to wilt in the warming spring sunshine. Instead of being dumped in large sites visible from the air, ammunition and fuel were laid in ditches or among copses of trees. The Hussars took these orders very seriously, earning the praise of Eighth Army’s camouflage officer, who, after inspecting their work, deemed them the best-concealed unit in the army. George Robinson’s high standards again had paid off.

The Hussars from New Brunswick formed part of a massive coiling spring waiting to be released to smash the foe. They knew their time was coming but remained in the dark about Allied plans and their role in them. Only on May 11 was George Robinson finally summoned to brigade headquarters for the briefing. That afternoon, he passed the plan on to the assembled Hussar officers: later that night, British, Indian, Canadian, Polish, French, Moroccan, Algerian, and American troops would open the largest offensive so far mounted in the Second World War by the Western Allies — the fourth, and last, Battle of Cassino. Ten divisions were to swarm German units manning a thirty-kilometre stretch of the Gustav Line from the Tyrrhenian coast all the way to the smashed ruins of the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Enemy frontline forces had to be wiped out, if possible, because the Germans would not take long to figure out that no amphibious assault was coming and that the great danger to their forces in Italy lay at Cassino after all. Once they realized that, German units guarding the coast to the north were sure to move south into the trap.

Operation Diadem plan.

Mike Bechthold

When their turn came, Lieutenant-General E.L.M. “Tommy” Burns’s plan for 1st Canadian Corps called for 1st Canadian Infantry Division to lead off, passing through the Gustav Line and making first contact with the German reserves on or near their fallback position, the Hitler Line, and smashing them decisively. Then it would be time for 5th Canadian Armoured Division, broken up into armoured and infantry mobile battle groups, to press through organized enemy defences to hunt down, destroy, capture, or pursue surviving German units and intercept any reinforcements on the move before they could set up new defences. When 5 Armoured Brigade’s commander, Desmond Smith, briefed George Robinson and the other senior brigade officers, he told them he hoped they would be able to fight as complete armoured regiments and not in an “infantry-cum-tank role” as the terminology then described it — apparently, the idea of tanks somehow breaking out alone into the open still had proponents. The violent storm about to break, however, would squash such thinking in the Italian theatre once and for all.

Dismounted crew waiting to join the Fourth Battle of Cassino. Their young crew commander, Corporal Harold Skaarup, is second from the left.

Hal Skaarup Collection

For days they waited anxiously, close enough to hear the rumble of battle along the Gustav Line, but on May 17 the call finally came. By then the Gustav Line had been pierced and 1st Canadian Infantry Division was fighting its way toward the Hitler Line. 5th Armoured Division was ordered forward and told to make ready to take over the attack. That night, the 8th New Brunswick Hussars set off toward the cyclone. By dawn on May 19, they reached “Oxford Bridge,” south of the German strongpoint town of Sant’Angelo in Teodice. Daylight found them in the middle of a lunar landscape, under the eye of the dreaded ruins atop Monte Cassino. This part of the Gustav Line was one of the few battlefields of the Second World War to remain static for five months of intense combat. No building or tree remained standing, and the wreckage of earlier battles littered the ground. Hunter Dunn of R.H.Q. Troop remembers “the total devastation caused by shell fire and the stench of dead animals and humans. One never completely forgets the smell of the battlefield.”

It was here the 8th Hussars had their first encounter with battlefield traffic funnelling into the Liri Valley. The battlefield lying before them was canalized to the south by the Arunci Mountains and to the north by the massive barrier of Monte Cairo, towering 1,669 metres over the Liri Valley and spreading in all directions like a mountain-walled fortress. Monte Cassino stood on a spur acting as the southeastern bastion of the fortress. When the Hussars arrived at the mouth of the valley, Free French and North African troops were fighting their way through the Arunci Mountains on the southern flank and the Polish Corps was clawing its way onto Monte Cassino and the Cairo feature. The Germans still manned excellent observation posts around Monte Cairo linked to mortars, artillery, and rocket launcher batteries further up the valley.

In the daylight hours of May 19, the Hussars drove five kilometres west and deeper into the battle zone to Pignataro Interamna. Here, the whole regiment paused in a laager for the night, shielded from observation at the base of a low ridge crowned by the ruins of Pignataro. By dawn, Captain Jack Boyer and “A” echelon had reached the squadrons to refuel the thirsty “horses” for the next move forward. While the refuelling went on, one of the Liri Valley’s typical thundering downpours turned the fine dust on dirt tracks to slick mud in minutes. The tanks had no problem with the mud, but wheeled supply vehicles faced tougher going in the slime churned up by the fifty-four tanks that preceded them. Now only eight kilometres behind the raging battle, the Hussars were surrounded by the carnage of a fight five days earlier by Indian troops and tanks of the Three Rivers Regiment. While the steel cavalrymen waited anxiously, engineers cleared Gustav Line minefields and Royal Canadian Army Service Corps truckers hauled up thousands of shells for British, Indian, and Canadian artillery regiments to hurl at the Hitler Line. At that point, it was still uncertain whether German reinforcements would arrive in time to man the Hitler Line or whether the whole Canadian Corps would push on through and meet the enemy somewhere further up the Liri Valley. Then, at mid-day, the sun emerged to dry out the earth, and the 8th Hussars moved forward another five kilometres to a deep, wide ravine at the junction of the Forme d’Aquino (Aquino Creek) and a half-dozen smaller streams. The bowl-like feature was the perfect location to concentrate 5th Armoured Division, concealed from the searching eyes of enemy artillery observers on the slopes of the Monte Cairo massif. The great mobile mass of cavalry, motorized infantry, and self-propelled artillery gathered together about four kilometres behind the fighting battalions of 1st Canadian Infantry Division.

Early on May 21, plans solidified. While 1st Division attacked German reinforcements rushing forward to man Hitler Line defences, General Hoffmeister issued orders to 5th Armoured Division to form into a series of all-arms task forces ready to slip through any hole carved in the enemy’s line. Once through the main defensive belt, the task forces were to leapfrog past each other to the Melfa River, which intelligence reports and terrain analysis suggested was the next piece of defensible ground behind the Hitler Line where the Germans would try to re-form. 5th Armoured Division’s first mission was to blast a corridor through the Hitler Line rear areas all the way to the Melfa River and form a bridgehead before enemy survivors could retreat back to it and be reinforced.

The starring tank roles in the mission to the Melfa went to two task forces formed on the British Columbia Dragoons and Lord Strathcona’s Horse, each accompanied by small infantry detachments. The 8th Hussars formed the third and largest task force, together with most of the Westminster Regiment, an engineer squadron, a field ambulance section, a battery of anti-tank guns, and two batteries of self-propelled “Priest” 105mm guns from the 8th Field Regiment. The mission of this all-arms force was to reinforce the Strathconas at the river and guarantee Canadian ownership of the Melfa crossing.

8th Hussar task force formed up in the Forme d’Aquino Gully, May 24,1944.

LAC PA-140208

The Hitler Line to the Melfa River.

Mike Bechthold

On May 24, every man in 5th Canadian Armoured Division was up before dawn and ready to roll. When the order to move came at 0800, the lead British Columbia Dragoon task force charged into the hole and fought its way to the Mancini farm complex. The Strathconas, not waiting for the complex to be reported secure, shot forward to secure the Melfa crossing. In the few books written about the conflict, the story ends with the capture of the crossing, as though that feat ended the battle. 1st German Parachute Division still manned the Hitler Line at Aquino, however, and the corridor opened by 5th Canadian Armoured Division was surrounded and being crossed by German survivors trying to withdraw to the Melfa. The division had done its job of inserting itself between where the enemy was and where he wanted to be; now came the job of destroying or capturing as many Germans still around the Hitler Line as possible. At 1430, the 8th Hussar task force climbed out of the Forme d’Aquino ravine toward the hole carved into the enemy rear, with orders to reinforce their comrades at the Melfa. “Frenchy” Blanchet rolled first with “A” Squadron, followed by R.H.Q. Troop, then Howard Keirstead and “B” Squadron, and “Temp” Lane with “C” Squadron. Bringing up the rear was Lieutenant Herb Snell’s Recce Troop, now shrunken to just five Honeys, the other six having been parcelled out to the sabre squadrons to carry detachments of field engineers to help with demolitions, mines, and explosive traps. It took an hour to get all the tanks over the mud-bottomed San Martino stream in the middle of the Hitler Line.

The regiment was just clear of the gap and forming up north of Pontecorvo when word came over the radio from brigade headquarters that, according to artillery observer aircraft, “the enemy was withdrawing in large numbers on Route 6” — the German Parachute Division seemed to be abandoning Aquino to the north. The 8th Hussars were ordered to wheel hard right and cut in behind the paratroopers’ line of escape. Two squadrons of 5th Division’s armoured reconnaissance regiment, the Governor General’s Horse Guards, were already up there alone, shooting at Germans escaping around them, but they were too few in number to control the six-square-kilometre area covered with a network of farm roads behind Aquino. Concern grew in 5th Division that the escaping Germans might join in a general counterattack from all directions on the embattled Canadians at the Melfa.

Robinson halted the regiment, came up with a new plan and route, and calmly issued radio orders to the tank squadrons to reform facing northward. Three squadrons were to form a ring of steel at the head of the ravines draining into the San Martino brook they had just crossed. It was a sound plan making good use of ground to cover the Hussars’ approach and serving to harden the Canadian right shoulder of the hole cut into the Hitler Line. The new locations would position 8th Hussar Shermans a thousand metres southwest of still-manned German paratrooper positions around Aquino.

Robinson ordered Recce Troop, at the back of the column, to push on ahead of the sabre squadrons. Snell’s five Honeys had driven barely two hundred metres north along the back road to Aquino when they spotted German paratroopers retreating westward on a farm track along the edge of a large orchard right in front of them. Herb Snell called the contact report back to Robinson’s command tank, where it was received with some surprise. “Are you sure?” Robinson asked. In the same instant, Lance-Corporal Don Rodgers, manning the .50-calibre Browning machine gun in one of the Honeys, spotted the paratroopers. “First thing I knew, there were some Jerries rushing along the road directly ahead of us. I opened fire on them; another guy and me about the same time.” Snell excitedly snapped back into the radio microphone, “Well, by Jesus, if they ain’t Germans, I’m blind!” The diminutive Don Rodgers let fly with the heavy .50-cal, earning the nickname “Mow-em-Down Rodgers.” The Germans returned fire, but Recce Troop had the drop on them. Snell and his men figured they killed ten and wounded several more. Five survivors put up their hands to surrender, and the shooting stopped.

After Snell’s heated call, Robinson ordered “A” Squadron to make haste and get the Shermans up to the Honeys. “Frenchy” Blanchet powered the squadron through Recce Troop and into an orchard en route to its assigned position at the head of the ravine nest. Inside the orchard, the squadron came upon a German anti-tank platoon of three half-tracks hitching up to tow their guns out of the Hitler Line. If the guns had been deployed and facing south, things might have been different, but Blanchet’s lead Shermans surprised them. Coaxial Browning .30-calibre machine guns chattered from the turrets, knocking down some of the anti-tank gunners before the remainder surrendered.

Hussar Recce Troop cut-down M3A3 “Honey” tank, May 1944.

Courtesy of Clive Law

Then, just inside the edge of the orchard, two of “A” Squadron’s lead tanks plunged over the edge of a brush-concealed ravine and bogged down. The first vehicle, commanded by Sergeant-Major Ralph Wallace, got stuck with its 75mm gun pointing uselessly to the earth. Facing directly ahead was a German tank stuck in exactly the same position. Neither tank could elevate its main gun to fire at the other. The officer commanding the enemy tank leapt out armed with a Schmeisser submachine gun to decide the matter on foot. Sergeant-Major Wallace, an old Hussar original from Sussex (G129), drew his .38 revolver and did the same. An unnamed witness told 8th Hussars historian Douglas How that the two, “ran from tree to tree, like a couple of boys playing cowboys and Indians, hiding and then firing on one another. We kept watching, waiting for a break and it finally came; they got the German to run in front of a tank and a guy named Archibald opened fire and killed him.” The Hussar log reported, though, that the brazen officer was actually captured. It is unclear whether the Germans were counterattacking, retreating, or both, but a brush-covered gully was a terrible place for a tank squadron to be stuck without infantry. A third Sherman stood at the lip of the gully covering the bogged tanks until Blanchet got another troop of three into the edge of the orchard and ravine.

Behind this action, the lead troops from Major Temp Lane’s “C” Squadron met another German tank accompanied by infantry coming out of woods to the west. The squadron opened fire through the close brush, but were not sure if they hit the tank. Their machine guns, however, opened up on the advancing paratroopers. “One of them ran at us with a potato-masher, one of their long-handled grenades. He must have been a real fanatic, coming at a tank like that. One of our bullets struck the grenade and it exploded and tore off part of his head.” Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson reported these contacts on either side of the 8th Hussars to brigade headquarters, which issued new orders for him to turn the Hussars northwest to a new position two thousand metres south of Mancini farm, captured that morning by the British Columbia Dragoons. It was late afternoon on May 24, and a desperate tank battle was raging around the Melfa crossing. 5th Division headquarters wanted the Hussars to offer a firm shoulder on the south side of the corridor from the Hitler Line to the Melfa. The old military adage of “order, counterorder, disorder” came into play as Hussar squadrons chased around the thick brush that late afternoon, first sent northwest, then northeast, and lastly due west, among confused pockets of Germans retreating in every direction. The New Brunswick Hussars could take consolation, however, in having done what was expected of them: disrupt the German withdrawal and at no cost to themselves, at least not so far.

After Lieutenant Snell’s Recce Troop had gathered up German prisoners at the site of the first contact, they came upon 1st Canadian Division infantrymen wounded in the assault on the Hitler Line the day before. Given the location, they were probably Van Doos or West Novas. “They’d been there close to 24 hours. One had both legs blown off. He kept asking about his pal. We didn’t tell him his pal was dead. He said the Germans had come in the night and taken everything he had, even his identification tag.” Recce troopers loaded the wounded men into their Honeys to get them back to an aid post. Lieutenant David Gass, from Sackville, New Brunswick, rode as troop second-in-command along with Sergeant C.H. Stewart. Not far from the road to Pontecorvo and help, their Honey drove over a pressure-activated trigger wired to a German explosive trap. The explosion rocked the vehicle and set fire to it. Two Hussars were wounded but, thankfully, none of the suffering 1st Division infantrymen was further hurt. However, Sergeant Charlie Stewart, another original (G43) from the regiment’s birthplace at Apohaqui, was killed. He was twenty-four years old and had been an 8th Hussar since the law said he was a man. Thus, the first Hussar killed in action with the regiment was lost to what in a later war became known as an improvised explosive device or I.E.D. His loss was deeply felt.

Still, there was no time for grieving — the 8th Hussars had a job to do protecting the divisional left, or southern flank. In the late afternoon, all squadrons made their way to the blocking position still without any infantry, the Westminster Regiment and the rest of the task force having gone on ahead to the Melfa. Part of “C” Squadron was first into the area, followed by Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson and his second-in-command Major Bob Ross with R.H.Q. Troop. The deepest part of 5th Division’s battle in the German rear was raging another four kilometres ahead, but Germans still lurked everywhere. Robinson and Ross hopped out of their vehicles for a map check and to make plans to deploy the regiment. Next into the position came “B” Squadron and half of “A” Squadron. As they drove in, German infantry in farm houses scattered around the regiment’s area opened fire. In response, the Shermans’ guns cracked away at the houses until white flags emerged. After that, tank crewmen dismounted with Tommy guns, .38 revolvers, and grenades to clear the surrounding buildings.

Close-range predators were not the only ones to worry about: the Germans still controlled Highway 6 and the heights north of it. In May at last light in the Liri Valley, temperatures drop, the humid haze clears, and a spectacular shade effect illuminates objects on the valley floor. German artillery observers watched the Hussars pull into their blocking position and directed artillery fire onto them. Down below, Canadian drivers jockeyed for covered positions while crew commanders searched for distant muzzle flashes, spotting them on the southern slopes of the Monte Cairo massif, some five to six thousand metres northward. That put them in range of Sherman tank crews who knew how to fight like artillerymen. “B” and “C” Squadron calculated the range as best they could and let fly with volleys of high-explosive 75mm shells fired at maximum range. German gunfire ceased, but not before a shell crashed onto the front of one of the Honeys assigned to carry engineers for “C” Squadron. The crew commander, Corporal Samuel Robertson from The Pas, Manitoba, was killed instantly while directing the vehicle into a safe position. The driver was initially reported killed also, although it seems more likely he was badly wounded; the rest of the crew and the sappers on board, keeping low in the open centre of the Honey, were spared.

The Hussars’ first day’s action had proved costly. Yet despite their losses and their efforts to hold 5th Canadian Armoured Division’s corridor open, they get no mention in the history of the battle to reach the Melfa, nor do any of the other Canadian Corps units involved in destroying or rounding up Hitler Line defenders that day. Second World War military histories typically record only the action of the unit furthest out in front, and the Canadians’ operations apparently took place too far behind the touchdown line. The 8th Hussars’ accomplishments were important, however: gradually that day and into the night, orders to withdraw back to the Melfa reached the battered German units still occupying large sections of the Hitler Line, but the 5 Canadian Armoured Brigade’s three battle groups, including the 8th Hussars, were behind them, making it impossible for them to reform in strength on the Melfa River.

From the Melfa River to Ceprano.

Mike Bechthold

When dawn broke on May 25, Jack Boyer was on the scene with “A” echelon’s fuel and supply trucks. By then, the bogged “A” Squadron Shermans back at the upper San Martino gulley had rejoined as well. The well-trained and disciplined 8th Hussars were already rested and fed, refuelled and replenished like old pros. In no time they were ready and waiting to carry on with their original mission to attack beyond the Melfa bridgehead. Morning dragged on and they could hear the sound of battle raging a short distance to the west, but no order arrived to join it.

The 8th Hussars expected to be ordered forward to assemble close behind the river and “marry up” with the Cape Breton Highlanders to be ready to attack as soon as the fight to secure the west bank was won, but the need to manage the chaos on May 24 left them still covering the left rear of 5th Division’s corridor to the Melfa. Finally, at 1100, Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson was called to 11 Infantry Brigade headquarters, where Brigadier Eric Snow had been tasked with commanding the drive on Ceprano. Frustratingly, however, Hussar squadron commanders were then called within the hour to meet up with the Cape Breton infantry company commanders. Snow wanted the attack to start at noon, as soon as the fight to control the west bank was won, but since the 8th Hussars were only just then being brought into the planning process, that was impossible. Snow placed Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Weir in command of the Hussar-Cape Breton combat team. By then, Weir had already briefed his Cape Breton company commanders on his plan of attack, but no Hussars were around to listen.

While Robinson and the Hussar squadron commanders were away at Snow’s headquarters, Major Bob Ross worried about the time it would take to move the Hussars four kilometres ahead to the crossing site through thick brush, enemy stragglers, and mines. Nevertheless, he used his initiative and got the regiment moving. The need to stand guard on the left rear had passed during the night when units from 1st Canadian Division, led by their fellow New Brunswickers from the Carleton and Yorks, pushed up on the left to the lower Melfa, where it joins the Liri River. Ross’s decision was a wise one because it took two hours to cover the distance to “Benedictine Crossroads” just behind the crossing site, through shells, traffic, and mines. The Hussars’ arrival was greeted with concentrations of German shellfire, but crews stayed buttoned up and, by moving tanks into cover wherever they could, no one was hurt. But the guns were still missing. Although the 8th Field Regiment’s guns were on the move to new firing positions within range to support the attack, they would not be ready to fire for a few more hours. All movement forward was further complicated by German ownership of Highway 6 and the north side of the valley. Indeed, the German-held mountains on the Canadian right and rear remained a thorn in 5th Armoured Division’s side for most of the battle. Thankfully, the same brush and orchards that hampered off-road movement on the east bank of the river also concealed various elements of 5th Division making their way to the deep hole punched into the German line.

As the afternoon wore on, the Hussars grew impatient to get into the fight. Major-General Bert Hoffmeister’s biographer, Douglas Delaney, is critical of Brigadier Snow and Lieutenant-Colonel Weir for delays in issuing orders for the attack out of the Melfa bridgehead. According to Delaney, Snow was “ponderous and deliberate” and “not one for anticipating requirements and issuing preliminary orders.” After the battle Snow and Weir were replaced, but for now the New Brunswick Hussars and the Cape Breton Highlanders had to make do with the orders they’d been given.

By 1500, Weir finally had all of the infantry, armour, artillery, and engineer commanders assigned to his battle group assembled to brief them on his plan. By then, so much time had been lost that Hoffmeister was pressuring them to get moving, so a sound plan had to be rushed into action. All the time spent practising pre-battle procedure, such as netting radios in properly with the infantry and marrying up squadrons with companies, went out the window in order to get cracking toward Ceprano. Temp Lane’s “C” Squadron was supposed to cross the Melfa first and advance in front of two companies of Cape Bretoners through tree-lined fields on the west bank to a low rise of ground commanding the approaches to the Melfa crossing site. The remaining Cape Breton companies and Robinson’s R.H.Q. Troop would follow, and “A” and “B” Squadrons were each assigned to work with a company.

Finally, at 1630, Robinson and his squadron leaders leapt through their hatches, Chrysler engines roared, and the Shermans drove off in a long column down into the Melfa gorge on a new earthen road carved into its sides that morning by a Royal Canadian Engineer bulldozer. The narrow, steep, and soft route made movement slow, complicated further by German shells crashing down around the site. As the tanks slowed, the lead Cape Breton companies got ahead of Temp Lane and “C” Squadron. Robinson stayed hot on their heels with R.H.Q. Troop and the rest of the Capers and Hussars.

“C” Squadron climbed to the top of the gorge and spread out with two troops up and a third, along with Lane’s R.H.Q. Troop, in back. The lead Cape Breton infantry companies moved in front of them, making their way left and south as planned. The remainder of the Capers, including two bandsmen playing bagpipes, were in the column with the rest of the Hussars. Robinson and R.H.Q. Troop were tailing behind a Cape Breton Bren gun carrier when they came to a shuddering halt. The carrier, probably one of the signals vehicles for the lead companies, stopped at the top of the gorge on the enemy side and the crew jumped out, seeking cover. The carrier was left blocking the narrow lane for the rest of the convoy as heavy shells began blowing massive craters into the earth around them. Robinson climbed out of his turret and ran over to the driver. Hunter Dunn, stopped two tanks behind, saw the drama unfold. A heavy German shell landed beside the road in front of Robinson, burning off his eyebrows and smashing the periscopes on the tank in front of him. “Our Colonel told them to get back in their carrier and drive forward. ‘You may be afraid of the Germans but you better be more afraid of me’.” The terrified infantry carrier crew mounted up and the column got moving.

They had every reason to be afraid, though. Two hundred metres further up the lane, a storm broke upon ”C” Squadron as a line of German towed and self-propelled anti-tank guns, along with machine guns, snipers, and mortars, opened fire simultaneously. The turret crews fought back angrily, cracking off 75mm shells and machine-gun bullets in the direction of the hostile fire. By accident or by design, the first tanks hit were the troop leaders in both lead troops, Lieutenants Ray Neil and Harry Fleming. Trooper Lowell Langin of Newcastle Bridge, New Brunswick, was the radio operator/gun loader inside the turret of one that started to burn. His troop officer was fighting the tank from the open crew-commander’s hatch when a German shell struck them. “He was the natural one to go, but the gunner and I were trying to be the first one out, too. There were the three of us scrambling around, all trying to get out the top hatch at the same time. There just wasn’t room. We jammed up. All the time the damn tank was burning like blazes. We came back and rared again and got stuck again, so I figured to myself that someone had to wait or we’d all burn. I lay on top of the gun until they got out. I got my hair singed for all my trouble, but we escaped.”

The rest of “C” Squadron answered the fire, turret crews slamming shells into gun breeches and sending them off efficiently just as they had been trained. The equally well-drilled Cape Breton infantry likewise knew what to do, and fought their way toward the enemy weapons in short section rushes, covering each other with Bren gun and rifle fire. Temp Lane directed “C” Squadron’s fire with his head raised just out of the commander’s hatch — these tanks had none of today’s sophisticated sensors, so it was difficult, with the hatches closed, to maintain situational awareness of the location of enemy and friendly forces. A German anti-tank shell caught the open hatch, ripping it from its hinges and bouncing it off Lane’s skull. His tin crash helmet saved his life, but he collapsed to the turret floor, his head split open. Trooper Willie Richard, down in the driver’s compartment, felt the crash, looked back, and saw blood inside the turret. Sergeant Don Carter and Trooper Stephen Matthews were inside tending to Major Lane when the next German shell struck. It pierced the hull just beneath the back of the turret between the fighting and engine compartments, wrecking the motor and knocking the Sherman out of action. The hot armour-piercing shell spit jagged pieces of tank around the inside of the turret. They missed both the already-wounded Major Lane and Don Carter, but tore open Steve Matthews’s back. They had to get out. Carter got Lane out first. Although the major was knocked senseless and bleeding badly, he could stumble out partly under his own power. Matthews needed more effort, but Carter and his surviving crew somehow got the nineteen-year-old boy out of the turret and onto a blanket. Willie Richard remembers Carter telling the boy to “stick with her, Matt,” to which he replied, “you’re damn right.” Carter hoisted Temp Lane on his shoulders and ran him back to the Melfa gorge, several hundred metres to the rear. Richard and the co-driver pulled Matthews to safety, but he was too far gone: he died by the end of the day.

Days earlier, “C” Squadron’s second-in-command, Captain Cliff McEwen, had been ordered back to Division as a liaison officer, making the next man in the chain of command the squadron rear link, Captain William Wood from Sackville, New Brunswick. All of the rear link captains had been well trained how to direct artillery fire back at Ortona by the 8th Field Regiment. Bill Wood now put his skill to use and called down a concentration of 105mm shells on the enemy gun line. His calm voice came over the radio directing the remainder of the squadron to shake out into good fire positions, sing out about where they spotted muzzle flashes, and let loose on the German anti-tank guns, the same ones that had cut up the British Columbia Dragoon squadron earlier that morning. Just as the 1943 drills called for, Wood dealt with the enemy guns with all-arms team fire. “C” Squadron veterans remembered “his coolness was a tonic.”

While “C” Squadron duelled with the enemy force, the rest of the Hussar-Cape Breton battle group emerged from the Melfa gorge and side-slipped left. R.H.Q. Troop popped up out of the gorge in time to see Sergeant Carter carrying Temp Lane to the rear. As Wood took control of the battle, Robinson parked his own tank in front of Lane’s smoking Sherman. One of Hunter Dunn’s jobs as R.H.Q. Troop Officer was to keep the commanding officer alive. He called through his No. 19 set intercom to his driver to pull in front of the C.O.’s tank. “I was looking off to my right for anti-tank guns when my driver said there was someone on the ground to my left trying to get my attention by shooting his pistol at my tank!” Lieutenant Ray Neil had spotted the gun that had brewed up his tank and was angrily pointing it out to Dunn, who could not see it. Instead of shooting at it, however, Dunn fired off his 2-inch smoke discharger to cover their movement behind the “C” Squadron battle line. Moments later, the fight was over. In fifteen sharp minutes, the Hussars accounted for three German anti-tank guns and one self-propelled gun, which lay smoking or abandoned on the right edge of the field. More important, the squadron had acted as a right-flank shield, allowing the Cape Breton assault companies to make their way to the low rise commanding their objective, code-named “BEER,” a field two thousand metres to the left front. Six Cape Bretoners died in the effort, including one of the two company commanders. The other, Major Tony MacLachlan, was hit but stayed on his feet leading the final assault. “A” and “B” Squadrons tried to catch up to the infantrymen, but without being properly netted in with their radios they could not reach them until after the fight for BEER was won. The Cape Bretoners dug in while Hussar crews positioned their Shermans in an arc facing left, front, and right. The Germans, their blocking force having been evicted from the rise, then called down a storm of shell and mortar fire on their former positions. For the Hussars, it was the heaviest enemy barrage they had endured so far in this war.

Darkness gathered as the Hussar-Cape Breton battle group reformed on the low rise, which was beside the main Naples-Rome railway line and overlooked at least a dozen ravines and gullies that cut up the landscape between them and their next goal, the bridge over the upper Liri River at Ceprano, seven kilometres ahead. Brigadier Snow, apparently activated by intense pressure to repeat 5th Division’s dramatic success in disrupting the German withdrawal to the Melfa, wanted to keep going that night. He suggested Hussar tanks take the lead in a night advance to Ceprano with the Capers following behind. George Robinson “argued strenuously” against the idea, especially since the tank-infantry force was still not properly coordinated or netted in. A hasty tank advance in darkness across ravines and gullies completely controlled by the Germans on the high ground to the right was ridiculous. To make matters worse, the Melfa crossing site two thousand yards behind them remained under intense German fire. 6th British Armoured Division had pressed as far as the main Highway 6 bridge over the Melfa but was stopped there in the darkness by strong enemy fire. The Canadian fording site was unfit for anything except tracked vehicles, and traffic behind it was backed up for miles. Somewhere stuck in that traffic was Jack Boyer and the fuel, ammunition, and supply trucks. Snow listened to reason and, instead of pressing on, 11 Canadian Infantry Brigade and their attached 8th Hussars used the cover of darkness to organize themselves.

8th Hussar Sherman “riding” hard up the Liri Valley toward Ceprano, May 1944.

Courtesy of Clive Law

During the night, Canadian Corps Engineers finished two bridges over the Melfa, releasing the traffic stacked up behind it waiting to cross. The Perth Regiment made it over the river and linked up with Howard Keirstead’s “B” Squadron. The Capers finally tied in properly with “Frenchy” Blanchet’s “A” Squadron. By first light, the two Canadian infantry-tank combat teams were ready. “B” Squadron and the Perths took up station on the left, while “A” Squadron and the Capers stayed where they were, just south of the Rome-Naples railway line. North of the railway, 5th Division’s armoured reconnaissance regiment, the Governor General’s Horse Guards, made ready to cover their right flank and suspected German positions on two hills commanding the north side of the valley. Ceprano itself sits low on the Liri Valley floor three kilometres upstream from where the Liri and Sacco rivers join, and is overlooked by heights on the east bank. Those heights were the next goal for the 8th Hussars and 11 Brigade.

A little after 0600, Blanchet’s tanks and the Capers moved off, but after going only a few hundred metres they found themselves in a fight as German machine guns and snipers opened up on the infantry. Blanchet manoeuvred his tanks into firing positions and blasted the first machine-gun posts to oblivion with 75mm high-explosive shells. But the ground in front dropped into yet another brush-covered gully littered with mines and I.E.D.s strewn on paths suitable for vehicles. The Capers went on ahead while “A” Squadron cleared mines and tanks towed each other across the brook at the bottom of the ravine. More brooks lay ahead, and even tracked vehicles found it terrible going. The squadron worked as quickly as it could to get its machines forward to the Capers, who were calling for help to deal with intense German machine-gun and rifle fire ahead. As the force advanced along the farm track that ran alongside the railway embankment toward Ceprano, “A” Squadron’s lead tank bogged in the middle of a brook running across their path. Above the embankment, on a choice piece of ground barring the back road to Ceprano, a German rearguard detachment was making a determined stand. Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Weir brought up another company of Highlanders, the artillery observer lay on a fire mission, and “Frenchy” Blanchet lined up his tanks to spray the railway embankment with machine-gun fire.

Ever since Sicily, Eighth Army policy called for the use of maximum force to deal with German delaying positions since it proved tough to catch and kill the enemy whenever he chose to retreat in the rugged Italian countryside. The goal, then, was not just to drive back the enemy rearguard but to take advantage of the enemy’s having turned around to fight and wipe him out. No German soldier escaped the assault at the railway embankment. Once the attack started, Blanchet and the artillery observer from the 8th Field Artillery spotted a cluster of Germans moving along the gully away from the assault. “The artillery F.O.O. said ‘Want us to take them on?’ and the major said ‘yes,’ and there were a lot of Germans killed when the shells came. It is unclear how many were killed outright. The fifteen that survived put up their hands to surrender.”

On the left, Keirstead with “B” Squadron faced the same problems of terrain, although at first they encountered fewer Germans. Enemy engineers had blown up every culvert and bridge on the dirt road they were following toward the Isoletta Reservoir. It was slow going clearing mines, bypassing demolitions, and inching forward behind the Perth Regiment. By mid-afternoon, the jockeying, track spinning, and searching for bypasses had put Hussar gas gauges dangerously close to empty, but accurate German fire and traffic at the crossing had prevented the customary fuel and ammunition top up the night before. Now, Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson told Brigadier Snow he had no choice but to stop and refuel. Snow chose to stop the whole of 11 Brigade and wait for the Hussars to replenish.

Robinson, however, had anticipated the problem. During the morning, he had managed to get “A” echelon as far up as the Hussar R.H.Q. on the rise named BEER. To save time on refuelling, Robinson had Captain Boyer drive the fuel and ammunition trucks close to the scene of the “A” Squadron-Cape Breton battle. The tanks now were coming to the fuel trucks a troop at a time. Apparently, though, not all of the Germans manning the railway blocking position had been rounded up. When Lieutenant Steadman “Sted” Henderson brought his troop back to the fuel truck, a brazen German flung a potato-masher grenade through his open hatch. It bounced down onto the floor at the driver’s feet. He passed it back to Henderson who then pitched it outside before it detonated.

The advance continued late in the afternoon. Snipers and shells directed from observers hidden far off to the north and west were the main trouble now, along with more demolitions, including brooks sown with mines and I.E.D.s. “A” Squadron crewmen following the lead Cape Breton company did their best to take on the snipers once they were identified, but that usually came after one or more Highlanders had been cut down. One sniper dropped six Capers, and by then all of that company’s officers had been wounded. “A” Squadron’s lead troop searched in vain for the sniper until a Black Watch Highlander finally weaved back to the tank, yelling out the location of the evergreen in which the sniper was perched. That tank’s gunner, Bill Bishop, let loose on the tree. “Down came a Gerry running like the dickens. Bishop followed him with his machine gun. You could see the tracer chasing him until it upended him. When we came up to him, he was sitting against a tree with a cigarette going. He had one leg off and had taken off his belt and made a tourniquet. His sniper rifle had six notches in it.”

After refuelling, “B” Squadron rejoined the Perths and drove over the railway embankment beside the Isoletta Reservoir. Together, they pressed on northwest toward a rise called Point 130, overlooking Ceprano and controlling its approaches in all directions. The force made it to a rise traversed by the Colle d’Alto road and were about to drop into the last ravine that barred their way when German tanks and anti-tank guns fired at them from Point 130. Here, the Hussars met their first Mark V “Panther,” the German tank lauded to be the best of the Second World War, parked on Point 130 over a thousand metres away. The Panther’s long-barrelled high-velocity 75mm gun, much more powerful than a Sherman’s 75, cut loose an armour-piercing shell that missed the centre of mass of Lieutenant Jimmy Jones’s tank, but ploughed into his track and drive sprocket with such force that it travelled all the way along the hull, sheering off the suspension on one side. An anti-tank gun then hit a second “B” Squadron tank. No one was hurt in either crew. Lieutenant Jones saw the flash and could plainly see the Panther. Instead of bailing out, he and his gunner laid on the target. The Sherman’s armour-piercing rounds had no chance of penetrating the Panther’s frontal armour at that range, but Jones called into the intercom, “Load, one high-explosive . . . Fire.” A million-dollar shot, the shell, probably deflecting off the Panther’s gun mantlet, bounced into an open driver’s hatch. The German tank exploded in a ball of flame and metal pieces.

The heights east of Ceprano, meanwhile, appeared to be firmly in German hands. Howard Keirstead backed up “B” Squadron behind the Colle Alto road and tucked it safely under the reverse slope. Two companies of Perths dug in around them. Shortly afterwards, “Frenchy” Blanchet brought “A” Squadron to the Colle Alto road a few hundred metres north, due east of Ceprano. Brigadier Snow, listening to developments over the wireless, decided not to press the attack home but to pause and wait till the next day. There, they holed up for the night and made plans for an assault over the Liri River on May 27. Not taking any chances, Boyer took the opportunity to top up fuel and ammunition.

While the tanks stayed put in the darkness, two Perth companies infiltrated across the deep Liri River gorge on the south edge of town crossing the swift current in small boats. The Irish Regiment of Canada moved to the east bank to cover them and prepare to cross behind them. The next morning, “B” Squadron moved off at the run with the remaining two Perth companies riding on top of the tanks. The moment they crossed their covered start line and topped the crest along the Colle Alto road, German mortar bombs rained down on them. The Perths leapt off the tanks and charged ahead on foot. Keirstead’s tanks barrelled over the crest, down into the last ravine, and then climbed up to take Point 130 and knock out the 88mm anti-tank gun that had fired on them the night before. Shermans inched forward on the northwest nose of the high feature astride the road to San Giovanni, overlooking Ceprano and the Liri River. Canadian infantry and tanks now controlled all roads leading into Ceprano on both sides of the river. By 0900, a Perth platoon and a single “B” Squadron tank had edged down the hill to the deep river gorge where the Highway 6 bridge once crossed it. Northeast of town, Major Blanchet pushed “A” Squadron onto Point 142, also overlooking the town and the roads leading in on the far bank.

It now remained to bridge the Liri so the Hussars could get to the Perths on the other side, but the rising sun brought German observation and heavy fire. The Canadians might look over the roads into Ceprano, but German observers sat even higher above them on the hills north and west of the town. The rest of the Perths crossed the river to join their comrades in clearing Ceprano of snipers. But they could not complete the task because a strong German blocking force occupied a low hill a kilometre west of the town, from which the Germans could bring heavy mortar fire down on anything that moved around the bridging sites. “A” and “B” Squadrons waited helplessly on the heights overlooking Ceprano looking for some way to help. Howard Keirstead went to the river himself searching in vain for a way to get tanks down into the gorge. But if the Melfa gorge was tough, the Liri River gorge was impossible for a tank to cross without a bridge. Meanwhile, they waited, and the Perths attacked Point 126 alone. Frustration grew when the 8th Hussars could clearly see German vehicles and troops evacuating. They called back through R.H.Q. to Brigadier Snow for permission to fire, but were denied. Apparently, headquarters did not know fully the location of all 11 Brigade units, so Snow ordered the Hussars to hold fire in case they hit Irish or Perth patrols in Ceprano. The Hussars fumed as they watched grey-green uniforms and vehicles move into and then back out of the range of their 75mm guns.

While the Hussars waited for the engineers to get forward to bridge the river, Keirstead gave in and let his crews dismount for a smoke and a stretch — for now, it looked as though they would be out of the war for quite a few hours, if not a day. But German artillery observers were watching the tankers emerge from their armoured vehicles, and at 1000 the enemy rained down fire on the nose of Point 130. A dozen Hussars were caught in the open, including Keirstead’s own turret crew, both of whom were killed. The shells came so fast and thick that even men inside tanks were struck. One shell burst in a tree, sending shrapnel into open hatches and wounding two men. Squadron rear link Captain Tom Weir and his driver Trooper J.W. Gammon watched from inside their turret as two Hussars were struck down by blast fragments. They selflessly jumped out to administer first aid amid more bursting shells. Weir and Gammon got the two wounded men to safety in an empty Recce Troop Honey. Weir sent Gammon off in the Honey to get the injured men to an aid post while he went back to man “B” Squadron’s radio links to the outside world. Keirstead and “Tim” Ellis policed up the dead and wounded, got everyone buttoned back up, and pulled the squadron to the safety of the east side of Point 130. Five men were killed and eight wounded during the barrage. The five dead are buried at the Cassino Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery; they are Trooper John Pesko, an American who had crossed the border to join the Canadian Army; Trooper James Patrick O’Reilly from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and Trooper Clinton Groves from Trout Mills, Ontario, two reinforcements assigned to the regiment when it expanded into an armoured regiment early in the war; and two old originals, Trooper Alfred C. Lawton (G544) from St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and Major Keirstead’s radio-operator, Lance-Corporal Alvin McGarity, (G138) from Young’s Cove, New Brunswick. It was a bitter blow to the squadron.

Two Hussars on leave after the liberation of Rome, summer 1944.

Vern Pearson Collection, PANB

By now, the New Brunswick Hussars were itching to join their infantry brothers in action on the west side and avenge their comrades. But they had to wait, for now the fighting was over. In the aftermath of its first mobile armoured battle, 5th Division and the 8th New Brunswick Hussars could feel proud of their actions. The Germans, shocked that the Hitler Line defenders had been destroyed so quickly, made desperate efforts to feed more men and heavy weapons into the grinding battle to hold the Melfa River, and in so doing played into the Allies’ hands. Intercepted German signal traffic revealed that their Melfa blocking force was “completely destroyed.” In total, the 8th Princess Louise’s (New Brunswick) Hussars destroyed or captured eleven German anti-tank guns, two self-propelled guns, a half-dozen gun tractors, a 105mm field artillery piece, innumerable machine guns, and Jimmy Jones’s Panther tank. They killed or captured over a hundred German soldiers. These measurable achievements mattered in the struggle to defeat Nazi Germany’s army much more than the rate of “advance.” In return, the regiment paid a heavy price: ten dead and twenty-four wounded. Six tanks had been totally destroyed, but thirteen others were recovered and repaired by unit fitters. In the context of this most destructive war in history, the 8th Hussars could take pride that, in their first true battle, they had made an important contribution to the mission of drawing German attention and forces to Italy and thereby guaranteeing victory in Normandy. The lessons and the experience the Hussars took away made them an even more efficient armoured force, and readied them for their greatest role, which awaited them three hundred kilometres north.