Calgary tour group will retrace Canadian soldiers' WWII Italian steps
About 30 Calgarians will travel to Sicily and up the Italian peninsula in November to follow the paths of relatives who fought in what many call the forgotten campaign of the Second World War.
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Vicki Sotvedt never met her great uncle, but this November she'll walk the ground he fought across more than 80 years ago.
Peter McGowan, a Hastings and Prince Edward Island Regiment infantryman, was captured by German troops in 1944 while fighting to breach the Nazis' Gothic Line in northern Italy. He spent the war's final months in a POW camp in Germany. The letters he sent home contained restraint—"all the things when you didn't want your mother to worry about you," Sotvedt said.
Now the Calgarian, a historian who has spent years studying Canadian soldiers' experiences in Italy, will join about 30 others on a tour organized by Valour Canada, a non-profit that connects Canadians to their military heritage. The group will begin in Rome in November and retrace the paths their relatives took, starting in Sicily and moving northward up the Italian mainland. Sotvedt will serve as the tour's historical interpreter.
The Italian campaign, fought from 1943 to 1945, cost nearly 6,000 Canadian lives in action but remains overshadowed by the Normandy landings of June 1944. "There were more casualties at Ortona than at Juno Beach but (Italy) is a forgotten campaign for most people," said Brad Pierce, whose aunt and uncle both served in Italy—Helen Pierce as a nurse, her eventual husband Frank as a military policeman. The two would marry after the war, but not before experiencing the campaign's bloodiest battle at Ortona on the Adriatic coast in December 1943, where more than 500 Canadian soldiers died battling German paratroopers.
Pierce said an earlier trip to Italy illustrated the deep gratitude Italians hold for Canada's sacrifice. "Canadians need to understand the significant sacrifice Canadians made and that connection to the Italian people," he said. "In Ortona, Canadians are treated not unlike they are in Holland . . . there's a gratitude toward Canadians."
For Sotvedt, visiting Canadian war cemeteries will be the most emotional part of the journey. "I'm more susceptible to those feelings because I understand what I'm looking at," said Sotvedt, who at 31 brings both family ties and scholarly depth to the pilgrimage.