In the early hours of 22 October, C Company of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada reached the church of Pieve Sestina, about 500 yards short of the main road north of Cesena. Including the tank hunters, Maj. Stewart Lynch had about 50 men. They had no tanks and no anti-tank guns, and the river behind them had risen six feet in five hours. Enemy tanks could be heard moving nearby. Sgt. K. P. Thompson laid a string of Hawkins grenades across the road at the junction beside the church and camouflaged them. Smith led his PIAT team across an open field under fire to a roadside ditch, then went back across the road with Pte. James Tennant for a second PIAT. First into the trap came a Volkswagen staff car, which passed between the mines. Behind it, a self-propelled gun struck one, lost a track and was finished off with PIAT bombs and grenades. Then came a Panther with infantry riding on its hull, sweeping the ditches with its machine guns. Tennant was hit. At 30 feet, in full view of the enemy, Smith fired. The Panther stopped and began backing away. About ten German infantrymen jumped off and charged him. Smith moved out into the road and killed four of them with his Tommy gun at point-blank range, and the rest fell back. Another tank opened fire and more infantry closed in. Gathering abandoned magazines from a ditch, Smith stood over his wounded friend until, in the words of his citation, the enemy “finally gave up and withdrew in disorder.” He then got Tennant to cover and medical help, and went back to his place by the road. “In the end there was just Jimmy and I, and then he got wounded so that left only me,” he said years later. “So I had to stay out there by myself while everybody else was in the church.” By 0600 the Germans had gone. Smith’s Victoria Cross was the only one ever awarded to a Seaforth, and the third and last won by a Canadian in Italy.

Thirty feet from a Panther: the true story of Smokey Smith 22 October 1944. The Savio River, Italy. Rain had raised the river six feet. No tanks or anti-tank guns could get across to the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada on the far bank. Then three Panthers, two self-propelled guns and about thirty infantry came down the road at them. Pte Ernest "Smokey" Smith knocked out a Panther with a PIAT at thirty feet, then held the road with a Tommy gun. He became the only Canadian private awarded the Victoria Cross in the Second World War. Every unit on this map is placed from the war diaries and company reports of the men who were there. Tomorrow, 82 years to the day, we release the full video: six days, and the crossing of the Savio. #SmokeySmith #VictoriaCross #SeaforthHighlanders #CanadianHistory #WW2 #ItalianCampaign #LestWeForget – at Casselman, Ontario