84 years ago today, 4,963 Canadians went ashore at Dieppe. By early afternoon the beaches were back in German hands. Fewer than half the men came home. More than 910 were killed. 1,946 were taken prisoner, the largest single Canadian surrender of the war. This is Operation Jubilee mapped position by position, from the run-in to the last radio call off the beach.

The rain that had covered the crossing now threatened to cut the bridgehead off. Gen. Vokes noted that the water gap widened from 45 feet to 300 feet in 24 hours. The engineers could offer no hope of getting supporting arms across for at least a day. At 0705 on the 22nd, Brigadier Bogert told his battalions to hold their positions. Daylight brought one piece of good luck. German machine-gunners on the riverbank, unaware of what had happened on their flank, walked back with their mess tins to the farmhouse kitchens that were now D Company’s headquarters. “This surprised and surprising breakfast line-up netted us 56 prisoners of war,” Bell-Irving wrote. By the end of the morning the battalion held some 150. The Germans still had tanks, and the Seaforths had almost no PIAT bombs left. At 1215 a tank and infantry drove A Company out of the buildings on the main road. The artillery observation officers, calling down fire from the guns east of the river, became the bridgehead’s strongest defence. Supplies crossed by assault boat and later by raft, and nearly 200 prisoners worked as porters and stretcher-bearers. Telephone lines laid across the river were carried away by floating haystacks. On the afternoon of the 23rd, Maj. R. Clark led a patrol back towards the main road. The covering 2-pounder jammed, and Clark was killed in the withdrawal. By 0300 on the 24th a floating bridge was open, and at dawn the Germans pulled back. Lt-Gen. McCreery wrote to Bogert that the battle had been “a great example of how determined, well trained infantry can destroy enemy tanks with their own weapons.” The four days cost 2nd Brigade and the West Nova Scotia Regiment 191 casualties, 33 of them fatal. The Germans had simply withdrawn to the next river. 📷The Marecchia River, seen overrunning its banks following heavy rain, is sweeping a Bailey Bridge downstream. Army Numerical 73, 41995. 📷Seaforth's with Stens, Enfields & a PIAT, in Bagnacavello, Senio River, Italy. From the Album (Scrapbook) of Major W.David Blackburn.

Sad to learn today that Master University can't afford to keep the Lloyd Reeds Map Collection online. This is one of the most important WW2 map collections in the world, curated and built by Gord Beck who put so much love into building this collection. I am not sure what the future holds for this Map Collection, but I do hope that McMaster will consider passing on the collection to an organization who has the capacity and knowledge to keep these maps accessible. This is much like the WW2 aerial imagery collection at Laurier. The originals are kept in the basement awaiting a flood, and the digital copies kept on an external HDD above a microwave. It is disappointing when institutions like these can't have the proper infrastructure and data governance to maintain their collections. We have kept Project '44 free and online for almost 8 years now and have no long term financial backing. If we can do it, you think they would be able to do it.

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.

The Savio north of Cesena ran between steep, high dikes. The Canadian official history called it “a strong natural military barrier, at all times a tank obstacle and when in flood virtually impassable to infantry.” Even in peacetime, the Italians had never bridged it on that stretch. On the evening of 20 October, two companies of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry attacked across at Martorano. D Company never got over. Only 17 men of Maj. E. W. Cutbill’s A Company made it across, and their wireless set was put out of action in the water. For more than a day they clung to a strip of the far bank with German positions 75 yards away on every side, while the rain collapsed their dugouts. At 2000 on 21 October, 2nd Brigade made its set-piece crossing, with the Seaforths on the right and the Edmontons on the left. It was raining, and the rain helped. B Company of the Seaforths found heavy fire on its crossing place, moved 300 to 400 yards north and waded over unopposed. D Company crossed the mud flats in single file, waded the chest-deep river by 2045 and joined Cutbill’s men under the bank. Their weapons were so caked with mud that some of the Patricias swapped rifles with them, since the Seaforths were the ones going forward. A farmhouse beyond the ridge turned out to be the headquarters of the German unit holding the sector, and 25 prisoners were taken in it. When 17 Platoon rushed another house, Lt. W. D. F. Gildersleeve shouted for the occupants to come out and was answered in English: “Don’t shoot! Vee are coming!” B Company’s signaller, Pte. G. V. Carrington, lay in an open field under shell and machine-gun fire until he had the soaked No. 18 set working again. He received the Military Medal. By 2330 both companies were on their objectives. The Seaforths later credited the weather, which kept the Germans in their dugouts, and the choice of crossing places the enemy had thought impassable.

When Lt-Col. H. P. Bell-Irving returned to command the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada in the autumn of 1944, he brought an idea with him. On the San Fortunato ridge in September he had watched men of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment knock out several heavy German tanks with anti-tank mines and the PIAT. Bell-Irving wanted the PIAT used to hunt. It was not a popular weapon. The PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) was a spring-loaded spigot launcher that threw a hollow-charge bomb of about two and a half pounds. To cock it, a man had to stand on the weapon and heave on the shoulder piece. It was reliable against the side or rear of a tank at a hundred yards or less, and of little use beyond that. Using it against a Panther meant letting the tank come very close, in full view of its machine guns and the infantry riding on it. At Riccione, the Seaforths formed a tank-hunting platoon under Lt. F. H. Harfield, drawn from the anti-tank platoon: an officer, a sergeant, a corporal and 14 others. Eight men formed four two-man PIAT crews. The other six carried No. 75 “Hawkins” grenades and Tommy guns. The drill was simple. Mines laid across a road would break a tank’s tracks. Once it was stopped, a PIAT crew would knock it out at short range, and the Tommy gunners would deal with the crew and any infantry riding on it. One of the men picked for the platoon was a private who had been with the battalion since 1940 and had been promoted to corporal, and reduced again, nine times. His name was Ernest “Smokey” Smith. Within weeks, the drill would be tested on a dark road beside a church on the far side of a river no tank could cross.

Come on guys...

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

Soldiers of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade run into snipers and machine gun fire, Campochiaro, Italy. This dramatic photograph shows Canadian soldiers of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade pinned down by sniper and machine-gun fire in the streets of Campochiaro, Italy, during the Italian Campaign. It is often misidentified as Ortona, but the image was actually taken earlier, in November 1943, as Canadian troops fought their way through a series of hill towns on the advance to the Moro River. The narrow streets and stone buildings of Campochiaro created a deadly environment for infantry. German and Italian defenders used high vantage points and prepared firing positions to sweep alleyways with machine-gun fire, while rubble and ruined walls made movement slow and exposed. Canadian troops responded with cautious advances, hugging walls, returning fire where they could, and relying on supporting arms to dislodge hidden defenders. Though less well-known than the later house-to-house fighting at Ortona, battles like Campochiaro were typical of the grinding Italian campaign: infantry pushing through fortified towns, enduring ambushes and sniper fire, and paying a heavy price for each step forward. This photograph captures the vulnerability and determination of Canadian soldiers in those moments—an image that has become symbolic of the difficult fighting in Italy.

Band of Brothers is easily the most well known show on WW2. I try not to do a lot on BoB because it is covered so much, but for small engagements this is probably the most well known of them all. I thought it would be fun to test what it would look like animated.

On the afternoon of 16 December 1944, more than a thousand people filled the Cinema Rex in Antwerp for a matinee of The Plainsman. Many were Belgian families. Nearly a third were Allied soldiers on leave, British, American, Polish and Canadian. At 3:20 p.m. a German V-2 rocket came through the roof without warning. The building collapsed on the audience, killing 567 people, 296 of them servicemen. It took almost a week to recover the dead. It remains the deadliest single missile strike of the Second World War. To understand why that rocket fell on Antwerp, you have to understand why the city mattered. By the autumn of 1944 the Allied armies had raced across France and Belgium, but their supplies were still being landed in Normandy and driven hundreds of kilometres to the front. The advance was starving for fuel and ammunition. Antwerp, one of the largest ports in Europe, was the answer. British troops took it almost intact on 4 September, but the Germans still held the banks of the Scheldt estuary that connected the docks to the sea. Clearing it fell largely to First Canadian Army, and it took two months of grinding, costly fighting through flooded fields and dykes. Only on 28 November, after the river was swept of mines, did the first Allied ships tie up at Antwerp. Germany could not retake the port on the ground, at least not yet, so it tried to destroy it from a distance. From launch sites in the occupied Netherlands, German units fired two very different weapons at the city. The V-1 was a pilotless flying bomb driven by a pulse jet, slow enough to be shot down and loud enough that people learned to dread the moment its engine cut out. Thousands were fired at Antwerp. Against them the Allies built a defence known as Antwerp X: more than 500 guns and some 22,000 American, British and Polish soldiers under US Brigadier General Clare Armstrong. As radar and new proximity fuzes improved their aim, they went from bringing down roughly six in ten flying bombs to almost all of them. The V-2 was something new in the history of war: a ballistic rocket that climbed to the edge of space and fell faster than sound. There was no warning and no defence. About 1,600 fell on the Antwerp area, more than were fired at London. No city in the world received more. The bombardment began on 13 October 1944 and did not end until the last launch sites were overrun at the end of March 1945. When Germany launched its great Ardennes offensive on the same day as the Rex disaster, its ultimate objective was Antwerp itself. By the time the weapons stopped falling, more than 4,000 civilians and soldiers had been killed in and around the city. And yet the port never closed. Through the whole of that winter, ships kept unloading at Antwerp, and the supplies that came through its docks carried the Allied armies into Germany and on to victory. The map in this video plots roughly 1,300 V-weapon impacts recorded within the city itself.