Much Canadian blood had been split on the long road to Ortona. The cruel path had begun on the shores of southern Italy back in September 1943, before snaking across winter-ravaged countryside by November, all the while pushed back by ferocious German resistance efforts. Hitler had one chief goal: to make the Allies pay for every inch of ground.
Attached to the British Eighth Army as it clawed its way northwards, 1st Canadian Infantry Division – commanded by Major-General Chris Vokes – had arrived at the south bank of the Moro River by early December. There, over several days, attempts to gain a foothold on the far side had proven costly as the 90th Panzergrenadier Division held firm, in spite of their own losses. Only on the 9th were the Canadians able to secure most of their objectives, although their ordeal against a determined enemy and challenging terrain had not yet ended.
The next obstacle became known – somewhat ominously – as The Gully, a 197ft-deep (60m) and 262ft-wide (80m) natural trench spanning three miles (5km), around which the dug-in Germans lay in wait. Major-General Vokes thrust his men forward in a series of frontal assaults, each failing to dislodge the grenadiers. Nicknamed ‘The Butcher’ for these actions, the Canadian commander subsequently sent his French-speaking Royal 22e Régiment into the fray, at last slicing a wedge into the German defences – and, in the process, facilitating the heroic rise of Québécois Victoria Cross recipient Captain Paul Triquet.
Praised for his leadership in the face of repeated counter-attacks, Triquet’s remarkable exploits undoubtedly boosted morale. What they could not do was detract from the considerable casualties sustained within 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s ranks. “[Vokes] has been sharply criticised by Canadian historians for how he handled the Moro River Campaign and The Gully,” Major Jayson Geroux, a Canadian Army officer, urban operations instructor and leading expert on Ortona, tells History of War. “But looking back now, his decision to predominantly use 1st and 3rd Brigades, all the while leaving 2nd Brigade out of the worst of these engagements, had
