www.nb.legion.ca 5 It is a great honour to be sharing this dinner in a room full of extraordinary men. In the past few years at UNB I've had the great pleasure of researching and teaching about Canada's war in Italy. I learned this regiment, and indeed all Canadian units in the campaign, made a critical contribution to stopping Nazi evil that only now can we fully appreciate. Recently-declassified intelligence documents about German military strength prove that the Allied invasion of Normandy and drive into Germany would be destroyed unless some way coud be found to draw some of the enemy's attention in the West. Against the 29 Allied divisions that could land in Normandy with the available sealift, the Germans could muster 51. The solution was Sicily and Italy, and you. We also know now that this scheme could only work if your mission to Italy was given the barest minimum of men, weapons and ammunition so as not to reduce the size of the Normandy invasion. Most importantly of all, we know now that you succeeded in this mission beyond the expectations of great generals and planners. Not because you captured all of Italy and crossed the Alps into Vienna, but because with a comparatively small force you convinced Hitler and his generals that you could. That made you very dangerous. For that you lured in 27 of those 51 enemy divisions that - as I need not tell you - included many of the best in the German Army. As often as not this meant you were evenly matched on rugged ground that made Jerry's job a hell of a lot easier than yours. But you kept attacking with the kind of detemination, guts and military skill that made the Germans believe you were always one step away from Vienna. This was exactly what the Combined Chiefs of Staff needed you to do. You fought half the German Army in the West, with less than a quarter of Allied strength. To me that doesn't make you D-Day Dodgers; it makes you the long right flank of the invasion of Normandy and advance to Germany. The world has you to thank for making Allied strategy to stop Nazism finally work. And you, the Carleton and Yorks, performed more than your share of the mission 62 years ago in the Dittaino River Valley in Sicily, and at Reggio and the dusty foot of the boot, and in front of that awful Gully and the rest of that terrible winter around Ortona. You did it brilliantly 61 years ago when you bashed your way through the Hitler Line, and you were nothing short of miraculous in that hellish, shell-swept valley in front of San Fortunato Ridge. And you kept on doing it, even though it meant another wet Italian winter, often below sea-level in the Po Valley flats. THE TOAST TO THE REGIMENT, THE CARLETON & YORK REGIMENT As proposed by Lee Windsor of the University of New Brunswick Conflict Studies Faculty at the Dinner held in conjunction with the 60th, and Final, Annual Reunion of Surviving Veterans of the Regiment held at Fredericton, New Brunswick, on Saturday, August 6, 2005. cont’d
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