From Italy to France

Heroes Remember

From Italy to France

Transcript

We landed in Anzio, Beachhead and that's where I heard my first shell. And we used to shell up at Anzio Beach the dock there every night. All the time they were shelling, shelling, shelling. When I got, when we got there, the beachhead was only about five miles square so that's not too big, is it? So then we all had to dig our holes in the ground. And that's where we done a lot of the training we used to go on night patrols, pretty near every night, night patrols, day time patrols and that was every night. And then after about six weeks, I guess it was about six weeks that's when we made the big push for Rome. And it was, I would say there was, the morning we left there was five hundred bombers in the air dropping, our bombers, softening up the route. I think it took us fifteen days to get to Rome. Had a bunch of prisoners with us. They didn't want to fight either. We had no problem with them. They were like us, they didn't want the war either. And we all sat down and drank wine together but we had a lot of people on guard though watching us you know. Interviewer: What was your job at the time? I was a gunner. In the infantry, machine gunner. And that was heavy, I'm telling you, it weighed over thirty pounds I would say plus your ammunition that was on your, all the time on your back. The Germans gave it to them, they were scared to death of us. Interviewer: Really? Yeah. Interviewer: Now why was that? I wasn't there. Just after I joined that they took this place by the name of Santa Maria, there are two Santa Maria's in Italy. They took this Santa Maria and they never lost a man. They had a couple wounded but they took every German in that town prisoners and then when they interrogated some of them, one of their officers that's what they named us. They were terrified of us yeah, they didn't know where we were. We'd blacken our face in the doors at night, they couldn't see us. And then we always had a scout with us too, they were good. Some patrols would be a contact patrol, eh. And more times there would be a fighting patrol and there was different kinds of patrols. I know one night we left at dark, dusk and we went a long ways because we didn't get back until morning, daybreak. But we were gone a good many hours. But on the way back I guess the Germans had the same idea as we had so we met their patrol head to head. And we tooka few prisoners and that was a bad night. But anyway everything worked out good that time. Just I don't know, by the grace of God I guess it did. After only, we took, we came back to a lake by the name of Lake Albano that was just outside of Rome. And then we were there for about a month I guess and the rest and we took amphibious training in rubber boats. We knew there must be something up and there was. We had to make a beach landing in Southern France. I was a beach marker. Interviewer: Okay. What does a beach marker do? Well they get into a rubber boat with three other guys and you paddled yourself ashore in the dark and pull up a light and just praying to God that there's no Germans where you land. All your gear and everything you're not supposed to make any noise. Climb down one of those boats on rope ladders on destroyers and rope ladders, that was scary. And I can't swim.

Description

Mr. Durant talks about many of his Italian missions and battles. Also, about his involvement in the Devil's Brigade.

Lawrence Durant

Mr. Durant was born in Saint John, New Brunswick but moved to Prince Edward Island as a child and grew up in the Summerside area. His father was a peddler. He joined the army in May, 1943 and was sent to the Italian front where he saw action for the first time on the Anzio Beachhead. He was part of the forces that went on to Rome and forced its fall from German hands. He was also briefly part of the Devil's Brigade. With the West Nova Scotia Regiment, Mr. Durant saw action in France, Belgium and Holland where he took part in the fall of Apeldoorn. He briefly left the service after coming home, but enlisted again in 1950 and took part in three peacekeeping missions to Germany, Egypt and Korea. He was discharged in 1960 from the military and made his home in Charlottetown, PEI.

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