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After Sicily

Heroes Remember

Transcript
As far as we're concerned, the invasion went on, the Americans went on the west coast of Italy. We had another squadron...we didn't go in right away, we came in afterwards on the east coast. And we landed up there, that was when...where they told us that there's no problem there, everything is fine. But we found again our big problem was the armament we had on the tanks because the Germans with the 88's. They used to sit behind the sand dunes and wait for us to come up. Because we couldn't see who was there. And all they had to do was just fire, and it'd just come up like that. Some of the time there we had to get off the beach because we couldn't get into the...couldn't land. But once we landed, which was south of Foggia (sp), that was a big area, there was a lot of airports there. We captured that very quickly. That gave the air force a chance to come in. Then we went up from there to Bari. And then we came up the next big battle we had there was, would be Termoli. That was the next big battle where we lost quite a few tanks.
Description

Mr. Horowitz talks about what happened when they left the island of Sicily for Italy (the continent). He describes the first few battles, German weapon superiority and how the terrain played to the German advantage.

Robert Horowitz

Mr. Horowitz was born in Cornwall, Ontario, on August 30, 1919, of Jewish parents who immigrated to Canada from Russia. He grew up in Montreal where he studied at Lord Arthur School and then moved on to Montreal High. He enlisted with the Régiment de Trois-Rivières in the latter part of 1939 when he was 20 years old and still in high school. Mr. Horowitz attended Camp Borden during the winter of 1939-40 for approximately 1.75 years. He first set foot on European soil in Scotland and trained in Salisbury. He saw action for the first time in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula before being wounded in Tremali. Following the war, he spent some time with Veterans Affairs assisting Canadian Veterans in England and later retired in Canada.

Meta Data
Medium:
Video
Owner:
Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:
01:33
Person Interviewed:
Robert Horowitz
War, Conflict or Mission:
Second World War
Location/Theatre:
Italy
Battle/Campaign:
Italian
Branch:
Army
Units/Ship:
Three Rivers
Occupation:
Gunner

Copyright / Permission to Reproduce

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