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Description
Mr. Dowie describes a tactical system they learned while in Ortona which was called "mouse-holing".
Vernon Dowie
M. Dowie est né à Montréal, le 9 juillet 1920. Son père, d'origine jamaïquaine, était médecin et avait reçu sa formation à Cambridge, en Angleterre. Il ne possédait pas de licence pour pratiquer la médecine au Canada et, pour cette raison, il a occupé divers emplois, notamment peintre et porteur pour une compagnie de chemin de fer. Au mois d'août 1940, M. Dowie s'est joint au Three Rivers Regiment et a fait partie de la 1re Brigade blindée canadienne. Instruit en Angleterre, il a servi en Italie, en Sicile et en Hollande. Il œuvre toujours auprès du Three Rivers Regiment.
Transcription
We then moved across the field and into Ortona and the fighting, the fighting at Ortona started and that's where we learned the system of mouse-holing, where we'd blast a hole in a wall because you couldn't go down the streets, they were too narrow and the snipers had them all spotted. So the infantry, the Loyal Eddies and the Seaforth Highlanders, they were with A-Squadron, the Loyal Eddies were with us and they would, we'd blow a hole in a beginning of a block of houses and then they would go in and blow out the next wall and clear each house out one at a time that way. So the infantry, the German snipers, didn't have a chance to get at them.