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Description
Mr. Dowie describes being under constant fire for 282 days in Italy and then entering Rome.
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 were under constant fire for a total of 282 days, from the 4th of June to the 24th of February, the 4th of June '44 to the 24th of February '45, we were always under direct fire contact with the enemy from there. We spent, I think it was 282 days of continuous action.
Interviewer: The net result was that the Liri Valley and the Liri Valley defensive position, the Hitler Line and the Gustoff Line were broken.
Mr. Dowie: Yeah. We broke through.....we did the final push to break the Hitler Line to Highway 1 with the Royal 22nd. The Germans had taken the turrets off tanks and built pill boxes with them. We helped the infantry, supported the infantry by giving them covering fire while we took one by one, and we finally broke through to the Highway 1 with the Royal 22nd. It was an interesting thing. One of the barns, one of the fellows went in and found a German with a beam across him, his legs and being the normal idiots we were, the guy said to him, "Hi Fritzy. How does that feel? " He said, "I'd feel a lot better if you'd take this damn plank, beam off me!" He'd been educated at Oxford. We went through, broke the hole and the 5th Div. rolled through us on their trip to Rome.
Interviewer: In fact, Rome could have been taken, as I understand it, by the Canadians.
Mr. Dowie: Yeah.
Interviewer: Do you know why they didn't?
Mr. Dowie: Political.
Interviewer: In fact, the Americans took it.
Mr. Dowie: Yeah, the political thing was that the Americans should be the first in. And our colonel, Colonel at the time, Caron, Vern Caron, decided that he was gonna beat 'em to it so we took a side road, went around Rome, and when the Americans rolled through, triumphantly through Rome, we were all lined up on the road to greet them, the other side of Rome.