"The Little Devils": Why German Paratroopers FEARED the Canadians in Italy (Ortona, 1943)

Описание: In December 1943, a small coastal town in Italy became the site of one of the most brutal urban battles of the Second World War.

The German 1st Parachute Division had fortified every street, every building, and every intersection of Ortona. Mines were hidden in rubble. Booby traps waited behind doors. Entire blocks were prepared to collapse on advancing soldiers.

When the 1st Canadian Infantry Division entered the town, the battle quickly turned into something few armies had experienced before. Progress was measured not in streets, but in rooms.

To survive, Canadian soldiers developed a brutal improvisation known as mouse-holing. Instead of advancing through streets that had become killing grounds, they blasted holes through the walls of buildings and fought house to house from the inside.

For eight days in December, the battle consumed the town.
Yet in the middle of that destruction, something unexpected happened. On Christmas Day, inside a damaged church near the front line, Canadian soldiers sat down for a full Christmas dinner before returning to the fight.
This is the story of the battle that Germans would later describe with a name they rarely used.

The Canadians of Ortona.

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“Crusade” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

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