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Special Units · Sicily, 1943
The 1st Canadian Infantry Division in Sicily
Canada’s first large campaign of the war took a division that had trained in England for three and a half years across 240 kilometers of Sicilian mountains, through Assoro, Leonforte and Agira. It cost 562 Canadian lives.
- Canadian Army · XXX Corps, Eighth Army
- Pachino, Assoro, Leonforte, Agira, Regalbuto
- 10 July–7 August 1943
Three years of waiting
The 1st Canadian Infantry Division had arrived in Britain in December 1939 and spent the next three and a half years guarding the south coast of England and training for an invasion that never came. Apart from the disastrous raid on Dieppe in August 1942, which had used the 2nd Division, the Canadian Army overseas had not fought. In the spring of 1943 the Canadian government pressed for its troops to see action, and the 1st Division and the 1st Canadian Army Tank Brigade, with the Three Rivers, Calgary and Ontario Regiments, replaced a British division in the Husky plan (Veterans Affairs Canada).
Its commander was Guy Granville Simonds, a 40-year-old artillery officer who had taken over only weeks before the invasion when his predecessor was killed in an air crash. He was clever, cold and demanding, and Montgomery thought him the best of the Canadian generals. The division’s three brigades carried the names of regiments from across the country: the Royal Canadian Regiment, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment and the 48th Highlanders in the 1st Brigade; Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and the Loyal Edmonton Regiment in the 2nd; and the Royal 22e Régiment, the Carleton and York Regiment and the West Nova Scotia Regiment in the 3rd.
The convoy and the beaches
The Canadians sailed from Britain in late June. On the way, U-boats sank three ships of the assault convoys; 58 Canadians drowned, and about 500 vehicles and several guns went to the bottom with them. Their names are on the Cassino Memorial in Italy, because they have no grave (Veterans Affairs Canada).
On 10 July the division landed on the Costa dell’Ambra, west of the Pachino peninsula at the southeastern tip of Sicily, the left flank of Montgomery’s XXX Corps. The day is still marked in the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment as “Pachino Day.” The Italian coastal troops put up little fight; the Canadians took Pachino airfield and more than 500 prisoners and moved inland through Ispica and Modica in the July heat (Veterans Affairs Canada; Chapter 2).
Into the hills
The real fighting began when the Canadians reached the Germans. At Grammichele on 15 July a rearguard of the Hermann Göring Division met them with tanks and antitank guns. Piazza Armerina fell on 16 July and Valguarnera on 17–18 July, both after sharp fights with the 15th Panzergrenadier Division. When Alexander gave the Eighth Army Highway 124, the Canadians became the left hook of Montgomery’s army, swinging north and then east through the mountains toward Mount Etna (Veterans Affairs Canada; CMH 72-16).
Assoro and Leonforte, 20–22 July
Assoro stood on a mountaintop more than 800 meters high, with a ruined castle at its summit and a German garrison that could see every move in the valley below. On the night of 20–21 July the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment climbed the cliffs on its far side in the dark, carrying their weapons up a slope the Germans had thought no troops could scale, and were on the summit at dawn. They held it through a day of counterattacks and shelling until the rest of the brigade arrived. The regiment’s battle honor “Assoro” is dated 20–22 July 1943. A young officer of the regiment, Farley Mowat, later wrote about Sicily in The Regiment (1955) and And No Birds Sang (1979) (Department of National Defence; Veterans Affairs Canada).
Next door, Leonforte was a town built on a steep ridge, reached across a ravine whose bridge the Germans had blown. The Loyal Edmonton Regiment fought its way into the streets and was cut off; a flying column of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, with tanks of the Three Rivers Regiment and antitank guns, crossed on a bridge rebuilt by Canadian engineers under fire and broke through to it. Leonforte fell on 22 July (Veterans Affairs Canada).
Agira, 24–28 July
Agira, a hill town on the road east toward Adrano and Etna, was the Canadians’ largest battle of the campaign. It took five days. The 2nd Brigade attacked along the road, and the Germans of the 15th Panzergrenadier Division held three ridges in front of the town. Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry took the first ridge, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada the second, and on 28 July the Loyal Edmonton Regiment cleared the third. Agira fell that day (Department of National Defence; Veterans Affairs Canada).
The division kept going. The 3rd Brigade took Catenanuova at the end of July, the 1st Brigade fought for Regalbuto, and from 3 to 6 August the Edmontons fought for Hill 736 and Monte Revisotto above the Salso valley, losing 93 men, 26 of them killed, in five days (Legion Magazine). On 7 August, before Adrano fell to the British, the Canadians went into reserve.
| Dates | Place | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 10 July | Costa dell’Ambra, Pachino | Landing; Pachino airfield and more than 500 prisoners taken |
| 15 July | Grammichele | First fight with the Germans, a Hermann Göring Division rearguard |
| 16–18 July | Piazza Armerina, Valguarnera | Fights with the 15th Panzergrenadier Division |
| 20–22 July | Assoro, Leonforte | Night climb at Assoro; street battle and bridge at Leonforte |
| 24–28 July | Agira | Five days, three ridges; the division’s biggest battle |
| 29 July–6 August | Catenanuova, Regalbuto, Hill 736 | The last pushes toward Adrano |
| 7 August | — | Into reserve after about 240 km of marching and fighting |
Sources: Veterans Affairs Canada; Department of National Defence battle honor “Agira”; Legion Magazine.
Agira Canadian War Cemetery
After the campaign the Canadian dead were brought together on a hillside below Agira. The cemetery holds 490 Canadians, 477 soldiers and 13 airmen of the Royal Canadian Air Force, in rows facing the town the division fought for. Their headstones carry the maple leaf, and many carry a line chosen by the family at home (Veterans Affairs Canada).
The insignia, rendered
Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the division’s official emblem. The 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s real formation patch was a plain red rectangle, the color of the 1st Division in the Canadian Corps of the First World War.
Timeline
- The 1st Canadian Infantry Division arrives in Britain.
- The division sails for the Mediterranean; U-boats sink three convoy ships, and 58 Canadians drown.
- Landing west of Pachino.
- Grammichele: first fight with the Germans.
- Assoro and Leonforte.
- Agira.
- Hill 736 and Monte Revisotto.
- The division goes into reserve.
- The division fights at Ortona, Italy.
People of the unit
Read the full story
- Chapter 6: The Hard Way North: Eighth Army, Primosole and the Canadians in the Hills
- Chapter 2: D-Day, 10 July: Seven Divisions on a Hundred-Mile Front
- Chapter 8: The Human Cost: Prisoners, Massacres, Civilians and Malaria
- Chapter 9: End Game: Lehrgang, Messina and What Sicily Changed
- Invasion of Sicily collection
- The record: the Hermann Göring Division in Sicily
- Special Units: the Special Raiding Squadron in Sicily
- Special Units: No. 3 Commando and the Malati Bridge
Sources
- Veterans Affairs Canada, “Canada – Italy 1943–1945”.
- Veterans Affairs Canada, Agira Canadian War Cemetery.
- Department of National Defence, battle honor “Agira”.
- Legion Magazine, “The 1943 battle in the Italian mountains”.
- G. W. L. Nicholson, The Canadians in Italy, 1943–1945, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, vol. II (Ottawa, 1956).
- Farley Mowat, The Regiment (1955) and And No Birds Sang (1979); Mark Zuehlke, Operation Husky: The Canadian Invasion of Sicily (Douglas & McIntyre, 2008).
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