The Canadian Army Journal

124
THE CANADIAN BATTLEFIELDS IN ITALY: ORTONA & THE
LIRI VALLEY
MCGEER, Eric with SYMES, Matt. Waterloo: Laurier Centre for Military, paper,
112 pages. ISBN (13) 978-0-9783441-0-8. $28.00 CAD.
Review by Major John R. Grodzinski, CD
This is the first of three guidebooks to
Canadian battlefields in Italy to be
published by the Laurier Centre for Military
Strategic and Disarmament Studies
(LCMSDS) and edited by Terry Copp,
Professor Emeritus of History at Wilfred
Laurier University and Director of the
LCMSDS. He may be more familiar to
readers of this journal as author of several
studies on the army in North-West Europe,
including the recent Cinderella Army: The
Canadians in North West Europe.
Battlefield guidebooks have been
produced for years and Professor Copp is
no stranger to the genre, having produced
two excellent guides to battlefields in North-
West Europe. Other examples include the
famous Major & Mrs Holt’s Pocket
Battlefield Guides and the excellent
Battleground Europe series. The utility of
these guides lies in providing a good
general overview of a campaign or battle and other information useful for conducting a
tour of the sites described in the text, along with travel information, accommodation
advice and other tips. They are the sort of thing one would thumb through while driving
around the countryside looking for some point from a battle. Short text and lots of maps
and images give these guides their value.
The battle for Ortona and the Liri Valley campaign are two particularly fascinating
campaigns with which to launch this series. Orotona involved a difficult division level
struggle through very some very tough ground, culminating in an epic fight to clear a
town; while the Liri Valley campaign was the first corps level operation conducted by the
Canadian Army during the Second World War and played a significant part of a massive
allied effort to destroy a German field army and take Rome.
Eric McGeer, who wrote the text, received his doctorate from the Université de
Montréal and currently teaches Latin and history at St Clement’s School in Toronto. He
has written on warfare and law in mediaeval Byzantium and more recently has focused
on Canadian war cemeteries of the Second World War and their commemorative
inscriptions. Matt Symes is a freelance photographer whose work appears in this book.
The two campaigns in this guide include an introduction, historical narrative and tour
itinerary. Both are well illustrated with period photographs of commanders, soldiers,
vehicles and specific aspects of each battle, along with selected artwork from the
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art. Contemporary photographs show other points of
interest and Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemeteries. It would have been
helpful to provide specific locations of some buildings shown in the photographs, such
Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spring 2008