The Italian Campaign

Moving on through the World War Two section at the Canadian War Museum, we see overhead a Spitfire, one of the fighters that won the war in the air. 

Models are found here.

This striking painting is Sergeant M.E. Boreham, the British Empire Medal, by Robert Hyndman. She spent three years with RCAF in London. 

Alongside the Americans, British, and other Allies, Canadians took part in the Sicily and Italy campaign. A portion of the gallery focuses on this theatre of operations.

The painting here depicts the fighting at Casa Bernardi. Charles Comfort was a commissioned war artist with the Canadians as they moved through Italy.

It was a brutal campaign- street to street, house to house, room to room. You can walk through a corridor, where life sized mannequins of a Canadian soldier and a German soldier are on either side of a wall.

Another work by Charles Comfort: Canadian Armour Passing Through Ortona.

Canadians faced tough fighting in Italy. Like their Allied counterparts, they kept pushing, driving the Axis back.

One of the stories that came out of that campaign was a joint American-Canadian special operations unit, an elite group of soldiers known to history as the Devil's Brigade.

This Stug-III self propelled assault gun was captured by Canadians during the Italian campaign.