Characteristics of Canada’s Fighting Regiments in the Italian Campaign

November 2, 2021

Viewing Time: 3 min  content from CBC.ca

Characteristics of Canada's fighting regiments in the Italian Campaign | CBC.ca

Transcript

Front Page Challenge

Lieutenant-General Guy G. Simonds

Characteristics of Canada’s Fighting Regiments in the Italian Campaign

Interviewer: General, do regiments have personalities?

Simonds: Very much so.

Interviewer: I wonder then if you’d give a rundown of the personalities of the Canadian regiments that were in that original invasion of Sicily. We’re on a national network now and I read many appraisals of the personalities of the commanders, but nothing of the regiments. How about a look at the regiments.

Simonds: Well that’s quite a long question to answer because as you say every regiment has very much a personality of its own and to describe each one with justice would take whole evening to do it. The three brigades that were involved in the landing were the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Canadian Infantry Brigades. In the 1^st Brigade which I had in an earlier stage of the war commanded myself there was what is today the 1^st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment. They had been mobilized from what had been a regular regiment in peacetime and had as they expanded and went through their training and practices in England maintained many of the, their primary characteristic was you might say a professional soldier.

Interviewer: Like the Guards so to speak.

Simonds: Well, like lets say a regular line regiment. Then there was the 48^th Highlanders, very well known in Toronto here. They too developed a very distinctive personality. They had a tremendous tradition which they carried with them from their efforts in the First World War. And all ranks seemed determined that those traditions were going to be maintained in battle and in the observance of their various traditional costumes and characteristics of a highland regiment. And then there was the Hastings and Prince Edward regiment, which was primarily recruited from the country. Ah, I would say its principle characteristic was a sort of, they were excellent and they were quiet and they didn’t make much pretence at a great of glamour, they always produced the goods and they were primarily recruited from a farming country and carried with them many of the quiet and solid characteristics of a farming community. Now those three regiments were as different in their personalities as three individuals would be and yet they all fought with great bravery and skill and it would be very hard to say in battle that one was any better than another.