Leigh Loggie

I didn’t have much action on Sicily, it was pretty near over when I got there.  But they put me on a gun and we were prepared, but nothing much happened, until we got a chance to go to Italy.  That was when I was driving, when I went to Italy.

Well, at first I was driving, towing a [field] gun.  I drove then, too, eh?  But then when I started driving in Italy I wound up driving the kitchen.  Every time we moved, I had to take the whole works.  But when I wasn’t driving, I was driving other jeeps and cars, driving officers around, when I wasn’t trucking.  But when we moved, I trucked.

Well, I had two or three fellows on the back of the truck, and you know what you’re, you’ve got lots of fire – danger when you have… what did we use, for fuel?  Some kind of fuel. I don’t know how that eventually caught fire, but it was burning right in convoy and they couldn’t get me off of the road in time to save the truck, but I took the truck off the convoy to save the rest of them.  I was called up for office and I thought I was going to catch all hell but I got an MID [Mentioned in Despatches] for it.

I know I started for Florence, Italy one time and we thought it was taken and it was only half taken.  One side of the river was taken.  And there was a river running right through it, and we were going down the hill towards the bridges, and they started shelling us on the hill.  Well, we pulled into a street, off of the main trail, and this lad beckoned us into a basement and he had all kinds of wine.  And he give us a rest there, and after they stopped shelling a while, we took a chance and drove up the hill again, but we didn’t go across the river.

I thought we were going to see that Venice but we didn’t get there.  We were only about half, little over halfway to there, when we left.  But we were up above, we stayed one winter in a place called Russi.  We stayed that winter there.  But that’s quite a ways from Venice.  We were in a rest area there called Riccione.  I was just checking out a picture house and this lad come up in a half-ton truck.  Blew the horn and he said, “What’s on tonight for shows, soldier?”  And I knew his voice, it was Mel, my brother.  After he got wounded in France, they sent him up – after he spent some time in England, they sent him up to Italy, because he was [Royal Canadian Army] Service Corps, could be attached anywhere.