Robert Hunter Dunn

My name is Robert Hunter Dunn. I was born February the 5th, 1918. In 1939, on the 21st of December, I joined the McGill Canadian Officer Training Corps and was commissioned. I was sent to Connaught Ranges in Ottawa, and then to training camps, where we trained recruits for thirty days, and then it was sixty days. In 1941, I went to Brockville and Camp Borden and took Canadian Armoured Corps. Training. I went overseas to England on the Letitia (ship). There, I joined the 8th New Brunswick Hussars. We trained in England until about November 1943. We then went to Italy. We arrived in Naples, and after a brief period of training, we went up to the front. We didn't do any real fighting around Ortona. Ortona had been taken by the Canadian Infantry – the Three Rivers Regiment. In May, we fought in the Liri Valley. One of our battle honours is the Battle of the Melfa River. Then we went for rest and recreation for most of the summer; most of June and July. In August we started off south of Rome and moved up, and finally on the 30th of August, took part in the Battle of (what was called) the Gothic Line. We Canadians broke the Gothic Line. Then we went up further, up to San Alberto, Lake Commechio, and in February of 1945, we went from Leghorn in Italy over to Marseille in France, and up into Belgium, and eventually into Holland. We fought from Arnhem… there's a very small airfield outside of Arnhem, and we fought up to a small town […] near the Zuiderzee. Then we went over towards Delfzijl, and we held the Germans in around Delfzijl, and the war was over. I was not with the regiment about three days before the war was declared over. I was sent with a group of Corporals and Sergeants and two other officers. My rank by this time was Captain, and I was to set up a training camp to tell the recruits what it was like in action, but since the war was over I arrived in London on V-E Day, and when you see the photographs of the people in the square in front of Buckingham Palace, I'm in that crowd.