News
Conference hears Irish Brigade Italy campaign stories
Enniskillen Castle Stories of members of the Irish Brigade in the Italian campaign were told at the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (The Skins) in the Italian campaign conference in Enniskillen on Saturday 11 November. The event was opened by Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Mark Scott chairman of the Inniskillings Museum which hosted the conference. His father Robert…
Read MoreCharlie Lawson tells heartbreaking story of the uncle he never knew
Actor Charlie Lawson (far left) famous for playing the role of Jim McDonald in the TV soap Coronation Street spoke this week about his uncle John Glennie, a lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers who was killed in the Italian campaign in 1943. Born in Enniskillen in 1923, John Glennie attended the town’s Portora…
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Fusilier Anthony Addis
We received details of the life and service career of Fusilier Anthony Addis, from William Best, the husband of Anthony’s niece. Fusilier Addis served with the Royal Irish Fusiliers in Italy and died in hospital of wounds suffered at the River Trigno at the end of October 1943. He would be re-interred a year later…
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Termoli plans monument, museum and documentary to commemorate the landings of 1943
Plans are being developed for a new memorial and a larger Second World War Museum in Termoli and a documentary film to commemorate the landings and battle there on 3-6 October 1943. The town and the surrounding area were the scene of the largest tank battle in the Italian campaign in the Second World War…
Read MoreIrish Brigade at the Battle of Termoli in October 1943
The latest edition of This Week in the Italian Campaign tells the story of the Battle of Termoli on 3-6 October and the role of 38 (Irish) Brigade in repelling 16 Panzer Division. The battle began with special forces landings on the night of 3 October. On 5 October, 16 Panzer came close to taking…
Read MoreSicily conference report published
An 85–page report on the proceedings of The Sicily Peace, Security & Prosperity Conference on 7-8 July has been published this week. It covers a total of 40 speeches and presentations and the conference’s recommendations. You can see the report here: The Sicily Peace, Security & Prosperity Conference report
Read MoreRoyal Inniskilling Fusiliers in the Italian campaign conference to be held in November
A half-day conference about the role of The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in the Italian Campaign is to be held at the Inniskillings Museum in Enniskillen on Saturday 11 November. The event will also review the role of 38 (Irish) Brigade in the campaign. Speakers are: Chairman of the Inniskillings Museum Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Mark Scott…
Read MoreAngelina Belfiore, 101, tells her eyewitness story of the arrival of the London Irish Rifles in her hometown
The story of the arrival of the London Irish Rifles in Piedimonte Etneo in September 1943 after the end of fighting in the Sicilian campaign has been retold in a news report published this month by La Repubblica, the national Italian newspaper. Eyewitness Angelina Belfiore, 101 in July, was 21 and living at home with…
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Rifleman James Gerard Murtagh, 1912 -1943
The invasion of Sicily, known as Operation Husky, took place exactly 80 years ago and the recollections of that time remains especially vivid for families of the fallen as well as the local people on the island who greeted Allied soldiers as liberators. The memory of James Murtagh, a 31 year old Rifleman from Lurgan,…
Read MoreMessage from King Charles launches commemorations of the 80th anniversary of Sicily landings
King Charles, the son of a Sicily campaign veteran, sent a message of support to The Sicily Peace, Security & Prosperity Conference held earlier this month in Catania to launch commemoration events for the 80th anniversary of the landings on the island in 1943. “His Majesty has asked me to thank you for coming together to…
Read MoreMinneapolis family heads to Sicily for WWII commemoration
Marian Johnson (right) with daughter Hayley and grandson Owen Three generations of an Edina family are heading to Sicily next month to join the commemoration of Allied landings on the island, which took place at a turning point in the Second World War, 80 years ago. Mother of five, Marian Johnson, will be joined on…
Read MoreJoe Mantegna, drawing on his Italian roots, lends his support for the Sicily Peace, Security & Prosperity Conference
Italian-American actor, movie star, director and philanthropist Joe Mantegna says his Sicilian roots and the experiences of his parents’ generation in the Second World War are behind his support for The Sicily Peace, Security & Prosperity Conference at Catania’s Le Ciminiere Festival Centre on 7-8 July. “In my career I’ve portrayed many characters who dramatize…
Read MoreTop speakers to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Sicily landings at Catania conference
More than 30 speakers from Italy, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US will address the Sicily Peace, Security & Prosperity conference in Catania on 7-8 July organised in partnership with Museo Storico dello Sbarco in Sicilia 1943 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the landings in Sicily. The event will be followed by…
Read MoreIFPSP founder Gregory on when he was inspired to memorialise Canada’s Husky role
Founder of the International Forum for Peace, Security & Prosperity (IFPSP) Steve Gregory was inspired to preserve the memory of Canada’s role in Operation Husky in 1943 while on a family visit to Sicily more than a decade ago. “Everywhere I went, I asked questions about the Canadians in Sicily and they would look at…
Read MoreSwift success in Sicily was built on the lessons of the Tunisian campaign
At 1445 local time on 13 May 1943, 18 Army Group Commander General Harold Alexander sent the following signal to UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London: “Sir, it is my duty to report that the Tunisian campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shores.” One week later, American,…
Read MoreCountdown to Husky: Operation Mincemeat
Charles Cholmondeley (left) and Ewen Montagu with the van taking the body of Glyndwr Michael to Scotland on 17 April 1943 At 0415 on Friday 30 April 1943, the body of Glyndwr Michael was taken out of a sealed container on the deck of the Royal Navy submarine HMS Seraph which had surfaced off Huelva on…
Read MoreCountdown to Husky: Canada joins the campaign
The sun was shining brightly on the afternoon of 23 April 1943 when Commander of the First Canadian Army Lieutenant General Andrew McNaughton (see left, below) strode into the War Office in Whitehall. It was St George’s Day and it had been more than two years since the last German bombing attack on Britain’s capital. The…
Read MoreCountdown to Husky: the false start and the final plan
Original plans called for widely dispersed landings and the early capture of both Catania and Palermo. The final plan concentrated Allied forces in the south-east of Sicily (Source: www.canadiansoldiers.com) Fully-engaged with the effort to defeat Axis forces in Tunisia in the spring of 1943, Allied commanders in North Africa were nevertheless presented with plans for…
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Stars in the Sicilian campaign: Audie Murphy
Seething with frustration, 18-year-old Corporal Audie Murphy landed on the Seventh Army’s western-most landing beach at Licata on 10 July 1943 three hours after his battalion’s first wave. “…the timing got snarled in the predawn confusion; and we came in late, chugging ashore like a bunch of clucks in a ferryboat.” Murphy wrote in his…
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Stars in the Sicilian campaign: Alan Whicker
Holding his camera over his head, Alan Whicker waded ashore near Pachino from a tank landing craft soon after dawn on 10 July 1943. “I took my first sodden steps on the long march towards the Alps,” Whicker wrote in his 2005 book Whicker at War. “So far, so surprisingly good…Standing tense on that soft…
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Stars in the Sicilian campaign: Christopher Lee
At six foot five inches, it was almost impossible for Christopher Lee to go unnoticed and that helped make him a star best known for playing the part of Count Dracula 10 times. But in the Second World War, he played a less obtrusive role as an RAF intelligence officer which brought him to Sicily…
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Stars in the Sicilian campaign: Douglas Fairbanks Jr
The transition of Douglas Fairbanks Jr from Hollywood action hero to combat veteran was completed off the coast of Sicily near Gela in the early hours of 10 July 1943. Among those on the deck of Admiral Henry Hewitt‘s flagship USS Monrovia in the darkness before dawn, Fairbanks had spent the previous evening coaching Seventh…
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Stars in the Sicilian campaign: Alec Guinness
Famous as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, Oscar-winner Alec Guinness had a starring role in the landings in Sicily on 10 July 1943. Born to an unmarried mother in April 1914, Guinness left school aged 18 to work in a London advertising agency. Determined to…
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Remembering the dead of the Sicily campaign
The CWGC Catania War Cemetery, the largest in Sicily, has 2,135 graves The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemeteries in Catania and Syracuse contain the remains of 2,410 men who lost their lives between the start of the Sicilian campaign on the night of 9 July and the end of August 1943. The overwhelming majority…
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Sgt Raymond Phillips at Centuripe
It’s been nearly 80 years since the Irish Brigade’s remarkable assault on the hill-top town of Centuripe in August 1943. Led by the 6th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (the Skins), the brigade fought their way into the town after prolonged assaults on the evening of 2nd/3rd August 1943 and, following its capture and the crossing…
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Photo portrait initiative to mark the 80th anniversary of Operation Husky
Canadian Agira CWGC War Cemetery with photo markers Photographic portraits of Americans, Britons and Canadians who died in Sicily in 1943 are to be placed in the island’s war cemeteries this July as part of the 80th anniversary commemorations to mark Operation Husky. The project was initiated in 2019 by Jimmy Hilgen, a police sergeant…
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Churchill, Roosevelt and history’s most momentous press conference
It was noon on 24 January 1943 and around 20 American and British reporters and photographers had gathered on the lawn of the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca. Most had flown in the previous day from Algiers, the location of the headquarters for Allied forces fighting in Tunisia. They were arranged before three empty chairs. The…
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Catania to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Sicily landings
A series of events are planned in Catania in July to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings in Sicily, the city’s Museo Storico dello Sbarco in Sicilia 1943 has announced. They include the Sicily 1943: Peace, Security &Prosperity conference on 7-8 July which will tell the story of the landings and how peace in Sicily was…
Read MoreHow Operation Husky in July 1943 made Overlord possible in June 1944
Allied commanders of Operation Husky in Tunisia in 1943. Commander-in-chief General Dwight Eisenhower (left), Air Commander-in-chief Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder (second left) and General Montgomery (not in the picture) were commanders in Operation Overlord. General Harold Alexander, land forces commander in Husky (second right), remained in Italy. (© IWM CNA 1075) AT a…
Read MoreFDR’s 1943 journey to Casablanca and the decision to invade Sicily
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the press conference following the end of the Casablanca conference in Hotel Anfa on 24 January 1943 On 9 January 1943, President Roosevelt at the start of the tenth year as America’s head of state boarded his special train at Washington DC’s Union Station and headed north.…
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The USAAF bombing raids on Palermo in January 1943
Palermo, capital of Sicily, has been shaped by events that changed the course of Europe’s history. But an impact of an unprecedented kind followed Italy’s declaration of war against Britain and France on 10 June 1940. Palermo was one of the first targets of French bombing raids at the end of that month. Starting in…
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The December 1941 Arcadia conference and the Irish Brigade
On 13 December 1941, a Royal Navy convoy comprising the battleship HMS Duke of York and three destroyers set sail for America from the River Clyde. The Duke of York was taking UK prime minister Winston Churchill on a tryst with destiny in Washington and a conference with US president Roosevelt. America had been Britain’s…
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National Italian memorials planned
Work has started on a plan to develop Second World War national parks and sites across Italy to commemorate the sacrifices made during the conflict. The first phase of the plan involves research in Sicily and creating a supporting network on the island. That will begin at the Sicily 1943: Peace, Security & Prosperity conference…
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Peace walk to commemorate Sicily campaign
The 80th anniversary of Operation Husky and the start of the Sicilian campaign will be commemorated next summer in a 325km walk that will follow the route of the 1st Canadian Division and 1st Canadian Tank Brigade from landing beaches near Pachino to Adrano. The Walk for Remembrance & Peace (WRAP) is organised by the…
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2 LIR at the Sangro river
This is the title given to the battle in which the German winter line was broken. The river had, in fact, been crossed and the bridgehead established by 11 and 36 Brigades. It was from this bridgehead that the attack was launched. For the operation, the Bttn had trained with 44 RTR and, in fact,…
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Remembering Fusilier Albert Cyril Smith
We recently received a short note from Richard Davis, the great nephew of Fusilier Albert Smith, who was killed in Tunisia on 17th April 1943 and who is named on the Memorial at the Medjez-el-Bab CWGC Cemetery. “My great uncle, Albert Cyril Smith, was born to Albert Edward Smith and Hilda Mary Smith (nee Hampson)…
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Maletto memorial for the men who died in the Irish Brigade’s final Sicily battle
A memorial to men of the Irish Brigade who lost their lives in and around Maletto in north-east Sicily in August 1943 in the brigade’s final battle on the island was formally unveiled on 18 September 2022. Those listed on the memorial are 18 members of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers (Faughs)…
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New memorials unveiled in Sicily
A pilgrimage organised by the London Irish Rifles returned from Sicily at the end of September after visiting locations where 38 (Irish) Brigade and 168 (London) Brigade fought during July and August 1943. At that time, the Irish Brigade comprised the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers (The Faughs); the 6th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (The…
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Irish Brigade Films complete filming for new All My Brothers episodes
The team making Parts 7 and 8 of ‘All My Brothers, The Story of the Irish Brigade in the Second World War’ completed location filming in Italy on 8 July 2022. This time, the film unit comprised Edmund and Richard O’Sullivan, co-producers of the series and son of Irish Brigade member Ted O’Sullivan, and director…
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