The monstrously complex operation was fraught with danger. While it’s true that the war in Western Europe overshadowed that in Italy, from July, 1943, that was the place of Canada’s first sustained test of battle. It implied that they missed the real show in Normandy. The moniker came from a cheerful Second World War nameless song that was belted out by soldiers to the tune of Lili Marlene, with the words, “We’re the D-Day Dodgers here in Italy/Drinking all the vino, always on the spree.” While it was typical soldiers’ fare in not taking themselves too seriously, the term occasionally was used callously to describe the hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers who served in the Mediterranean against the fascist forces of Germany and Italy. “D-Day Dodger s” was a dismissive slight against the close to 100,000 Canadians who served in the Italian campaign during the Second World War. Tim Cook is chief historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and author of 13 books of Canadian military history.

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