On the seventh day of our trip along the path Canadians followed to liberate Italy, 65 years ago, I learned a valuable lesson of remembrance.
One of our tour guests, the mayor of Shelburne, Ont, asked if he could address the group of 50 Canadian travellers my wife and I are accompanying. Ed Crewson, 48, carefully unfolded several fragile-looking newspaper clippings that clearly meant a lot to him. He explained that the mementos came from the Second World War effects of his father – Pte. William Crewson of the Saskatoon Light Infantry.
“My dad got bone cancer when I was eight,” Ed Crewson told us. “I didn’t look through these wartime papers and read them until long after he was gone.”
William Crewson died five years later in 1973. One of the clippings Crewson shared with our tour group came from the pages of the wartime army newspaper, The Maple Leaf. By coincidence, it described an incident on a battlefield just steps from where we were located that day – the Foglia River valley on the doorstep of the Germans’ northerly most defensive position – the Gothic Line. Headlined, “His Bren gun stuttered death. Nova Scotia youth dies a hero as he covers comrades’ withdrawal,” the story described the heroic actions of a single Canadian gunner serving with the Cape Breton Highlanders (sister regiment to William Crewson’s Saskatoon Light Infantry). The news article described combat at the Foglia River on August 30, 1944.
“The Cape Breton Highlanders … swept forward toward (on Hill 120)…ran into barbed wire entanglements and mines. ‘Things were getting pretty desperate, because (the Germans were) coming over the reverse slope and my sections were being cut to pieces,’” Capt. L.E. Brannen told The Maple Leaf reporter.
That’s when a young gunner named Alphonse Hickey – a 22-year-old private from Sydney, Nova Scotia – stepped forward.
“‘He volunteered to cover our retreat,’ Capt. Brannen continued. ‘He wasn’t asked to do it. We didn’t want him to, but he made up his mind knowing that it would mean certain death.’ (Hickey) was found the next day with four dead German soldiers in front of him … mute testimony to the accuracy of his aim and the stout heart that kept his hand squeezing the trigger until he died,” The Maple Leaf concluded.
The Highlanders lost 19 killed and 46 wounded that day.
On a day 65 years later, when the world still grappled with ways to negotiate aid workers into cyclone-stricken Burma and on the same afternoon that Italian soccer fans all around us were celebrating a huge victory by the team from Milan, Wendy Crewson, Ed Crewson’s wife, stepped from our tour bus and made her way to a cenotaph she’d never seen before. Somehow she sensed this was a place she had to visit. The tour had stopped at the Montecchio cemetery, where 582 Commonwealth soldiers, including 289 Canadians, were buried after the Italian campaign between 1943 and 1945.
In the graveyard registry (a location guide common to all Commonwealth War Grave Cemeteries around the world), Wendy Crewson found the name Pte. Alphonse Hickey, his regiment, his age (22) and his simple registration number: F32124. At his burial site – plot 1, row D, grave 13 – she stood a moment, placed a Canadian flag in the earth in front of the marble marker and recounted into her video camera how this grave had pulled her family to Italy.
“My husband, Ed, found the story of Alphonse Hickey in his father’s wartime papers,” she said. She went on to say that Mayor Crewson employed the heroic story in a Remembrance Day talk last year. “A friend in the audience, Don Stewart, said he had just booked passage on a tour to follow the route of the Canadians through Italy during the Second World War. He insisted that we join him.”
They did. Not just Mayor Crewson and his wife Wendy, but also their daughters Jennifer, 21, Brooke, 18, and their 15-year-old son, named after his veteran grandfather, William Crewson.
“The farthest we’ve ever travelled as a family is to Florida,” Ed Crewson admitted to me later. “This trip is important. It tells the vets’ stories. We need to understand the sacrifices they made.”
But Ed Crewson had a deeper message in his family’s pilgrimage to Italy and to Pte. Hickey’s grave. We have always complained to others that “Dad never talked about the war.” We have always blamed him for not sharing his experiences with us, his sons and daughters. We’ve never assumed any of the responsibility ourselves.
“We can’t understand who they were,” Ed Crewson said finally, “unless we go there,” not just to the battlefields and the grave sites, but to the memories – good and bad – they carried home with them.
Phonse was my uncle. I have heard stories about his actions in Italy, many a times over supper. My older brother is named after him. My own sons have done write-ups about him for school projects. His deeds live on .
Phonse was also my uncle. My Father and his brothers have told us many stories through the years about Phonse and what he had done. Also many of the vet’s from the Pier Legion over the years have recounted our uncle’s fate. My children also know well of his heroism and will never forget. Every Nov. 11th is a special day for all of the Hickey family.
I recently came across this article and found it most interesting as Capt. Brannen is my uncle. He passed away in 2012 in Tacoma Washington. His obituary is still posted online. I knew he was a decorated veteran but didn’t know the story, so this has helped answer some questions. The Canadian Military archives online has also been informative. In researching the Gothic Line I was quite astonished as it is a battle that hasn’t had much public coverage and it sounds like it was a very intense battle. So many Canadian heroes, and so many lost. Thank you for filling in the blanks.
Good evening! Can someone give me more information on Alphonse Hickey? He died in my country. Next month I will keep a public conversation and a guided tour in the places of the Gothic Line and I would tell the story of this heroic soldier who sacrificed himself to save his comrades. Thanks for the gel that you can give me! Roberto.
My father, M.C. Hunter was Bren gunner with the 8th Platoon, Cape Breton Highlanders since March of 1944, when he was assigned with them near Casino and battled northward thru the Liri Valley to Rome and then onward thru the summer to The Gothic Line. On Aug 30, 1944 he recalled crossing the Foglia River and starting the assault on Hill 120. They left the river at a dogtrot across the open field towards the elevated positions of the Germans. About halfway to the base of the hill was an old stone farmhouse, where they stopped to catch their breath among the chaos. As he looked around the corner of the building, he could visibly see the machine gun fire coming down in waves, not unlike a hard rain shower. One minute of rest and the order to commence was given and they charged out into the storm. With about 200 yards to the base of the hill, they sprinted as best you can laden down with guns and gear. His last conscious thoughts were of two of his comrades on the left going down, and the soldier on his immediate right, taking a round in the face amid a spray of red. His next recollection was very confusing but he came to,with his face down in his helmet and oddly impressed with a little pool of blood that would change design as he moved his head. A few seconds of wonderment and then his sense slowly returned as he first started to hear the sounds of battle and then realized where he was and what he was supposed to be doing and tried to move. Pain racked his entire body and he couldn’t move a muscle. Another Highlander slid down beside him, telling him not to move, as he was hit hard. The savior quickly tied off both legs and arms and his forehead wounds, all the time shielding him. Once he had the bleeding , somewhat under control, he gathered equipment from surrounding bodies and was explaining to my dad, what had happened. Apparently he had taken the first round just across his right eyebrow, knocking him down but not out, but not coherent either. Unbeknownst to my father, he got partway up and began to crawl as fast as he could toward the objective when he took 7 , MG 42 rounds thru both legs. Then as he tried to pull himself on his elbows he took the final 2 rounds through both arms. So there he lay, completely immobilized, but alive. He thinks the man that rendered the live saving first aid, was named Vic Varner. Vic stayed with him now as the battle continued and the tanks finally came forward just before dark. One very vivid recollection, my dad recalled his entire life, was,as he lay there, face down, unable to move, he could hear the battle as it played out before him. He clearly recognized the sounds of each gun. After an hour or so, the gunfire died down in his sector, and Vic announces, the “byes” have took the ridge. A few minutes later he recognizes the sounds of German infantry weapons again and the distinct sound of a lone Bren gun as it opens up atop the ridge. My dad scooched his head up and saw, perfectly silhouetted against the evening sunset, was that one lone soldier, shooting his Bren ,freehand, without the benefit of the “mandatory” bi-pod. He tried watching as the Highlander calmly changed magazines and laid down a barrage of cover fire as the rest of his platoon retreated ahead of a German counterattack. As the pain overcame his desire to watch, he laid his head back down and listened intently and roughly counted 7 or 8 magazines of Bren fire until the gun was silenced. Shortly after, the stretcher bearers arrived and as they placed him on the little canvas contraption, Vic wished him luck and picked up my dads Bren and headed forward toward the battle.
For his entire life, anytime my dad was pressed by one of his 7 children to explain his war wounds, his admiration and awe of that unknown Bred gunner was so obvious. Although his only words were, ‘I wonder who that crazy SOB was, standing up there ,like John Wayne”.
Well, let me tell you. My father passed away 8/08/08 and in 2013 , my sister, one niece and my wife and I traveled to Italy to see some of the sights he had seen so long ago. When we reached the Allied war cemetery in Montecchio, we realized that with the internet, we might be able to answer that long wondered question. We simply scoured that beautifully kept cemetery, and snapped a picture of each headstone attributed to a Cape Breton Highlander, dated Aug 30, 1944. There was 19 and within a few minutes we had the answer. Alphonse Hickey. Wow!! We continue to this day to be in awe of a Canadian hero that we never knew but had heard about thru an eyewitness account, our entire lives.
This summer I am going to Nova Scotia and will visit the Cape Breton Highlanders museum and maybe, if I am lucky, maybe meet some of Alphonse Hickey’s, next of kin. Or if anyone knows of or have ever heard of another one of our heroes named Vic Varner.(my email is hunterr@telusplanet.net if anyone of his clan reads this and would like to meet)