A Canada Day gift

They didn’t realize that July 1 is Canada’s birthday.

That’s OK, because last month members of the Berardi family warmly welcomed a tour of Canadians (my wife and I were hosting) to their farm near Ortona, Italy. We Canadians had come to Ortona to revisit the site of the “Christmas battle” during the Second World War, when after a long siege, Canadians removed the occupying German army from that part of the Adriatic coastline. Sixty-five years after that historic battle, Lanfranco Berardi, who had survived wartime as a civilian, gave us visiting Canadians an early Canada Day present. First he reflected on the Canadian troops who in 1943 gave his starving family hot soup, medical attention, sweets and something more precious.

“The Berardi family was saved from German oppression by Canadians,” Signore Berardi told us. “Because of the Canadians, we found again a smile and humanity.”

Our tour bus arrived at Casa Berardi – the 36,000 square metres of olive groves and rows of grapevines perched on a valley, known as The Gully, several kilometres away from Ortona – about midday. Several members of the Berardi family, including Lanfranco’s older brother Fernando, strode out to meet us and direct us toward their famous house. There we gathered in the May sunshine to hear the Berardi story.

It was Fernando, Lanfranco explained in Italian as his daughter-in-law Rosella interpreted, who led him by the hand away from the battleground around Casa Berardi in mid-December 1943. As Canadian troops clawed their way across The Gully to hold ground around the Berardi farm, Lanfranco (then five) remembered eventually hiding in the stable with about 30 other people and several cattle.

He explained that members of Canada’s Royal 22nd Regiment struggled for nearly two days to liberate the farm. Of 81 Van Doos who began the siege, only Capt. Paul Triquet (VC) and 13 others survived the successful operation.

After the battle, Lanfranco remembered the holes and pockmarks in Casa Berardi caused by machine-gun and artillery fire. He recalled the stable area of the house filling up with Canadian wounded, some of whom were given his father’s pyjamas and his mother’s night dresses as medical gowns in this makeshift first-aid station. Best of all, Lanfranco could almost taste again the chocolate that Canadian troops had shared with the Berardi children.

Eventually, in late December 1943, their liberators moved on to Ortona, an even greater crucible for Canadians fighting up the Adriatic coastline. It would take another two weeks, until New Year’s 1944, before it too was liberated.

“All my life I have asked one question,” Signore Berardi concluded. “Have we been worth their sacrifice? Are we yet worth it?”

No words needed to be spoken at that moment. But when Rosella completed the translation, many in the tour group sighed supportively. All of us were voicing the affirmation of the fathers and grandfathers who had served in Italy.

The cost had been dear. Of 92,757 Canadians who had served in the Italian theatre during the Second World War, 5,399 had been killed (more than 26,000 casualties over all). But the Berardis and thousands of families like them had returned safely to the lives they’d led before the war. And they had not forgotten the freedom Canadians had restored to them.

At the end of Signore Berardi’s walk and talk around the farm, our tour group presented him with a crisp, new Canadian maple leaf flag. We learned that a renovation of Casa Berardi, the wartime shrine for Canadians such as ourselves retracing the path of the liberation of Italy, was nearly complete. The Berardis, as well as running a productive olive- and grape-growing farm, now hope tourists will come and stay in the restored casa. They envision a bed and breakfast kind of facility, with completely refurbished apartments on the upper floors and a dining hall in what was the wartime stable and first-aid station on the lower level.

That’s where the Berardi’s had prepared lunch for us that midday last month. For an hour they served us fresh meats, cheeses, breads, pasta, salads and local wine. Laughter and wonderful conversation filled the room as we dug into this sumptuous meal laid out by our hosts. Then, the patriarch of the family rose from the table to speak one last time.

“You are making history today,” Lanfranco Berardi told us. “You are the first Canadians to eat in this room since the war. The last Canadians who ate here were wounded Canadian soldiers who gave us our freedom.”

We had shared a true celebration of Canada half a world away.


About Ted Barris

Ted Barris is an accomplished author, journalist and broadcaster. As well as hosting stints on CBC Radio and regular contributions to the national press, he has authored 18 non-fiction books and served (for 18 years) as professor of journalism/broadcasting at Centennial College in Toronto. He has written a weekly column/webblog - The Barris Beat - for more than 30 years.

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