Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command of The Royal Canadian Legion www.ns.legion.ca 143 continued ... home studying for exams, and he came home for a coffee break. Staley loved his coffee. He sat in the living room for several hours sharing his memories of Sicily and Italy. She vividly recalls sitting on the floor looking up at him sitting in his platform rocker as he told her about being in the trenches. One story in particular stuck with her and it was how German infantry tied their boots in a different way than Allied infantry. He remembered waking one particularly pitch-black night in a trench close to the lines and feeling someone touching his boot laces and hoping he had his boots laced the right way. In Italy, his Regiment was transferred to the 12th Infantry Brigade, 5th Canadian Armored Division, and served in an infantry role. Because of his wireless training Staley was deployed to the New Brunswick Hussars as a wireless operator in the tank regiment. In May 1944, during fighting in the Liri Valley, “we broke though the lines and found ourselves being fired upon by the free French and American planes. We put out yellow smoke, a signal that we were friendly, and the Americans stopped firing at us and flew over and tipped their wings before they flew off”. During the breakthrough they came upon an Italian who told them there were Germans in the next house. They captured three Germans without incident but were unable to take them as prisoners because there was no room in the five-man tank. They sent the Germans walking toward the Allied lines. Information about the war and its progress was often limited and censored. He described the progress as often slow. For the tanks there was always another hill, another valley, and another mountain as they pushed against the German defenses. He described one particular assault where “800 guns opened fire at night. It was so bright you could read a newspaper”. “Christmas day of 1944 was one Christmas I'll never forget.” The Germans “buried an 88 shell right in front of my trench … blew me back about 20 feet into the mud”. Fortunately, the ground was soft, so the shell went into the ground as it exploded. “If it had been on top I probably wouldn't be here”. The guy in the next trench thought the exploding shell had killed Staley. “I got up and took off toward a house” As he passed a haystack on the way, a second shell hit the haystack and covered him in hay. Still unhurt, he managed to reach the house just as a third shell hit the roof and exploded. “But I was okay”. Staley would spend both the Christmas of 1944 and 1945 overseas. “No Christmas dinner just rations … we ate the rations cold … wouldn't know it was Christmas.” Once Italy was controlled by the Allies, Staley, as part of the New Brunswick Hussars, moved to Marseilles in southern France. “Near our base the Americans had a prisoner camp for Germans and the Americans came over and wanted us to play baseball. They built us a ball field and supplied us with all the equipment … so we went out and played baseball. Of course, they beat us”. But Staley managed to find a softball pitcher who was serving with the Canadian Medical Corps. In the second game with the help of the new pitcher Staley’s team beat the Americans 6-3. “They never came back… when we left, we left all the equipment behind.” They had only played two games. They discovered that the Americans had previously been in Saudi Arabia guarding oil fields and played most of the time so Staley was pretty pleased that they, a scrub team with little practice, were able to beat this well practiced American team. From southern France Staley stayed with the New Brunswick Hussars as they moved into Belgium and Holland. During this time in the Netherlands Staley spent some time in Nijmegen, Holland. There he met a young petite girl called ‘Tiny’ Robrback. She could speak English and invited Staley, and his friend Joseph Regimbald, back to her home to have coffee with her mother and brother, Herman. Once there he realized they had little else besides coffee in their home. After their first visit, Staley and Joseph would return to the house with food and other items the family could use or repurpose. He described bringing them wool socks that Mrs. Rohrbach unraveled and then used the wool to make a hat, gloves, and sweaters. continued ...
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