Heat and Danger In Italy—Summer 1944

Canadian war veteran Lloyd A. Carter of Hemet, Calif., shares two photos taken while he was attached to a gun shop detachment with 1st Canadian Division.

The top photo was taken near Alife, Italy, when summer’s heat “reduced me to my work clothes.” The other one shows Carter sitting next to a pile of freshly dug dirt outside his tent at the Metauro River.

Carter also remembers pulling into a field where there was a line of grapevines and a line of trees. The grapes looked good so he decided to settle in. A Sergeant Kierstead came along and asked him to move his equipment closer to the trees because he wanted to park a vehicle—in need of repairs—on the level ground next to the grapes. “Always co-operative, I moved my equipment,” recalled Carter. When he learned the area had been shelled the previous evening, he dug a slit trench for one side of his tent and placed his bed on the other side. “That evening, a shell hit the spot where I had originally dropped my equipment. It went deep into the soft ground and the shrapnel went high and distant. The dirt collapsed my tent on top of me in the slit trench. I owe my life to Sergeant Kierstead.”

We thank Lloyd for his contribution to Find-Share-Discuss, and invite readers to share similar memories of wartime or peacetime service.