Handing out the rum ration aboard HMCS Arvida in St. John’s to celebrate the news of Italy’s surrender on Sept. 8, 1943. [Lt. John D. Mahoney/DND/LAC/PA-142439]

From the archives: S.R.D.

STORY BY LEGION MAGAZINE

This story appeared in a June 1926 issue of The Legionary, the predecessor for Legion Magazine that celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The piece has been left mostly as it was originally published, with only minor copy edits to correct typos or glaring omissions.

“If the Sergeant steals your rum, never mind!” Thus goes one of the favourite ditties when veterans foregather, sung to the tune of the wartime refrain, “Though your heart may ache a while, never mind!” written and composed by Harry Dent and Tom Goldburn. Today the original words are all but forgotten, but it is quite safe to say that the army version will last as long as good fellows get together.

The familiar letters on the gallon stone jars, denoting “Service Rum Diluted,” have also lent themselves to many a quip: Soon Runs Dry, Sergeants Rarely Deliver, Seldom Reaches Destination, or as the orderly sergeant so aptly puts it in his “Five Nines and Whiz Bangs”—Soldiers’ Real Delight.

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Major Jayson Geroux in a still from the 2013 documentary The Battle of Ortona. [The Battle of Ortona/imdb.com]

An urban warfare historian on Canada’s forgotten Battle of Groningen, Part 1

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

It’s a name that resonates—at least in Canada—like few others: Ortona. An idyllic Italian town it may now be, but in December 1943, it was here that 1st Canadian Infantry Division fought through rubble-laden streets and shattered houses against fanatic German resistance.

Even today, more than 80 years later, the struggle once dubbed Little Stalingrad continues to draw significant scholarly focus. Among those gravitating to such studies is Major Jayson Geroux of The Royal Canadian Regiment.

Geroux is an urban operations instructor and urban warfare historian. Like countless compatriots, he too sees the resonance in Ortona’s name. Nevertheless, the infantry officer also believes that another name, another Canadian urban battle of the Second World War, deserves a greater place in the discourse: Groningen.

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