On the day of the landing, July 10, there were 10 Canadian casualities at the beach. So as Michel said, it wasn't a tremendous battle. They moved inland very quickly, and I should mention that they moved inland on foot. The three ships that were carrying our trucks were sunk, and this is why we will be retracing on foot. They suffered, and we think we can show the world that we can suffer.
The first three days were difficult walking, but relatively speaking, it was an easy slope. It wasn't until the second week that things got really difficult. The Canadians engaged the Hermann Göring division, and they were absolutely ferocious in their—I don't know what you call it in military terms—defensive withdrawal. What was unknown to the Americans and the English at the time was that the major German defences had moved inland toward the spine of mountains north of the Catanian plain, directly in our path.
The book that is being produced for this project by UNB and printed by Laurier University will produce new information that has been discovered in the Italian and German archives, which says that the Canadians really did much more than was previously known. So the terrain was difficult and the fighting was amazing.
That said, the veterans, as well as the Sicilians I have met on numerous trips back, tell stories of the Canadian soldiers not eating while they gave the food rations that they had to the townsfolk, in Modica in particular. So it was pretty spectacular. I think the Canadians did much more than was expected of them.