By Sumayya
SASKATOON – A team of college learners are giving hundreds of hours of their free time to bring an important part of Second World War history into clear view.
Linaya Taylor is one of the learners assisting in building a tiny display of the Battle of Ortona inside the Saskatoon Museum of Military Artifacts.
“It is (a battle) that a lot of people do not actually know about, so that is why we are making a model,” she shared.
The less-famous Battle of Ortona was very brutal. Canadian soldiers battled against German forces in close, hand-to-hand fighting during Christmas 1943.
Over 500 Canadians lost their lives while they assisted in freeing the Italian town from German control.
For Taylor, the small details represent the most vital part of sharing any war tale.
“I like seeing individual people’s stories. It makes it really real for me,” she stated.
The display will feature two structures—a bank and an apartment—made out of wood, featuring separate rooms inside that show Canadian and German fighting using small, hand-painted plastic figures. Army tanks and soldiers will crowd the copied roads just like they did in actual life. Taylor, who is 20 years old, spent many hours studying the fight, the structures, and the troops who gave up their lives.
“I found a picture of a man who was being lifted onto a stretcher and taken away,” she shared, pointing toward the spot on the display where it took place. “He was an actual person who needed help.”
Kevin Hicks, a British army veteran and museum project leader, has been teaming up with young helpers like Taylor over the past five years.
He stated that the younger crowd has assisted in changing the museum into a space packed with real stories instead of just old items.
“It is humanizing history,” he told reporters.
“It is just wonderful because the students see it and they are enjoying it.”
Hicks, who worked during the Cold War inside the Royal Military Police, knew a buddy who battled in the Battle of Ortona.
He wanted to respect the massive sacrifices those troops made in a deep way.
“They fought incredibly hard and I thought, come on, they deserve more of a mention than just a tiny, little model,” he expressed. Hicks, 71, pushed out one of the museum walls to create space for the fresh display and built the copy structures from wood.
He noted it was very important to put mouse holes inside the building walls, which played a big role during the actual fight.
The Canadians relied on this famous battle trick to travel inside buildings while staying protected from outside strikes.
“They dug a hole in a room, threw a load of hand grenades and machine gunned through the hole and then followed through to fight the Germans literally face-to-face,” Hicks stated.
The Ortona display stands as one of several that fill the museum, situated in the lower level of the Nutana Legion.
Last year, learners finished a copy of Juno Beach built from 3-D printed homes. That whole display needed over 1,800 hours to wrap up.
Multiple other displays are currently being built.
Evelyne Clark, 20, just began giving her time at the museum. She is building a display of the Vimy Ridge tunnels out of Styrofoam.
She thinks these displays can assist the younger crowd in better grasping the past.
“Having a visual representation of something rather than just hearing about it or listening about it through a textbook, can make you a lot more interested in it,” she shared.
“You can make connection that you cannot always make on paper.”
The team hopes to wrap up the Ortona and Vimy Ridge displays early in the coming year.
