Two Valleys, 80 Years Later
History and memory are tied to people and places. In May 2025, ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ History professor Jim Wood was preparing to lead a historical battlefield tour in Italy to retrace the path of the British Columbia Dragoons (BCD) in the Second World War, including visits to Naples, Rome, Ortona, Ravenna, and the Liri Valley. Today, the British Columbia Dragoons are the "Okanagan's Own" regiment of the Canadian Army Reserve, whose serving members include both faculty and students from OC. In the Second World War the unit went overseas as a tank regiment in the 5th Canadian Armoured Division. Beginning in the spring of 1944, it fought in the Liri Valley offensive that broke the "Hitler Line" and helped open the approaches to Rome.
Wood, a reserve officer and Deputy Commanding Officer of the BCD, was planning visits to sites like the famous Abbey of Montecassino, war cemeteries, and on-the-ground explorations of sites where the regiment fought in 1944-45. That's when a message to the regiment's Facebook page from Marco Savarese, Deputy Mayor of the Commune of Pofi, brought about a change of plans. Having seen the BCDs were coming back to the Liri Valley, Savarese asked if the BCDs would visit his town's memorial to the Canadians who fought there in 1944.
What followed on arrival in Italy became a remarkable encounter with living memory. At the Commonwealth war cemetery in Cassino, the BCDs were met by Alessandro Campagna, a local historian with an incredible knowledge of the Liri Valley as it was in 1944. Driving through a countryside of olive groves and farm villages -- many of them rebuilt from rubble after the war -- a stop at the Melfa River was met by a delegation that included the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the nearby town of Roccasecca. Also present was Benedito, a local resident who in 1944 had been a young boy when the Canadians passed through. Now in his 90s, Benedito recalled Canadian tanks fording the river at that point between the San Vito Vecchia Church and the Roman ruins at Aquino, and how the Canadians took up a collection of food on a blanket laid out behind their tanks and gave to his family after weeks of hiding in the nearby woods as the frontlines moved past them in the spring of 1944.
The day ended in Pofi, a beautiful hilltop town that was liberated by the Perth Regiment and the British Columbia Dragoons towards the end of the Liri Valley offensive. There, Deputy Mayor Savarese welcomed his guests at a memorial Pofi has established to the Canadians who liberated their town from Nazi occupation.
"This was unforgettable;" says Wood, "it was a chance to experience the connection between our two valleys, the Okanagan and the Liri. Here in Canada, our memories of the war are the written histories and family stories passed down across 80 years. But in the Liri Valley, its everywhere -- it's ruined bunkers in the farm fields, it's war graves maintained by the Italians, and it's seen in acts of remembrance like the memorial at Pofi. I was planning to lead a tour, but now it feels more like a pilgrimage."
