In Fall 1943, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division was working its way up the boot of Italy alongside their British and American counterparts. It was a tough, dirty scrap – the Germans were in fighting retreat, springing ambushes and laying mines. In December, the small coastal town of Ortona became the site of a bloody clash between the Canadians and an elite unit of German paratroopers.
Alexander Railton Campbell was killed just outside that small coastal town, near the Moro River. He was 33 years old, a Major in the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, and the immediate superior of Canadian writer Farley Mowat.
He is a major character in Mowat’s war memoir, And No Birds Sang. Mowat describes Campbell as “elephantine lump of man” who had “a ferocious determination to kill as many Germans as he could.” But more than the exaggerated “Titan” of Mowat’s memoir or one of the battle’s 5,836 Canadian casualties, Campbell was a real person whose sacrifice is only fully understood through the letters he left behind.
Capt. Alexander Railton Campbell portrait, dressed in
Hastings & Prince Edward Regiment Uniform. Date unknown.
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George Metcalf Archival Collection
Canadian War Museum
Born and raised in Perth, ON, Campbell lost his father to war at the age of seven. Harry Davies Campbell was killed on July 30, 1917 and was buried in Noeux-les-Mines, France. Sarah Jane Railton Campbell had to raise Campbell, along with his two sisters and two brothers, on her own.
That early tragedy did not stop Campbell from military involvement. He joined the Militia’s Lanark and Renfrew Regiment in 1928 before switching to the “Hasty Pete’s” in 1940.
Campbell wrote to his mother regularly during his service, often apologizing for delays or complaining of the wait – he wouldn’t see “a real-life German” until mid-1943. And although Mowat quotes him saying the “only good German… was a dead one,” little of this hatred appears in his letters. But the effects of the war on children did upset Campbell.
“Whenever I see pictures of the kids in Europe I think of Bill + Jan and I get so mad I could wring Hitler’s neck,” reads one 1940 letter mentioning his niece and nephew, whom Campbell missed.
Letter from Campbell to “Bill,” dated Dec. 27, 1941.
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George Metcalf Archival Collection
Canadian War Museum
“Hey there fellow you better stop growing or I won’t know you when I come home,” he writes to Bill on Dec. 27, 1941.
The holidays were difficult for Campbell, as they undoubtedly were for many soldiers. “This is the one time of the year I really would like to ship away and come home,” reads a December 1942 letter.
In an undated 1943 letter to his mother, Campbell is excited at the prospect of some future family vacation. “I think your idea of a trip over after this war is dandy,” he writes.
Telegram notification of Alexander Campbell’s death, dated Jan. 3, 1944.
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George Metcalf Archival Collection
Canadian War Museum
Official records and a glib telegram to Sarah Campbell show Campbell died on Christmas Day, 1943. Mowat’s account – itself secondhand – has him, upon witnessing the devastation of a Canadian platoon, seizing a Tommy gun, giving “an inarticulate bellow” and charging straight at the enemy.
“He could have gone no more than three or four paces before he was riddled by scores of bullets,” Mowat writes.
In the July 29, 1944 edition of the Canadian Gazette, Campbell is listed as “Mentioned in Dispatches” – a recognition for bravery. A poem he wrote, “Prayer Before Battle,” is held in commemoration by the still-surviving Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment.
But 75 years later, the legacy of Campbell and soldiers like him is uncertain.
“I think Canadians do not have a very strong sense of the Battle of Ortona or the Italian campaign,” said historian Tim Cook over the phone last week. The campaign is often overshadowed by D-Day and Juno beach, according to Cook.
“There are very few monuments and memorials in Canada or in fact on those battlefields that draw Canadians to those sites of memory,” he said.
Campbell’s grave is at the Moro River Canadian War Cemetery, 1600 km from his father and 6900 km from home.
Document 1: And No Birds Sang by Farley Mowat
Document 2: Letter to Bill, 1940