H/Captain, Padre Hugh McLean leading service near Piedmonte d’Alife, July 1944. P0561 The Canadian flag is draped over ammunition boxes to form the altar. Captain George Beal, arms crossed, stands in front of his company.
Piedmonte represented a well-earned rest for the 48th following their unassisted penetration of the Hitler Line and a long 24-hour fight behind and within the fortifications on 22/23 May. They were the first Canadian battalion to break the Germans’ vaunted line. They were intended to be a diversion, to convince the Germans that this was where the Canadian Army would attack in strength, while the actual attack would be later and to the east at the Melo River. The defences, built on the character of a WWI defence included concrete barriers with embedded machine guns and anti-tank weapons, yards of barbed wire, mined approaches and a deep and wide tank barrier. The 48th had been sent to attack the line, without support of a FOO for artillery, nor tanks and no advance screening of the mine fields by the engineers.