Joe Hallard on motorcycle in Piedmonte d’Alife, Italy – late May or June 1944 P560
The 48th Highlanders were at rest, recovering from their successful, and singlehanded, breaching of the vaunted Adolph Hitler Line defences at Pontecorvo on 22/23 May 1944. 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. The goal was 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.