July 2019 

 

In this It Happened Here episode we leave the invasion of Western Europe and return to the hard fought battles of the Italian Campaign.

 

Since first invading in September 1943, Italy had been anything but the “soft underbelly” that Churchill had called it. Finally in the spring and summer of 1944, after months of being held back by German forces defending Italy, things started to move. 

 

With the eyes of the world on Normandy the men fighting their way up the boot of Italy felt they had been forgotten back home, but they were not by codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

 

Our research historian, Dr David Kenyon, will be your guide to the vital support GC&CS gave to the Army’s on the Italian Front. It would be their hard fighting that would ultimately lead to the capture of the first of the Axis Capitals, Rome.

 

We also look at the absolutely enormous offensive launched by the Soviet forces in late June 1944, Operation Bagration.

 

Very special thanks to Lowden Jim for his recording of The D-Day Dodgers. His work can be found at  www.youtube.com/Lowdenjim

 

We dedicate this episode to Sgt Charles Leslie Harris and Gunner Gordon Brown, two of our own D-Day Dodgers. 

 

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