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The first Canadian sapper to set foot in Sicily was Captain George Wheelock Burbidge of the 4th Field Company. Captain Burbidge was attached to Combined Operations HQ and was assigned to 3 Combined Operations Pilotage Party in Malta. These parties gathered information on proposed landing beaches usually under the noses of enemy coastal defences and patrols.
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While the ground dictated that the infantry would bear the brunt of the battle, and indeed they did, the ground also dictated that the sappers would be front and centre in every action of the Sicilian Campaign. In less than two months, the Canadians would be on the Italian mainland and in a fight that would last into the winter of 1945 and become known as 'An Engineers War'. |
The Second World War Allied campaign in Italy is often called “an Engineer’s War” because of the terrain and obstacles the enemy created that had to be overcome. In December 1943, the German Army had retreated to the "Bernhard Line" across the narrowest part of the Italian Peninsula to halt or at least slow the Allied advance. The line crossed over mountain rivers swollen with winter rains that German military engineers reinforced by demolishing most of the bridges in the area to the south.
Peacekeeping activities for the Royal Canadian Engineers began in earnest when the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was authorized on 4 November 1956 for deployment in Egypt. This first United Nations Emergency Force was established to secure an end to the Suez Crisis between Egypt, Israel, Britain and France. The plan envisaged the deployment of UNEF on both sides of the armistice line. Egypt accepted receiving the UN forces, but Israel refused. Lieutenant General Tommy Burns, formerly a Roral Canadian Engineer officer, was appointed Force Commander.
| The previous articles present the role of the Royal Canadian Engineers during Operation HUSKY, the Allied campaign to land on the island of Sicily and take it from the Axis Powers. Although the landings were almost unopposed, action along the line of march from the beaches at Pachino in the south, over the mountains to the town of Adrano in the north, was hard and deadly. On a man-for-man basis, the RCE took casualties at a rate second only to the infantry. |
The Korean War presented a major challenge to military engineers because of the nature of the terrain. Korea was a land of mountains interlaced with rice patties in the valleys and there were few roads capable of carrying sustained heavy military traffic. The area was also subject to heavy monsoon rains that seemed to destroy roads and bridges annually.
During conflict, a poor water supply can cause even more casualties than the enemy and there are examples where soldiers have died in the thousands due to unsanitary camp conditions and from drinking contaminated water. Good quality drinking water is one of the basic necessities that is critical to humanitarian operations. The task of providing potable water falls to the Military Engineers. The treatment of raw water used to be based on the processes of coagulation and settlement.
“…Bailey Bridging made an immense contribution towards ending World War II. As far as my own operations were concerned, with the Eighth Army in Italy and with the 21st Army Group in North-West Europe, I could never have maintained the speed and tempo of forward movement without large supplies of Bailey Bridging.”
….Field Marshall Montgomery of Alamein
The Rock of Gibraltar is the key to the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. Thrusting 1300 feet above the Spanish plain on the Bay of Algeciras, the Rock of Gibraltar has been a great British fortress and an important defensive outpost since its acquisition in 1704. Through the years the Royal Engineers had excavated tunnels and galleries in the rock for defensive purposes.
Two young Canadian Engineers, J.A.D. McCurdy and F.W. Baldwin, piloted the first military demonstration of aircraft flight in Canada at Camp Petawawa, ON. Conducted in July-August 1909 using the Silver Dart and the Baddeck 1, these were the first such flights in the British Commonwealth by a member of the British Commonwealth.