Honouring fallen Barrhead serviceman

The sacrifice Sgt. Robert McEwan made was not in vain and will not be forgotten, if Mary Wright has anything to say about it.

McEwan, a Barrhead native and member of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, was killed in action on Aug. 5, 1943, as part of the Allied effort to liberate Sicily. He was 24.

In May, Wright (formerly Mary Tauscher), a Mosside resident who left the community 40 years ago, and her husband Doug decided to take a trip to Sicily, Italy.

Once they were there they took a side tour to the Agira Canadian War Cemetery where 490 of McEwan’s Canadian comrades have been laid to rest who died during the Sicilian campaign.

“We toured a number of Commonwealth cemeteries in France and Belgium last year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge and Canadian military history is something that has always interested me,” she said.

In preparation for their trip, her husband a retired Canadian army engineer, was looking to find the locations of the graves of his fellow engineers. While he was doing that, Wright decided to see if she could find out if anyone from Barrhead was buried at the cemetery.

“I decided to focus my search on the Loyal Eddies [Loyal Edmonton Regiment] because from what I have read in both the First and Second World Wars the soldiers tended to sign up pretty close to home, because if someone is from Barrhead chances are they would have enlisted in Edmonton,” she said. “And McEwan is the only one which specifically says his parents [William and Jessie McEwan] are from Barrhead.”

As for how she felt when she visited McEwan’s grave and placed a Canadian Flag next to the headstone she said it was quite emotional.

“When you think of what they must have gone through,” she said, noting the village of Agira is located on this hill and I am standing at the cemetery and thought how did these young men take Agira. With the Germans bolstering the Italian troops defending the high ground, but here are these Canadians, fighting uphill in tremendous heat, yet they did it.”

Wright said the day they visited, they were the only ones in the cemetery, which did not surprise her. In addition to being one of the more remote Commonwealth cemeteries in that people need to take a day-long ferry ride to get there and that the Allied Italian campaign is overshadowed by the Normandy, D-Day invasion.

In fact, Allied servicemen who fought in Italy were given the nickname “D-Day Dodgers” by a British member of Parliament Viscountess Astor.

“Because she thought the soldiers in Italy were having a cushy time and missed all the fighting at D-Day,” she said.

On July 10, 1943, following the successful conclusion of the North African campaign in mid-May, a combined allied force of 160,000 Commonwealth and American troops invaded Sicily as a prelude to the assault on mainland Italy. The Italians, who would shortly make peace with the Allies and re-enter the war on their side, offered little-determined resistance but German opposition was vigorous and stubborn. The campaign in Sicily came to an end Aug. 17. Agira was taken by the 1st Canadian Division, the Lord Eddies, July 28 and the site for the war cemetery was chosen in September for the burial of all Canadians who were killed in the Sicily campaign. Although the Sicilian campaign proved successful for the Canadians, it wasn’t without a cost. In the 27-day campaign, 562 Canadians were killed, 1,664 wounded, and 84 taken prisoner in the course of the 130-mile advance.