 Henry Beaudry. (KATHLEEN HARRIS/SUN MEDIA)
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ROME, Italy - A large sign promising adventure and kisses from girls lured a young Henry Beaudry to the war.
Four years later, he returned home a man - with wounds from Ortona and a frame frail from months as a German prisoner then a malnourished escapee.
Beaudry, an aboriginal Second World War veteran of the Italian campaign, staged the escape with a Mongolian fellow prisoner who didn't speak a word of English. The pair managed to communicate through signs and gestures, travelling together for two months in a determined search for their allies.
They slept in haystacks and marched mostly at night to avoid detection.
"I was wondering if I'd ever make it home, but I just kept going," Beaudry said.
Eventually, the weary pair met up with American allies.
Now 88, Beaudry is making his first trip back to Italy since the war ended nearly 65 years ago. Memories have been flooding back in the last week as he has gazed in astonishment at the serene landscape that was once blood-drenched rubble.
He was "jumpy and not quite well" after the war ended. One image that haunts him still today is of a baby crying as his mother, an Italian civilian, was shot dead on the street.
Beaudry wasn't thinking about the horrors that awaited when he was drawn to enlist by a sign that called out: "Join the army - see the world and kiss a girl in every port."
"It kind of attracted me," he said.
He joined in 1941 and landed in Sicily in July 1943. He was shot in the hand in the Battle of Ortona and was later captured on Dec. 13, 1944. At the time, his group was holed up in a building - out of ammunition, with no radio communications and many wounded men suffering in pain.
"We couldn't get any messages out, and we couldn't go out there - the Germans were just packed, waiting for us to go out," he recalled.
Beaudry hid under a table. When the Germans finally burst in, he cleverly dodged their questions.
"Me no speak English," he lied.
Just before he was taken prisoner, Beaudry lost an eagle feather an elder had given him before he left for the war along with a cross that the Germans eventually seized. In 1949, he received a parcel from Ottawa returning the cross without any explanation.
As Beaudry and other veterans wrap up an emotional pilgrimage to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Italian Campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a statement honouring those who fought and died in "one of the longest and fiercest struggles of the Second World War."
"The values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law for which they fought in Italy's mountains, flooded rivers and rubble-filled streets are the same values our military men and women continue to protect today," he said. "The legacy of our veterans lives on in the brave Canadians who are serving today in places such as Afghanistan. Veterans demonstrate time and again that they rise to any challenge."
