Personal Message
from the Army Commander

To All Ranks 1 Canadian Corps

Now that 1st Canadian Corps is leaving the Eighth Army, I want to thank you all for your splendid contribution to the successes of the Eighth Army in the Sicilian and Italian campaigns.

As a Corps you had, after a long period of training, your first battle experience with the Eighth Army. In the Sicilian battles and in those ensuing you showed a magnificent fighting spirit, skill, determination and endurance; and these qualities produced the successes they deserved. In the battles of the Sicilian campaign, in the landing in Italy and the advance to Campobasso, at the crossing of the Moro and the capture of Ortona, in the advance up the Liri Valley and the breaking of the Hitler Line, in the breaking of the Gothic Line and the capture of S. Fortunato, and finally in the capture of Ravenna and the advance to the Senio, in all of these you have maintained and enhanced the great reputation that Canadian arms established in the last war at Vimy Ridge and on other historic battlefields.

You leave at a time when we can look forward with confidence to an early and final victory over the Germans. To this your contribution has already been outstanding, and whatever the future may bring I am confident that your progress will be as distinguished as it has always been in the past while serving with the Eighth Army.

We shall miss you much,

All good luck.

R. L. McCreery
Lieut.-General,
G.O.C., Eighth Army.
Main H. Q,
Eighth Army.
17th February, 1945.