SASKATOON – A group of university students are dedicating hundreds of hours of their time to put a significant piece of Second World War history into perspective. Linaya Taylor is one of the students helping construct a miniature model of the Battle of Ortona inside the Saskatoon Museum of Military Artifacts. “It is (a battle) that a lot of people do not actually know about, so that is why we are making a model,” she said. The lesser-known Battle of Ortona was vicious. Canadians fought against Germans in hand-to-hand combat during Christmas 1943. More than 500 Canadians were killed as they helped liberate the Italian city from the Germans. For Taylor, the details are the most important part of telling any war story. “I like seeing individual people’s stories. It makes it really real for me,” she said. The model will include two buildings – a bank and apartment – built from wood, with individual rooms inside that depict Canadian and German combat with plastic, hand-painted figurines. Tanks and troops will fill the replicated streets just as they did in real life. Taylor, 20, spent hours researching the battle, the buildings, and the soldiers who sacrificed their lives. “I found a picture of a man who was being lifted onto a stretcher and taken away,” she explained, pointing to the part of the model where it happened. “He was an actual person who needed help.” Kevin Hicks, British war veteran and museum project manager, has been working with young volunteers like Taylor for the last five years. He said the younger generation has helped turn the museum into a place filled with stories rather than just artifacts. “It is humanizing history,” he told CTV News. “It is just wonderful because the students see it and they are enjoying it.” Hicks, who served during the Cold War for the Royal Military Police, had a friend who fought in the Battle of Ortona. He wanted to honour the sacrifices those soldiers made in a meaningful way. “They fought incredibly hard and I thought, come on, they deserve more of a mention than just a tiny, little model,” he said. Hicks, 71, expanded one of the museum walls to make room for the new model and constructed the replica buildings out of wood. He said it was important to include mouse holes in the building walls, which were key in the real-life battle. The Canadians used the famous war tactic to move through buildings while being shielded from outside attacks. “They dug a hole in a room, threw a load of hand grenades and machine gunned through the hole and then followed through to fight the Germans literally face-to-face,” Hicks explained. The Ortona model is one of many that fills the museum, located in the basement of the Nutana Legion. Last year, students completed a replica of Juno Beach made of 3-D printed houses. The entire exhibit took over 1,800 hours to finish. Several other exhibits are works in progress. Evelyne Clark, 20, recently started volunteering at the museum. She’s constructing a model of the Vimy Ridge tunnels using Styrofoam. She believes models can help the younger generation better understand history. “Having a visual representation of something rather than just hearing about it or listening about it through a textbook, can make you a lot more interested in it,” she said. “You can make connection that you cannot always make on paper.” The group hopes to complete the Ortona and Vimy Ridge exhibits in the new year.
