Ashleigh

Today we traveled to Ortona a city that in the second world
war the Canadians fought threw against the Germans, we visited the Moro River
Cemetery it was such an eye opening experience to actually see the grave of the
soldier that i reached. We were able to lay a cross on our soldier’s grave as
well as a poppy. Ray Adamson was the
soldier that i was given he was a gunner
in the Royal Canadian regiment he died the day after Christmas at the age of
37. After that we got together as a group around this statue and me and
Christina got to lay a wreath, then we got candles lit and those were placed at
our soldier’s grave as well. We got some
time to just wander the cemetery and see the graves, the hardest part for me
was reading the inscriptions on some of them they really start to get to you
after a while when you start thinking about the fact these men some of them as
young as 16 gave up their lives so we could have what we have today. On the
same note it really gave me a new outlook on things and i appreciate what they
did even more after being there. After
the cemetery we got a small tour of the city it was raining so it made things
hard, we went into the war museum there and i learned that mostly everything
that was first donated was done so by the Canadians. They had this really cool
model of what a street would have looked like during the time of the war it was
pretty destroyed with holes everywhere and tanks at every corner. They had the
uniforms from different countries there and let me tell you i don’t know how they wore them for months
because they were itchy they even had a blood stained stretcher kinda gross i know but at that same time makes
things even more real. I really enjoy
going to museums so it was a fun experience we couldn’t stay long though
because we were on a tight schedule and our bus was leaving but back to Rome
tonight for our last night then on to Florence !
-
Ashleigh Frederick.