Liverpool resident had dark Christmas 1944

On Boxing Day, Dec. 26, 1944, his company of the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR), after a half-decent meal Christmas Day, mounted a daylight attack on their objective, a farm house. Allison's Company was cut off and two infantrymen were dead and 24 injured. Anthony was among the most seriously injured, suffering a wound from a piece of shrapnel that pierced his side and lodged close to his heart. That battle memento remains in place to this day. The worst scenario developed and the company was taken as Prisoners of War (POW).

In a previous battle on Sept. 16, 1944, during which his Company had infiltrated the German lines, Anthony took a bullet in his left arm. That laid him up in an Italian hospital for seven days, when he was returned to the prison camp. Allison was declared "Missing In Action." His mother was not informed of his whereabouts until long after his capture. After he returned home to Milton, he says it was a long time before things got back to normal. "I just could not get it off my mind. You can never forget something like that."

A few days later the POWs were crammed into box cars, 50 men to a car, and headed toward Northern Italy. On the route, the train was attacked by Allied aircraft. The result; bombs sealed both ends of the Brenner Tunnel and the POWs were trapped in this "coffin" for seven days and seven nights. There was total darkness and the prisoners could not see their hands in front of their face, and certainly not the soldier sitting next to them. The only light they saw was in the evening when the German guard, carrying a lamp, came to each rail car checking to make sure that everything was in order.

The conditions were most severe. Once a day the POWs were given two slices of bread, but no water. The sights and smells created by using a corner of the box car for sanitary reasons are beyond description. After another seven days of these conditions, the train was finally released from its tunnel prison and they arrived at a POW camp just about an hour's drive outside Munich. The camp held about 22,000 men of various Allied nationalities, but mainly British, American and Canadians.

At this camp, the POWs were forced to work daily on re-building railways that had been destroyed by Allied bombing. It was here that Anthony received a painful injury to his left wrist, which still causes him pain today. The only thing that kept him going for a long six months was the thought of coming out of the nightmare in one piece and returning home.

Allison could not work with his injured wrist, so he was forced to march 20 kilometres a day, just to keep him busy. Finally, one day they heard a tank approaching. It was American, so the POWs were freed to a certain extent.

They journeyed with the cleanup American troops and were flown back to England. He recalls: "No one knows the feeling it was to get on that plane in Italy and arrive in England the same day, knowing that we were free men again. It was a great feeling."

Anthony entered hospital at Farnborough and was released after three weeks. Then it was off to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a month's leave.

He arrived back in Halifax, N .S. on Feb. 9, 1946 where he was discharged and returned to his mother's home in Milton.