Captain Charles Fraser Comfort
Perth Regiment of Canada

Following the breaking of the Hitler line May 1944, several crew members of the North Irish Horse returned to the battle field, accompanied by the NIH photographer, to examine their destroyed/disabled tanks. Close by my Churchill 'Ballyrashane' was a Canadian officer busily painting away. It wasn't until coming across an article in 'Canadian Military History' - an extract from which is below the photograph of him - that I discovered who the officer was and what he was painting. By happenstance, it was of a destroyed dug-in Panther turret (Panzertürm) the photograph of which is on the next page.

This photograph of Captain Charles Comfort was obviously taken elsewhere than in the Liri Valley but it is not too different as I recollect seeing him at work.

The following is an extract from "Canadian Military History"

Although at different angles, the photograph and the painting match one another quite well - note the disabled Churchills in the background.

The following is an extract from 'Canadian Military History' Volume 4, Number 1 - Spring 1995.

The Adolf Hitler Line was a ragged line of poplars a mile from the artist’ vantage point. It was a series of powerful defensive points extending from Monte Cairo in the east, through the towns of Aquino, Pontecorvo, to Arunci in the west. Each point or Panzerturm was a miniature fort of concrete surrounded by intricate barbed wire, then minefields, tank ditches, and built-in machine-gun pillboxes sited to bring down interlocking crossfire on every line of approach. In addition, there were mobile anti-tank guns, mortar platoons and panzer tanks. “No one underestimated the power of the line we were attacking.. .it would be the toughest battle Canadians had ever faced in any war.”

When the entire 5th Canadian Armoured Division passed through to engage a full panzer division, the Hitler Line was breached. Comfort examined one of the strong points. “One gun created a fantastic sight, sticking perpendicularly up into the air. . . memorializing the disasters of war. A direct hit had detonated its magazine.. .tearing the whole turret from its casemate, tossing it into the air. . .a vast, inert steel probe blindly challenging the heavens. All about the battlefield were derelict tanks. .. 14 confronting this one weapon This scene near Pontecorvo is remembered in his “Destroyed Panzerturm on the Adolf Hitler Line.” But the soldiers are more dominant in his best known painting, “The Hitler Line.”

Monte Cassino’s ruin had shaken Comfort profoundly. He expressed his grief in metaphor;
the dead of Pontecorvo “pressed into grotesque corrugations describing the dreadful shapes and pressures of the masonry that had crushed them.. .in a most depressed state of mind, I set up my equipment to one side of the great Romai road built 2400 years before to connect south Italy to Rome, and sketched what was left of the town.” Out of this came “Route 6 at Cassino.”

The affable lieutenant of 1943 — now Major Comfort — was hurting. The Canadians had breached the fearsome Hitler Line but “many a wonderful and sensitive boy” had gone forever. Comfort had the added problem of having made pilgrimage to Italy’s art treasures only five years earlier and, now, of seeing so much of it ravaged.

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