10.  During the 24 hour period the Regi­ment fi­red a to­tal of over 11,000 rounds and slap-happy lay­ers had to be forced to leave their seats to take a rest.  Even clerks and bat­men were busy haul­ing am­mu­ni­tion and the con­duct of all ranks in the first real bap­tism of fire was a cre­dit to the Regi­ment.  An out­stan­ding ex­am­ple was B-43749 Gnr. F.W. Tur­ner, M.M., whose ci­ta­tion reads as fol­lows:

“On the 17th Jan­u­ary 1944, the 11 Cdn In­fan­try Bri­gade put in an at­tack on a strongly held Ger­man posi­tion in front of OR­TONA.  An Ob­ser­va­tion Post had been es­tab­lished at map re­fer­ence 302179 sheet 1461-2 for the Com­man­ding Of­fi­cer of the Cape Bre­ton High­lan­ders and the Of­fi­cer Com­man­ding 37th Bat­tery 17 Cdn Field Regi­ment R.C.A.  Dur­ing the early stages of the bat­tle both the O.P. lines and In­fan­try lines had been cut by en­emy mor­tars and shell fire.  The R/T com­muni­ca­tion was not sa­tis­fac­tory.  Gnr. Tur­ner, who as Bat­tery Sig­naller re­a­lized that com­muni­ca­tions had failed, with­out or­ders, went for­ward in full view of the en­emy, un­der heavy mor­tar, shell and ma­chine gun fire and re­es­tab­lished com­muni­ca­tions be­tween the O.P. and Bri­gade Head­quar­ters.  His con­duct on other oc­ca­sions has shown a great de­vo­tion to duty and simi­lar dis­re­gard for his own safety”.

11.  The Regiment moved on the 20th Jan­u­ary to a con­cen­tra­tion area in the val­ley of the SAN­GRO and two days la­ter into gun posi­tions on the OR­SOGNA front under com­mand 4th In­dian Divi­sion.  Here the Unit took over posi­tions ori­gi­nally con­struc­ted by the New Zea­lan­ders and the dug­outs they had con­struc­ted were much ap­pre­ci­ated after the slit trenches of the OR­TONA-posi­tion.