Partisan in Florence, August 14, 1944
On this day in 1944, Operation Tractable was commenced by Canadian and Polish troops in Normandy with the goal of closing the Falaise Gap, which it did. Casualties were outsized, as they often are during offensives, with the Canadian forces, the largest Allied contingent by far, taking over twice the number of casualties as the Germans.
Canadian artillery advancing.
On the same day, the Red Army completed operations in Operation Osovets, having taken all of their objectives in a week's operation in the final stage of Operation Bagration.
Also on this day, the Ft. Lawton riot occurred at Ft. Lawton, Washington. The riot was a conflict between Italian Prisoners of War and African American soldiers who had been celebrating their imminent departure overseas. The riot started as an exchange of words between some drunk soldiers with liberty and Italian prisoners, which escalated into a fight. Military Policemen restored order with no arrests, but the following day an Italian POW was found lynched. No American participants in the riot could really be identified, but nonetheless 43 of them were charged in connection with the incident and 28 convicted in the largest US trial of servicemen during World War Two.
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