Canadian Sherman V tanks, likely with the 5th Armoured Brigade, 2nd Armoured Regiment (Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians), 5th Armoured Regiment (8th Princess Louise’s (New Brunswick) Hussars) or the 9th Armoured Regiment (British Columbia Dragoons), moving out of an LST on arrival in Marseilles, France, 6 March 1945. This was part of Operation Goldflake, which involved the move of 1st Canadian Corps from Italy to North-West Europe, February-March 1945.
Operation Goldflake was the administrative move of I Canadian Corps (in essence, all Canadian combatant units) and the British 5th Infantry Division from Italy to Northwestern Europe during the Second World War. The British-led forces had been fighting in Italy since the Allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) in July 1943. The Allied commanders decided to move the British and Canadian troops to fight in Northwestern Europe in the spring of 1945. The most significant of these elements was Lieutenant General C. Foulkes’s Canadian I Corps, which was transferred from Lieutenant General Sir Richard McCreery’s British 8th Army in Italy to General H. D. G. Crerar’s Canadian Army in the Low Countries.
Operation Goldflake was the codename of the plan to arrange the move and to conceal the shifting of such a large number of troops to another war theatre. The move was publicized as a regrouping away from the Italian front to allow for recuperation of the troops. A massive amount of planning was needed, since troops and administrative centres were widely dispersed in southern Italy. Trains and road convoys had to be arranged, while not leaving any of the front-lines vulnerable to counter-attacks by the German forces. Troops and materiel were to be moved from ports at Naples and Leghorn in Italy to Marseilles in France, at the rate of 3700 people, 40tanks, 650 wheeled vehicles, and 50 carriers each day.
Embarkation began on 22 February 1945 and most trips to Marseille took two days. It was then a five-day drive to the Belgian frontier, 1,085 km (674 mi). By the end of April, over 60,000 troops and support personnel had been moved from Italy to Northwestern Europe.