“D-Day Dodgers” was a dismissive slight against the close to 100,000 Canadians who served in the Italian campaign during the Second World War. The moniker came from a cheerful Second World War nameless song that was belted out by soldiers to the tune of Lili Marlene, with the words, “We’re the D-Day Dodgers here in Italy/Drinking all the vino, always on the spree.” While it was typical soldiers’ fare in not taking themselves too seriously, the term occasionally was used callously to describe the hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers who served in the Mediterranean against the fascist forces of Germany and Italy. It implied that they missed the real show in Normandy.
