In Memory of
Lloyd DUNCAN
Private, B/73486
48th Highlanders of Canada, R.C.I.C.
who dead 27 age
on 25 July 1943
Remembered with honour
AGIRA WAR CEMETERY, SICILY
AGIRA WAR CEMETERY, SICILY
Born 27 Oct 1915, Toronto, Toronto Municipality, Ontario, Canada;
Son of Andrew and Clara May Duncan, of Toronto, Ontario;
Enlisted on the 24th of November 1939 in Toronto.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 2009-08-05
Lloyd Duncan was part of Baker Company and involved in the heavy fighting near Monte di Nissoria. According to Dileas by Kim Beattie they were under heavy attacks by the German Panzergrenadiers:" There were no lack of fight in the men of Dog Company, but they still were learning the hard way; sometimes sheer courage and fighting heart do not win battles. That charge had been one of desperation. It might have won.
Baker Company had the same brave will to fight. The wounds of both their killed and wounded were on the upper parts of the body. They were hit when they stood up in the face of fire to charge forward.
They did that now, but Baker Company's ultimate experience was just as bleak and desperate as Dog's fight to their left. It looked well at first; they had not been on their crest of the centre height for more than a few moments when Capt. Lyon began to think a withdrawal had been made by the Panzer Grenadiers. He was definitely on the crest. Resistance seemed quelled when Corporals Len Burt and Syd Watling led their sections against a machine-gun post, and an SP-gun's position, and silenced both if they could not overrun them.
Capt. Lyon was just ready to start carrying out the right flanking movement, when disaster struck. The Germans had been lying doggo; they had withdrawn, but only for a few yards. It was virtually a trap. The Germans were artfully dug-in on the reverse slope. Baker discovered this with a shock at their moment of greatest optimism. Grenades and Spandaus flailed at them, and a machine-gun battle opened with a roar, the heavier Spandaus against the Company's few Bren guns. One platoon, which had bravely tried to rush the dug-in Germans, were locked in a savage bomb and bayonet encounter. Each section was soon fighting for its life, trying to get back to the stone faces of the terraces, or to claw out some kind of cover.
Both Baker and Dog were now hopelessly stopped. On both company fronts, sections and little groups of 2 or 3, still kept valiantly trying to get forward, or at least into a position where they could dommate that fire and hold the heights. Strong bodies of Germans were entrenched behind both mortar and machine-gun positions, and in Baker's area, tank guns were also now pumping like pom-poms and the panzers' Besas were blazing."
Lloyd lived in Toronto with his parents, three brothers and three sisters.
Find Grave, 2024-10-27
Information courtesy of the 