In one blood-soaked, furious week of fighting, from December 20 to December 27, 1943, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division took the town of Ortona, Italy, from elite German paratroopers ordered to hold the medieval port town at all costs. When the vicious battle was over, 2339 Canadians were dead or wounded. But the town that had become known as "Little Stalingrad" was now in Allied hands. Mark Zuehlke weaves reminiscences of the Canadians, Germans and Italians who were there together with a blow-by-blow account of the fighting.