When Force 141 was set up Monty had just taken Tripoli, and when it issued its programme of work for HUSKY on 17 February he was about to resume the advance towards Mareth. He thus had no time to spare and instructed Miles Dempsey to act for him in Cairo. Dempsey, GOC of XIII Corps, moved into a group of buildings in a residential district of Cairo centred on the Semiramis Hotel, which were thereafter codenamed GEORGE and in which was established Force 545,¹ the new inter-service planning HQ for the British element of HUSKY. The first task was to look at the revised plan which was issued by Force 141 and cleared for distribution by Alexander on 28 February.

In fact the plan released by Force 141 was very similar to that produced by the Joint Planners in London. The latter envisaged simultaneous landings on the south-east corner of the island, with the objective of securing the ports of Syracuse and Catania, and on the north-west corner, with a similar goal of taking Palermo. Ports were regarded as all important to supply the number of divisions engaged in the invasion.

Force 141 amended this plan by staggering the landings. On D-Day three British divisions would go ashore in the south-east and one American division on the south coast near Gela to secure the airfields there. On D+2 three American divisions would land in the north-west and a fourth British Division at Catania. The airborne element was enlarged. The intention, as well as to take the ports, was to confuse the defenders by the dispersed nature of the landings. This plan was approved by Eisenhower and his three commanders-in-chief on 13 March.

On the same day Dempsey and Ramsay arrived at Eighth Army’s Tac HQ to discuss the plan with Monty on their way to Algiers. Monty was horrified when he saw it, believing strongly that the two armies should be mutually supporting and not dispersed. He sent immediate signals to both Eisenhower and Brooke, setting out his total disagreement with the proposals. Dempsey and Ramsay then flew on to Algiers for a meeting with Force 141 on 18 March at which, in the absence of Alexander, Gairdner had to bear the brunt of Monty’s criticisms.

There followed a period of turmoil, during which various alternatives were proposed and rejected. Both Cunningham and Tedder had been in favour of the Force 141 plan, the former because dispersal offered better security to the fleet, the latter because the airfields inland from Gela were essential to the provision of air cover once the armies moved inland. Monty, in the meantime, became more and more frustrated, until by mid-April, with no rapid progress likely on his front in Tunisia, he decided to take charge himself. Freddie was sent to take over the army side of Force 545 on 15 April, whilst Monty himself met Eisenhower and Alexander in Algiers on 18 April to advance his own proposals. Not for the last time, he left a meeting believing that he had got his way, only to find out later that he had not. When he visited Cairo three days later, he found a state of extreme confusion. This was exacerbated when Freddie was injured in a plane crash on his way to Algiers on 28 April.

Monty’s letter to his Freddie was evidence of his consideration for his Chief of Staff:

I am terribly sorry about your accident. I am sending Belchem to Cairo. You are to stay in your house and be completely quiet.

Belchem will do the whole thing and can come and see you if he wants advice on any point.

It is absolutely essential that you take it easy and get well.²

Belchem was at something of a disadvantage as a mere lieutenant colonel, with Ramsay, who was a vice admiral, and a senior RAF officer as his opposite numbers. Ramsay was most co-operative, but the RAF from Malta had no experience of working with Eighth Army. More difficult still were the representatives of GHQ Middle East, who were responsible for staging most of the Eighth Army formations from their area and for supplying them thereafter. Belchem fell foul of one of GHQ’s senior administrative officers and it was only with the help of Lieutenant General James Steele, the Chief of Staff, that he was able to make a presentation which restored the equilibrium. With the support of a growing Eighth Army contingent, now including Miles Graham and Bill Williams, the Eighth Army plan was worked on and completed by the time Freddie returned to duty on 16 May.

In the meantime, Monty had been at work on the overall plan, which he recast to exclude the Palermo landings. In their stead he proposed to have the whole of Seventh US Army come ashore west of Eighth Army as far as Licata. His initial attempt to persuade the commanders-in-chief went awry when he became ill before a key conference on 29 April and, as Freddie was also out of action, Leese was sent to represent him and failed to make the case. Monty persevered, however, and on 2 May he went to Algiers himself, this time accompanied by Richardson, who later described the journey:

As I sat beside him in the aeroplane he explained that he was going to get agreement to the final plan for Husky. On his millboard he started writing in his schoolboy hand with soft pencil and an indiarubber within reach, and after some minutes he turned to me: ‘Charles, read that. Is it clear? Is it clear?’

Knowing my ‘master’ I knew that this was a formality: he never expected his staff, or indeed his ADCs, to agree to anything if they did not.

I answered that it was quite clear. As usual he had summed up the strategic argument with great force and few words. However, knowing as I did something of the prejudices of Tedder and Cunningham who were going to be very disinclined to alter their arrangements to satisfy the ‘egotistical’ Monty, I felt his chances were small.

But succeed he did. I was not present at the high powered conference, but on the return journey he was contented and relaxed.³

Monty’s contentment came as a result of a coup which he had engineered in Algiers. This was to beard Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, in the lavatory during a break in the conference and convert him to the merits of the plan. Bedell Smith then sold it to Eisenhower. The inclusion of Gela and the airfields satisfied Tedder, but Cunningham remained unhappy. However, Monty had taken great care to come to the conference with Ramsay’s explicit approval, so the naval C-in-C was forced to accept the new plan.

All now being agreed and the date of Operation HUSKY set for early July, Force 545 was disbanded and Main HQ was consolidated at Tripoli, with Rear HQ in Cairo, which remained the administrative hub for Eighth Army for the invasion itself. Richardson was sent to represent Monty at Force 141 as there remained a number of detailed but contentious issues to be resolved, particularly with Patton, although the substance of the plan remained the same. Gairdner, branded as ‘useless’ by Monty, was sacked,⁴ to be replaced by his deputy, Alex Richardson, who became Alexander’s Chief of Staff when 15th Army Group was formed to control the two Allied armies in Sicily.

Monty now felt sufficiently confident to take some leave. He left for the UK in his Flying Fortress on 16 May, accompanied only by Williams, Geoffrey Keating and his two ADCs. It was his first visit since August 1942 and he found himself the most famous person in the country. The papers had been full of Eighth Army’s successes since the previous October, and Desert Victory, a film consisting entirely of footage from Keating’s AFPU, had been showing in the cinemas. At a performance of Arsenic and Old Lace in the West End, the audience stood at the end to applaud not the cast, but the victor of El Alamein sitting in one of the boxes.

Poston and Henderson made the most of their trip. Staying with Monty at Claridge’s, they chalked up significant personal expenses, which as they left they found had been added to Monty’s bill and settled unknowingly by him. They decided to come clean, but Monty insisted on accepting the situation as it stood, saying that he had wanted them to have a good time. Having briefed the War Office on HUSKY, met the officers of 1 Canadian Division, which would be landing in Sicily directly from the UK, had tea at Buckingham Palace and satisfied himself that his son David was being well looked after, he left for Algiers on 2 June. There he met Brooke, who had recently arrived from the Trident Conference in Washington in order to meet Eisenhower. The latter was still seething over the Flying Fortress incident, which prompted Brooke to administer a dressing-down to Monty. Duly chastened, but unrepentant, Monty returned to Tripoli. The next few weeks were spent visiting all the formations in his command, when as usual he addressed all officers of the rank of lieutenant colonel and above, and attending some of the amphibious landing rehearsals.

On 1 July Main HQ opened in a subterranean cavern in Malta, in preparation for the invasion. Richardson had made all the necessary arrangements, Freddie arriving by sea with Graham and Belchem on the following day. Monty flew in on 3 July, staying for the next week at the Pavilion, a house just outside Valetta requisitioned by his resourceful ADCs. Having been much reduced in numbers after the end of the Tunisian campaign, the HQ was now being built up again and there were some new faces, two of whom were to last the course at Monty’s HQs until the end of the war.

With Freddie now a major general, Richardson in the role of BGS and George Baker gone to command 127 Field Regiment RA in 51 Highland Division, there was room on the establishment for another GSO1 and this was filled by Gerry Duke. Duke was a sapper who had commanded a RE field squadron in 7 Armoured Division, taught at the Staff College at Haifa and then been Chief Instructor at the Combined Operations Training Centre in Palestine, this last role providing useful experience to an HQ which had never been involved in a seaborne landing.

At the more junior level another new arrival was Paul Odgers. Odgers was a civil servant at the London County Council who joined the Territorial Army before the war and was commissioned into the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. After taking the Staff College course at Camberley he was posted as a staff officer to the Central Infantry Brigade in Malta, one of three charged with defending the island from invasion. That threat had been removed and there was no chance of immediate action, so he approached Harry Llewellyn, whom he had heard was looking for more liaison officers and who agreed to take him on. With two corps in action during the forthcoming campaign over a much wider front and in more inaccessible country than Eighth Army had been accustomed to, Freddie was determined to ensure that his information was at least as good as Monty’s and built up his resources accordingly. With his approval, Llewellyn had about a dozen officers available to him, rather more than were provided for on the official establishment.

Freddie also set up a robust communications channel with Tac HQ. At one end was Duke, at the other Major Dick Vernon, a Regular officer from the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, who had been a GSO3 on the Operations staff at Tac HQ from the outset at El Alamein and was now a GSO2 and in de facto command of Tac following Oswald’s departure. He was charged with reporting at least daily to Duke at Main HQ, his signals becoming popularly known as ‘Vernongrams’.

Another face familiar to Monty reappeared on his staff. As the Canadians were about to join his army, he requested that Trumbull Warren, who had returned from his Staff College course in Canada, should be assigned to him as a personal liaison officer for the duration of the Sicily campaign. Warren arrived shortly before the end of hostilities in Africa and was quickly integrated into the HQ. Several officers also returned who had been despatched to the UK by Monty to share their experience of active service with Home Forces, among them ‘Slap’ White. In his case he had done so at the School of Signals before being posted as Chief Signals Officer at Eastern Command. With a new campaign in the offing, he was summoned back, arriving at Main HQ just over a fortnight before the invasion.

The seaborne landings on 10 July went remarkably well, given the lack of previous amphibious experience. There was a great deal of confusion on the Eighth Army beaches and a number of formations and units went astray, but the whole army came ashore with very light casualties. This was largely because the Italian coastal divisions were taken by surprise and resistance was accordingly light, due not only to deception measures,⁵ but also to the bad weather which had affected that part of the Mediterranean over the previous few days. XIII Corps, comprising 5 and 50 Divisions and 3 Commando, landed either side of the town of Avola, south of Syracuse. XXX Corps, consisting of 1 Canadian Division, now under Guy Simonds, who had impressed Monty so much as BGS of the Canadian Corps in early 1942,⁶ 51 Highland Division, 231 Brigade and 40 and 41 Royal Marine Commandos, landed either side of Cape Passero. In the American sector, 1, 3 and 45 US Divisions all established beachheads.

The airborne landings, on the other hand, went badly awry. Most of 82 US Airborne Division’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment dropped on the island, but the lack of experience of the pilots led to units being widely scattered over the countryside. It was only the initiative of the American paratroopers which enabled them to form small ad hoc groups and hit whatever targets they could find, causing significant disruption to the enemy.

The British airborne assault, conducted by 1 Airlanding Brigade in gliders, was little short of disastrous. The main objective was the Pontegrande Bridge on the main road to Syracuse, whose capture intact was integral to Monty’s plan. A number of the glider tug pilots lost their way and turned back, whilst most of the others cast off the gliders too early. The majority landed in the sea, with a high level of fatalities from drowning. Only 12 of the 147 gliders arrived on target and a small party managed to capture the bridge before it could be demolished. It was then retaken by the Italians, but secured soon afterwards by troops from 5 Division, opening the way to Syracuse, whose port was found to be undamaged.

On the evening of D-Day Monty and Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, accompanied only by their ADCs and a few liaison officers led by Llewellyn, boarded HMS Antwerp⁷ and landed near Cape Passero at 07.00 on the following morning. Monty was expecting to be followed almost immediately by Tac HQ, but for once Freddie let him down by failing to ensure that Tac was loaded on to a ship ready to sail at a moment’s notice. The delay infuriated Monty, who was forced to camp at one or other of his corps HQs for the next two days. ‘I received the sharpest signal I think I ever got from him and I no doubt deserved it,’ wrote the COS later. ‘One thing I know, it never happened again!’⁸ The fourteen officers and sixty-seven other ranks, with Monty’s caravans and other vehicles, did not land until 13 July, joining Main HQ XIII Corps near Syracuse.

Freddie himself went over to Sicily with Miles Graham on the morning of 12 July. They failed to find Monty at XXX Corps near Pachino, so sailed up to Syracuse and motored on to XIII Corps, to discover that he had already left. They immediately returned by road to XXX Corps, where at last they met him. Fully briefed on the situation, the two officers arrived back in Malta on the evening of 13 July and made immediate arrangement for Main HQ to move to Sicily. The ‘Step-up Party’, which had been organized specifically to get the HQ operational in as short a time as possible, left on the same night, with the key officers, Belchem, White and the Deputy Director of Supply and Transport, travelling ahead by fast destroyer. Main HQ was eventually established just north of Syracuse on 15 July. It was only possible to include an advanced control section of the RAF, as the airfields in Malta were still being used and the full Air HQ was unable to relocate until the majority of its squadrons were based in Sicily.

Whilst Seventh US Army had to fight off a vigorous counter attack on 11 July by the Livorno and Hermann Goering Divisions, the latter the first German formation to be encountered by the Allies, the first 48 hours went well for Eighth Army, which took all its objectives, including the port of Augusta. The planning had focused on the landings themselves, with relatively little consideration given to what would happen thereafter, other than a general agreement that the goal was Messina at the north-east tip of the island. Monty envisaged a two-pronged advance by Eighth Army, with XIII Corps on the right up the main road from Syracuse to Catania and thence along the coast between Mount Etna and the sea, and XXX Corps on the left via Vizzini to Leonforte, a key road junction west of Mount Etna. As at Mareth the emphasis was on the right, and as at Mareth the right got stuck.

The main road to Catania ran over two key bridges. The Malati Bridge across the Lentini River was seized in an audacious operation by 3 Commando. To their surprise, the commandos found German paratroopers in the area, who had dropped in as the result of an urgent plea for reinforcements by the Axis commanders. There was a vicious battle and the bridge was initially lost, but was retaken by 50 Division before it could be destroyed. The second bridge was the Primasole, across the much wider Simeto River. To capture this, 1 Parachute Brigade was dropped on the night of 13/14 July and, as with the previous two airborne operations, few of the paratroopers landed on target, although the few that did so managed to create a bridgehead on the far side and remove the demolition charges from the bridge itself.

Bitter and confused fighting between the opposing groups of paratroopers took place all the next day, but the British were forced to give up their bridgehead. Only that evening did the advance guard of 50 Division and the first tanks of 4 Armoured Brigade appear on the scene. The following three days saw fierce fighting between 151 Brigade, with its three battalions of Durham Light Infantry, and the Germans. On 17 July the latter were at last forced to withdraw and the DLI established another bridgehead across the river, but the defences now erected by the Germans proved too strong to penetrate. As 5 Division upstream on the Simeto suffered the same fate, XIII Corps came to a halt.

XXX Corps started well, but 51 Division, 231 Brigade and 23 Armoured Brigade were held up for two days at Vizzini by a determined German defence. The Highlanders’ axis of advance was then changed from moving alongside the Canadians on the far left to moving across country towards Paterno. Near the town of Sferro in the Plain of Catania they, too, were stopped by a vigorous defence. This had one particularly serious consequence: the group of airfields around Gerbini, badly needed by the Desert Air Force, remained under enemy control or hostile fire.

With the Germans now holding the Etna Line strongly, Monty was forced to put all his trust in a left hook by the Canadians. The intention was to split the two main German formations in the area, the Hermann Goering Division facing the British and 15 Panzergrenadier Division facing the Americans, and to get behind the former by advancing along the main road between Enna and Adrano, cutting off any retreat from the Plain of Catania west of Etna. Monty had already persuaded Alexander to give Eighth Army full use of the Vizzini to Enna road, which had hitherto been allocated to Seventh US Army, and this would be vital for the new plan.

Patton, already disenchanted by what he saw as a subservient role in which his army was expected merely to offer flank protection to the British, was not happy, and the commander of II US Corps, Omar Bradley, was furious. On 17 July Patton flew to Tunis to see Alexander with a request to be allowed to detach a significant part of his army for an advance on Palermo. This had never been anticipated in the original plan, but, to Patton’s surprise, Alexander readily accepted the proposal. The US Provisional Corps made rapid progress against light resistance and was in Palermo by 22 July, the day on which the Germans were finally pushed out of Leonforte by the Canadians.

Monty had in the meantime brought in his reserve 78 Division, which he would have preferred not to use at all. It fitted into the line between 1 Canadian Division and 51 Division and made an immediate impact. The Canadians advanced along the road from Leonforte to Agira and Regalbuto, whilst 78 Division took the hilltop town of Centuripe on 3 August after heavy fighting. By 6 August Adrano was also in 78 Division’s hands and any retreat to the west of Etna was now blocked. With the Americans taking Troina and then Randazzo and advancing along the north coast, both by road and by a series of seaborne landings, the Germans and Italians were forced to fall back to Messina, from where they crossed to the toe of Italy in good order. Seventh US Army entered Messina from the west on 17 August, Patton winning what in his mind was a race with Monty.

Although Sicily had been taken, the Allies had made heavy weather of doing so. This was partly because of Alexander’s inability to provide any sort of clear direction or coordination to his two army commanders, who did much as they wanted without reference to each other. The first occasion on which Monty and Patton met was at Syracuse under the auspices of Alexander on 25 July, over two weeks after the invasion. Monty also flew to see Patton in Palermo three days later. This visit resulted in the demise of the Flying Fortress, as the runway turned out to be far too short and the pilot only stopped the aircraft by applying all the brakes on one side so that the aircraft slewed round, collapsing in the process. This was particularly alarming for Henderson, who always travelled in the bomb-aimer’s position in the glass dome on the nose and saw buildings rushing up to meet him. As not only Monty but also Freddie and Broadhurst were aboard, the pilot’s quick thinking averted a catastrophe to the British command. On his return to Tac, Monty sent an immediate signal to Eisenhower asking for a replacement and was allocated a C-47, a much more suitable aircraft.

The lack of communication between the two army commanders was not the only reason for turning into a hard slog what had, in the immediate aftermath of the landings, looked like a quick campaign. Monty had been unimaginative in the frontal approach to Catania, where the German defences were strong, but had little depth. A seaborne landing behind enemy lines, as carried out later by Patton on the north coast, might have unlocked the position. Although he once again showed his ability to move to an alternative plan, his two corps had lacked the ability to support each other. Richardson considered that the operations had been confused and wondered if he, as BGS (Ops), could have done more to overcome the muddles. In truth, both commander and staff had underestimated the difficulties of the terrain, which hampered progress and made it difficult to identify the enemy’s location, whilst Freddie believed that 50 and 51 Divisions had not fully recovered from their long North African campaign.

The battles had been almost exclusively infantry affairs. There had been some use of tanks at Vizzini and in the Plain of Catania, but the terrain was for the most part against them. Realising that this might be the case, Monty had decided not to ask for either of the two armoured divisions then in North Africa, but to employ two independent armoured brigades, 4 and 23, with 1 Canadian Armoured Brigade in reserve. In late July he decided to give his own armoured adviser, Harry Arkwright, command of 23 Armoured Brigade, taking the incumbent commander, G. W. ‘Ricky’ Richards, formerly of the Royal Tank Regiment, in his place. Richards’s first action was to point out to Monty the weaknesses of the British tanks relative to their German equivalents and particularly the inferiority of their guns. He was asked to write a short paper on the subject, which Monty immediately forwarded to the War Office.

As the campaign reached its conclusion there were some lighter moments, one of which was the liberation of Taormina. There were rival claims as to who arrived in the cliff-side resort first, but they were not the advanced patrols of XXX Corps. One of those who entered the town ahead of the fighting troops was Geoffrey Keating, in company with the war artist, Edward Ardizzone. Finding the road clear, the two made their way to a hotel, from where Keating summoned the local Italian commander and ordered him have his men pile their arms in the square before marching into captivity. A message was sent to Main HQ which found its way to Monty, who then contacted Leese asking him why his advance guard was not in the town. Leese was furious and banned Keating from visiting his HQ without express permission.

The other claimant was Llewellyn, acting on the instructions of Belchem to secure the best accommodation. He, too, accompanied only by his driver, arrived to find several hundred Italians still in the town and keen to surrender. By that evening Belchem himself was there and the two enjoyed a fine dinner in the best hotel, served by staff who had performed the same service for German and Italian officers twenty-four hours earlier.

For the first and only time in the campaign, Monty moved from his caravan, establishing himself in a luxurious house in Taormina, the Villa Florida, where some time later he was able to entertain Eisenhower, Patton and the American corps and divisional commanders. The villa came complete with an Alfa Romeo car, and Monty was given a peacock as a pet, which turned out to be noisy and troublesome and had to be quietly disposed of by Henderson. Tac HQ located to Taormina on 16 August for a brief period before Monty, believing that the environment was not conducive to a sufficiently workmanlike atmosphere, insisted on going back into caravans and tents at a site south of Messina as the next campaign approached. Main HQ remained in its rather uncomfortable and very hot location at Lentini, between Syracuse and Catania, before moving to a site some thirty miles west of Messina.