Even before it began, the Italian campaign was bedevilled by strategic disagreements between the Western Allies, which were to continue for the rest of the war. The Americans, whose spokesman was the US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, were adamant that the main effort should be in North-West Europe. The British, led by Churchill with the acquiescence of Brooke, continued to advocate a Mediterranean strategy, the centrepiece of which was the invasion and conquest of Italy, followed by an advance into the Reich through the Ljubljana Gap to Vienna. The consequences of their differences were compromise and confusion.
With some reluctance the Americans accepted that it was impossible for the substantial forces in the theatre to remain idle for another nine months. There was silence, however, on the strategic and even the tactical objectives of the next move. As a result, Monty was thoroughly disenchanted. In his own words:
If the planning and conduct of the campaign in Sicily were bad, the preparations for the invasion of Italy, and the subsequent conduct of the campaign in that country, were worse still.1
His ire was directed at the higher command and specifically at Eisenhower and Alexander, not at Eighth Army’s staff, who continued to perform to his exacting standards. Up until 17 August most of them were entirely concerned with continuing operations in Sicily, but the planners had been at work since mid-July on both Operation BUTTRESS, a landing by X Corps in the area of Gioia Tauro, some 30 miles north of Reggio di Calabria, and Operation BAYTOWN, another landing ten days later by XIII Corps near Reggio itself. Outline plans were issued by the end of that month. At a conference at Main HQ on 10 August, however, the staff were told that it had now been decided to scrap BUTTRESS in favour of landings by Fifth US Army under Mark Clark at Salerno – Operation AVALANCHE. This would now be the main event and BAYTOWN was seen as a diversionary measure. X Corps would be going to Fifth US Army.
To Monty this broke all the rules. Fifth US Army would be landing on its own, nearly three hundred miles away from Reggio and thus unsupported by Eighth Army, making the same mistake which he had succeeded in overturning for HUSKY. He was also far from confident in the abilities of Clark, who had had no experience in the field since the Great War. Asked to provide a senior staff officer for Fifth US Army, he nominated Charles Richardson, writing to him: