You have been a member of my team for a long time and will be greatly missed. But when appealed to by the Americans we had to send our best; and you are very much wanted in that show. I do not altogether like the way things are shaping up in your ‘party’!!²

Richardson was appointed one of Clark’s two Deputy Chiefs of Staff, with particular responsibility for liaison with X Corps, now commanded by Dick McCreery, whilst Belchem stepped up as BGS Eighth Army. Ordered by Alexander to get XIII Corps established on the toe of Italy to free up the Straits of Messina to Allied shipping, Monty remained in ignorance of any wider objective.

Following a massive bombardment by both Eighth Army and the Royal Navy, 5 Division and 1 Canadian Division landed north of Reggio on the morning of 3 September, immediately achieving Alexander’s purpose. There was no resistance, the Germans having withdrawn some time beforehand. There was a warm welcome, on the other hand, from the inhabitants.

The actual landings proved to be the only easy part of the new campaign. As XIII Corps advanced, 5 Division on the left in the direction of Cosenza, 1 Canadian Division on the right towards Catanzaro, it became clear that the Germans were not going to make any serious stands. Instead, they destroyed all the bridges, blocked the passes and cuttings, laid mines and set booby traps, leaving a fighting rearguard to harry the advance at every opportunity before withdrawing in good order. A quick pursuit along the only two roads available proved to be impossible. The most important troops in Eighth Army became the engineers and the most vital piece of equipment the Bailey bridge.

Having given an interview to the BBC at 08.00 on D-Day, Monty boarded a DUKW and crossed to the landing beaches in the wake of the leading brigades. Freddie had learnt his lesson from the Sicily debacle, and the advanced party of Tac HQ was pre-loaded on to a LCT and ready to sail. Its composition provides some indication of the priorities in moving Tac: it consisted of Monty’s staff car and jeep, three 15cwt trucks carrying signals stores and one for laying lines, one 3-ton lorry with general stores, a 15cwt truck for the Camp Commandant, responsible for setting up and running the camp itself, another jeep for a GSO3 (Ops) and a motorcycle for a liaison officer. Protection was provided by a Humber armoured car, a Daimler scout car and an infantry platoon in a truck and a lorry. On D+1 another LCT sailed with one of Monty’s caravans, a lorry carrying all the equipment for his mess, the all-important map lorry, the cookhouse, the ACV, the remainder of the signals equipment and most of the Operations staff. A 10cwt BBC Dodge recording van was also scheduled to be aboard, but was delayed. The remainder of Tac, including Monty’s other caravans and the balance of the protection troops, crossed on D+2. Main HQ, in the meantime, established itself just west of Messina.

On the morning of 9 September, Fifth US Army came ashore at Salerno. On the previous evening, the capitulation of Italy had been announced. Monty accorded little value to it militarily, believing that Italian troops would be more of a hindrance than a help and that German resolve would be strengthened. He proved to be quite correct. Clark met significant resistance at Salerno, and by 13/14 September the situation was so serious that he considered withdrawing. The stubborn resistance of X Corps, the reinforcement of VI US Corps by paratroopers from 82 US Airborne Division and the use of the Allied fleet to bombard German positions secured the beachhead permanently, but it had been a close run thing.

As a result of the crisis Monty was ordered by Alexander to drive towards Salerno as fast as possible, but the impediments remained and it was not until 17 September, by which time Clark had restored the situation at Salerno, that the advanced patrols of Eighth Army met those of Fifth US Army. This did not stop Monty from claiming the credit for saving the day.

On the same day as Operation AVALANCHE, 1 Airborne Division was landed by Royal Navy cruisers at Taranto in Operation SLAPSTICK. The paratroopers seized both the port and the town, but were held up outside, where their GOC was killed by a sniper. Nevertheless, with XIII Corps now approaching and Fifth US Army poised to break out from its bridgehead, the Germans withdrew and by the end of September were established along a line from the mouth of the Volturno in the west to that of the Biferno in the east. Meanwhile, 78 Division, with 4 Armoured Brigade under command, had landed at Taranto and Bari, following the Germans up the Adriatic coast and securing the key group of airfields around Foggia. The two British divisions, followed shortly by 8 Indian Division, came under the command of Lieutenant General Charles Allfrey’s V Corps, which had fought throughout the campaign in Tunisia but had never served under Eighth Army. Monty paid his first visit to the corps on 22 September and Tac HQ moved to the Adriatic side of Italy shortly thereafter, whilst Main HQ set up on a site 15 miles west of Bari, concentrating there by 26 September. Major Bob Long, responsible for identifying sites for Main, had strongly advised locating it away from the coast, due to the heat, mosquitos and dirt, as well as congestion on the main road. A small C-in-C’s camp was set up for Alexander nearby.

Monty had by now acquired a new ADC. Poston was still with him, but was due to leave for the Staff College course at Haifa before the end of the year, so he asked for Noel Chavasse, a subaltern in 51 Division’s machine gun battalion, the 1st/7th Middlesex Regiment.³ Monty had met Chavasse in January 1943 at the division’s HQ, where he had been serving as a liaison officer, and learnt that he was the son of a friend, Christopher Chavasse, the Bishop of Rochester. The young officer came to his attention again at Wadi Akarit, where he won the Military Cross. In the knowledge that the division was due to return to the UK, he decided to bring Chavasse on to his personal staff.

Eighth Army was now restored to being a two-corps formation, employing five divisions⁴ and two armoured brigades, the major thrust taking place under V Corps on the Adriatic coast whilst XIII Corps moved up the centre of the country in the foothills of the Apennines, with VI US Corps on its left on the other side of the watershed. The width of Eighth Army’s front and the difficulty of communicating on poor roads meant that LOs were constantly on the move. Monty was still relying on his own ADCs to fulfil the role, but the ‘Freddie Boys’ had by this time adopted a well-practised routine, which was considerably better developed as a result of their experience of the Sicily campaign.

The G (L) section of Main HQ consisted of five GSO2s, including Llewellyn as the Senior LO, four GSO3s, four Staff Lieutenants, a corporal/mechanic responsible for vehicle maintenance and drivers for the LOs’ jeeps. The Senior LO was based at Main HQ, but frequently found himself on the move, leaving one of the other GSO2s in charge. Two GSO2s were resident at each of the corps, from where they visited divisions, and one at Fifth US Army. Two of the GSO3s were based at Tac HQ, one acted in an admin role and one, who was specifically required to be staff-trained and battle-experienced, had a roving commission in a jeep with a W/T set and could be sent to any hot spot specified by the Ops staff. Two Staff Lieutenants acted as the Duty LOs at Main HQ, one from 08.30 to 18.00, the other from 18.00 to 08.30, the latter with a camp bed by a telephone next to the Watchkeeper’s office: they were responsible for keeping the visitors’ map up-to-date and ensuring that daily bulletins, situation reports and location statements were distributed appropriately. The other two carried out the visits to corps HQs.

At least one LO from Main HQ visited each corps HQ every day. Before leaving Main he was required to call first at Operations to be briefed by the GSO1, the Watchkeeper, the Map Room and the Ops 2 section which dealt with correspondence, records, and visitors. Whilst in the Map Room he would read and initial the report from the last LO visit to the corps in question, in order to preserve continuity. He then moved on for briefings by Intelligence, Staff Duties and the Signals Office. There was no need to see any of the other staff branches unless requested to do so by the Duty LO. On arrival at the corps HQ the LO would report to the resident GSO2 (L), before visiting all the Operations sections, including Air, and the Artillery, Engineer, Signals and A/Q branches. On returning to Main Army HQ, the LO was required to write out a report in triplicate and hand it in to the G (Ops) Duty Clerk, who would then disseminate it as necessary.

There was a considerable appetite at Main HQ for information from corps and divisions, and not just from Freddie himself. G (Ops) wished to know the locations of all corps, divisional and brigade HQs and all battalions, as well as patrol and defence lines, suitable sites for landing grounds and, most importantly of all, the commander’s intentions as to future plans, the grouping of his subordinate divisions and the tasks allotted to them; the LOs had standing instructions to obtain vital extracts from the divisional operations orders. G (Air) was interested in the same, but wanted in addition information on proposed bomb lines, the effectiveness of ground support and enemy air activity. G (SD) needed advance warning of the movements of formations and units. G (I) wanted up-to-date reports on enemy dispositions, identification of enemy units and copies of any maps, documents or equipment which had been captured. The armoured and artillery advisers needed details of the suitability of the ground for the deployment respectively of armoured vehicles and guns and of any losses incurred. The engineers were concerned with the location of minefields, the extent of booby trapping, the conditions of river crossings and the progress of bridging, whilst the LOs were specifically required to carry and fill in road report forms. The signallers wanted to hear about any signal or cipher delays, and each LO was obliged to call at the corps signals office during his visit. The A/Q branches requested information over a wide range of issues, including traffic blocks, likely casualties from future operations and forecast ammunition, POL and general supply expenditure. Overall, the LOs made a very significant contribution to the store of knowledge at Main HQ, although they in no way substituted for direct communication between the staff officers there and their opposite numbers at the corps.

The major headache affecting Eighth Army was now administration, which caused serious problems for Freddie and Miles Graham. When Eighth Army came under the control of 18th Army Group in mid-February, it did so for operational purposes, but administratively the geography demanded that it was still maintained from Middle East Command, the organization of which was all the better for having Brian Robertson in command of the Tripoli Base. For the Sicily campaign, the same was only partially true, as GHQ Middle East was at the other end of just one of several supply chains. By this time 15th Army Group, with much the same staff as its predecessor in Tunisia, had taken full responsibility and it turned out to be seriously lacking in the necessary skills. Monty heaped most of the blame on Charles Miller, its Chief Administrative Officer, who had been the first DA&QMG of Eighth Army in 1941, but in his memoirs he characterized all the army group’s administrative staff as having ‘neither the knowledge themselves, nor the courage and good sense to put their trust in the information they received from the well-tried and veteran staff of the Eighth Army’.⁵ The situation improved when Robertson was given command of Fortbase, the administrative HQ in Syracuse, but he was handicapped by a system which, in spite of all his efforts, was unable to deliver the right supplies and maintenance at the right time and in the right quantities, with large surpluses of some items and huge deficits in others.

The lines of communication in Sicily were relatively short, which helped to ameliorate the problem, but this was not true of Italy. As with operations, the uncertainties of timing and objectives right up to the last moment blighted the administrative planning. Robertson, who continued to be the lynchpin in the administrative chain, remained uninformed about 15th Army Group’s plans right up to the last moment. Thus, when XIII Corps landed, it had almost immediately to be placed on reduced rations, whilst both the tenuous lines of communication and the urgency with which the army was ordered to relieve the Salerno beachhead resulted in it running out of some essential supplies.

The problem was exacerbated when the axis of advance was changed so that the supply ports became Taranto, Brindisi and Bari; 15th Army Group proved to be completely unprepared for this and ships arrived with their cargoes poorly loaded, requiring much work on sorting them out, thereby causing serious delay before they could be carried on by road. The situation was not helped by the requirements of the tactical and strategic air forces, which demanded both large quantities of construction equipment to convert the Foggia airfields to all-weather operations and the POL and bombs to carry them out. Eighth Army nearly ran out of fuel, whilst its ammunition supplies also reached perilously low levels. On the A side it found that arrangements had not been made to evacuate the sick and wounded from casualty clearing stations and field hospitals.

Monty’s solution was to replace Miller with Robertson, and he found an influential ally in Humphrey Gale, the Chief Administrative Officer at AFHQ. The intermediate step was to have Robertson appointed as Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, AFHQ, Italy, on 12 October, with his HQ in Naples and the clear understanding that he would act as Alexander’s administrative adviser on all A and Q matters, thus effectively supplanting Miller. However, it was not until February 1944 that he became CAO of Allied Armies in Italy, as Fifteenth Army Group was renamed. In the meantime, the administrative situation improved markedly.

In mid-September Alexander wrote to Monty and Clark setting out how he saw the campaign developing, with the objective of reaching a line from Lucca to Ravenna by the end of November. He was to be swiftly disillusioned. In the immediate future, however, the campaign seemed to be going well, as X Corps liberated Naples on 1 October. Just as encouragingly, the line along the Biferno River was outflanked by the commandos of 1 Special Service Brigade, who landed north of Termoli just before dawn on 3 October, seizing the town and the port and enabling a brigade from 78 Division to disembark there. The crossing of the Biferno to relieve the force at Termoli, now under counter-attack, proved to be difficult and costly, but by the morning of 6 October the position was secure and the advance could continue. However, Eighth Army was by now aware of the single most difficult aspect of its campaign on the Adriatic side of Italy, the need to cross what seemed like endless rivers, all of which would shortly be swelling with the rains of autumn.

Monty paused to regroup before attempting the next water obstacle, the Trigno. It proved to be less of a problem than expected and both 78 Division near the mouth and 8 Indian Division upstream crossed without difficulty. By 5 November V Corps had taken Vasto and XIII Corps Isernia, an important communications centre up in the Apennines. Monty, heartened by his progress, produced a plan to drive straight through the Gustav Line and then turn west to approach Rome via Avezzano. By the end of the month, 78 Division had crossed the Sangro and established a bridgehead, but the weather deteriorated sharply and it became clear that Monty’s plan was unlikely to be achieved in the near future. A much more modest plan was put in place, to establish a firm foothold north of the Sangro.

One of the immediate consequences of the Italian surrender was that large numbers of POWs were released from or broke out of the prison camps in Northern Italy, whence they made their way south towards the Allied armies. Many were recaptured by the Germans, but a good number, assisted by friendly civilians, managed to evade the enemy patrols and walk across the mountains, often in circumstances of great hardship. They included some senior officers, including Monty’s friend and the victor of the first campaign in the Western Desert, Dick O’Connor, but there were also some familiar faces from Eighth Army HQ.

One of the first to appear was Hugh Mainwaring, dressed as an Italian peasant, in a truck from XIII Corps. Monty initially failed to recognize him when he walked up the steps to his caravan to announce himself, but gave him a warm welcome and insisted on holding a dinner party in his honour with twenty old friends, which turned out to be a highly enjoyable reunion. Monty was away when Carol Mather turned up, but Johnny Henderson looked after him and his travelling companion, the latter being accorded the honour of a night in Monty’s bed. Monty took the trouble to get an immediate message to his parents. Perhaps the most important arrival from his personal perspective was his stepson, Richard Carver, who did not reach safety until early December and was somewhat taken aback to be greeted with the words, ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Like the others, he was sent back to the UK to recuperate.

The last month of 1943 was deeply frustrating for Monty. On 4 December heavy rains caused the Sangro to rise to the extent that all Eighth Army’s bridges were washed away or under water and the bridgehead was temporarily cut off. The sector was reinforced by 5 Division and 1 Canadian Division, but the Germans also poured in reinforcements and little headway could be made. Orsogna and Ortona were taken, but any further advance was impossible as the battlefield, difficult already for its topography, became a sea of mud. All thoughts of Rome vanished.

Monty was generally exasperated. Unlike the most senior British leaders, he had never really shared in the enthusiasm for the campaign and he disliked the way in which it had evolved into a major commitment. He continued to hold a low professional opinion of Alexander, from whom he derived little in the way of constructive guidance, and felt that he was in competition with Clark. It was a far cry from the days when he could operate with considerable freedom in the desert. Alan Brooke, who visited Eighth Army on 14 and 15 December, wrote in his diary, ‘Monty is tired out and Alex fails to grip the show!!’,⁶ later comparing Eighth Army unfavourably with McCreery’s X Corps.

Freddie was equally tired. The strain of seventeen months of planning and fighting, with breaks only for sickness or injury, had left its mark. He continued to work very long hours, but suffered also from insomnia. His visits to Tac HQ became less frequent and Monty took to transmitting orders to him, always verbally, through relatively junior officers. One of these was Bill Mather, who was now running Tac following a request by Vernon to return to his regiment and who used to call in at Monty’s caravan before breakfast to receive the instructions for Freddie. As always, Monty never wrote anything down and, although the messages were models of simplicity and clarity, it was extraordinary that something so important should have been conveyed in this way.

Mather had just been made second-in-command of the 3rd Hussars in Syria when his new posting arrived and he had to go by sea to Salerno and then hitch a ride from there to Vasto. Asked on arrival why he had taken so long, his answer demonstrated to Monty that, outside Eighth Army, his wishes no longer commanded the sort of priority that he had been used to in North Africa.

There had been conjecture for some time about the command structure for Operation OVERLORD, the invasion of France, which was now known to be agreed for the summer of 1944. The news that Eisenhower would be the Supreme Commander in North-West Europe was conveyed to Churchill and Brooke on 4 December and Eisenhower was told personally by President Roosevelt three days later. The major question now was who would command the ground forces, a role reserved for a British officer. When Brooke met Eisenhower in Tunis on 11 December, he was told that the Supreme Commander Designate favoured ‘Jumbo’ Wilson as his successor in the Mediterranean, Alexander for the OVERLORD position and Monty to take over from Alexander.

Once the news of Eisenhower’s appointment went public, speculation grew about the identity of his ground forces subordinate. Bill Cunningham and Rupert Clarke, Alexander’s Military Assistant and ADC, decided to play a trick on their opposite numbers at Eighth Army, sending a signal asking if Monty would like to have their C-in-C’s caravans, with the clear implication that it was he who would be leaving. The recipients fell for the ruse and showed the signal to Monty, who immediately sent Freddie to see Alec Richardson, Alexander’s COS, who declared his complete ignorance of the matter. Only forty-eight hours later, on 23 December, Monty received a signal from Brooke that he was required for the command of 21st Army Group. The CIGS had always been dubious about Alexander’s military abilities and considered that only Monty possessed all the skills and experience necessary to take on such a vital role.

On 30 December the staff of Main HQ, the corps, divisional, brigade and battalion commanders of Eighth Army and senior representatives of the Desert Air Force gathered in the opera house at Vasto, where Monty delivered an emotional farewell⁷ to the formation which he had led to successive victories over the last sixteen months. Oliver Leese, who had flown out from England to replace him, was seriously delayed at Naples by the weather. Monty, insistent as always on dining and retiring to bed at the usual times, postponed the start of dinner until 20.30, and Leese arrived ten minutes later. Monty told him that he would be going to bed at precisely 22.15 and that the handover would have to take place before then. Leese later wrote to his wife that he and Monty had gossiped well into the night, so Monty must for once have broken his golden rule.

Leese came via the Main HQ at Vasto, where his Chief of Staff, George Walsh, stayed on for a rather fuller briefing by Freddie, who left to stay the night at Tac HQ immediately afterwards.

At first light on the next day, the last of 1943, Monty, Freddie and a number of others flew out from the airstrip at Tac, bound for England.