World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF ITALY: Ike's Way

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General Dwight David Eisenhower of the U.S. Army went to Messina last week and decorated the commander of one of the U.S., British and French armies serving under him. That commander was General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. On Sept. 2 Montgomery went to bed at his usual time, 10 p.m., having already written and issued an order to his troops :

". . . The time has now come to carry the battle on to the mainland of Italy. To the Eighth Army has been given the great honor of being the first troops of the Allied armies to land on the mainland of the Continent of Europe.

"We have a good plan, and air support on a greater scale than we have ever had before.

"There can be only one end to this next battle—another success.

"Forward to victory.

"Let us knock Italy out of the war.

"Good luck, and God bless you all." That night Monty's Britons and Canadians moved across the docks and beaches to their landing boats. The boats, group by group, turned toward the near shore of Italy. The night was clear and starry. Across the Straight of Messina, only two to twelve miles wide, the men in the boats could see the rocky outline of the Calabrian peninsula. Dawn was touching the sky and the shore when the first invaders landed on the chosen beachhead, a ten-mile strip of destiny around the port of Reggio Calabria.

It was Sept. 3, 1943, four years to the day since Britain declared war; three years, two months since the last British soldier left Dunkirk; two years, four months, two days since the last British soldier left Greece; 56 days since the first British and American soldiers arrived in Sicily.

There was little resistance. Italian defenders in pillboxes fired several rounds and came out with their hands in the air. Italian civilians came out of their houses announcing that the Germans had left three days before, retiring into the hills. At Allied headquarters in Algiers a press officer read out a brief communiqué: "Allied forces under the command of General Eisenhower have continued their advance."

It was a step toward destiny, but only the first step. The world waited for the next step. Ike Eisenhower's forces, massed under the belly of Europe, might strike with sudden full force at Sardinia and Corsica; into southern France; at the western Balkans, long softened by guerrillas.* But the most logical next blow would be at the real body of southern Italy, which the Eighth only nicked at its lowest extremity in Calabria.