Back home in the U.S., in Britain, barbed doubts arose over the Italian campaign. Was the Allied enterprise worth the cost? Had Allied strategy failed? Was it, as a carping British M.P. had said, "like an old man approaching a young bride: fascinated, sluggish, apprehensive?"
Up at the muddy mountain front, General Dwight Eisenhower himself played the part of apologist for the campaign which he was soon to leave for a bigger one. Flanked by the Fifth Army's Mark Clark and other high officers, the well-spoken man who was still Mediterranean commander...