Mussolini's Island: The Invasion of Sicily Through the Eyes of Those Who Witnessed the Campaign

Mussolini's Island: The Invasion of Sicily Through the Eyes of Those Who Witnessed the Campaign

by John Follain

Hodder & Stoughton, $290

The invasion of Sicily by some half a million men in the summer of 1943 was the largest amphibious operation ever, dwarfing even the D-Day landings. It marked a key turning point in the second world war, the first Allied foothold on the Axis' Fortress Europe, and provided the springboard for the final assault on mainland Italy and, eventually, Germany.

The landings led to the ousting of Benito Mussolini by his own government, and were also the setting for a bizarre contest between two of the great characters of the Allied military leadership, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and General George S. Patton.

But like any true story, this one is best understood when also told from the perspective of the little people involved: the Tommy and the GI, the Italian infantryman, the German tank driver, the Sicilian peasant. John Follain, the Rome correspondent for London's Sunday Times, brings events back to life by describing them from all these perspectives simultaneously.

For Patton and Montgomery, each controlling part of the invading army, success was to be measured by whose men would be the first to reach the cities of Palermo and Messina. 'This is a horse race,' Patton wrote to his commanding officer, General Harold Alexander, 'in which the prestige of the US Army is at stake!' Alexander, staying with the equestrian metaphor, in turn described Patton as an officer 'that you have to keep a rein on'.