Bernard Montgomery
Italy

Montgomery's Eighth Army was then fully involved in the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, becoming the first of the Allied forces to land in Western Europe. Led by Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey 's XIII Corps, the Eighth Army landed on the toe of Italy in Operation Baytown on 3 September, four years to the day after Britain declared war on Germany. They encountered little enemy resistance. The Germans had made the decision to fall back and did what they could to stall the Eighth Army's advance, including blowing up bridges, laying mines, and setting up booby-traps. All of these slowed the Army's advance north on the awful Italian roads, although it was Montgomery who was later much criticised for the lack of progress. On 9 September the British 1st Airborne Division landed at the key port of Taranto in the heel of Italy as part of Operation Slapstick, capturing the port unopposed. On the same day the U.S. Fifth Army under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark (which actually contained a large number of British troops) landed at Salerno, near Naples, as part of Operation Avalanche but soon found itself fighting for its very existence with the Germans launching several determined counterattacks to try and push the Allies back into the sea, with Montgomery's men being too far away to provide any real assistance. The situation was tense over the next few days but the two armies (both of which formed the 15th Army Group under General Alexander) finally began to meet on 16 September, by which time the crisis at Salerno was virtually over.

Clark's Fifth Army then began to advance to the west of the Apennine Mountains while Montgomery, with Lieutenant General Charles Allfrey 's V Corps having arrived to reinforce Dempsey's XIII Corps, advanced to the east. The Foggia airfields soon fell to Allfrey's V Corps, but the Germans fought hard in the defence of Termoli and Biferno. Movement soon came to an almost complete halt in the early part of November when the Eighth Army came up against a new defensive line established by the Germans on the River Sangro, which was to be the scene of much bitter and heavy fighting for the next month. While some ground was gained, it was often at the expense of heavy casualties and the Germans always managed to retreat to new defensive positions.

Montgomery abhorred what he considered to be a lack of coordination, a dispersion of effort, a strategic muddle and a lack of opportunism in the Allied campaign in Italy, describing the whole affair as a "dog's breakfast".
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