James Holland - Sicily 43

FORTRESS MALTA

TOGETHER WE STAND

HEROES

ITALYS SORROW

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN

DAM BUSTERS

AN ENGLISHMAN AT WAR

THE RISE OF GERMANY

THE ALLIES STRIKE BACK

BIG WEEK

NORMANDY 44

THE BURNING BLUE

A PAIR OF SILVER WINGS

THE ODIN MISSION

DARKEST HOUR

BLOOD OF HONOUR

HELLFIRE

DEVILS PACT

(See also the Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations on )

A LLIED UNITSA XIS UNITS

S TANDARD MILITARY SYMBOLS

I = Company

II = Battalion

III = Regiment

X = Brigade

XX = Division

XXX = Corps

XXXX = Army

XXXXX = Army Group

O THER ABBREVIATIONS

Air = Airborne

Arm = Armoured

bde = brigade

bn = battalion

Br = British

Can = Canadian

CB = Coastal Battalion (Italian)

CC = Combat Command

CD = Coastal Division (Italian)

Cdo = Commando

FA = Field Artillery

Fall = Fallschirmjger

GM = Gruppo Mobile

gp = group

HG = Hermann Gring (Panzer Division)

Inf = Infantry

It = Italian

LCI = landing craft, infantry

LST = landing ship, tank

LZ = landing zone

ME = Middle East

MG = Mobile Group

MT = motor transport

ops = operations

Para = Parachute

PG = Panzer Grenadier

Pz = Panzer

SRS = Special Raiding Squadron

TF = Task Force

TG = Tactical Group

US = United States

Planning in Lascaris, Malta Patton on the beach at Gela Primosole Bridge from the air 6th West Kents in Adrano

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Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright 2020 by Griffon Merlin Ltd

Maps drawn by Lovell Johns Ltd

Jacket photograph: American rangers move through Porto Empedocle on the south coast of Sicily on July 27, 1943 Associated Press

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First Published in Great Britain in 2020 by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: November 2020

Typeset in 11.25/14 pt Minion Pro by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes

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ISBN 978-0-8021-5718-8

eISBN 978-0-8021-5720-1

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For my oldest friend and best man, Giles Bourne

Writing a campaign history such as this is a complicated undertaking. Although dealing with American, British, Canadian, German and Italian units across the armed services, Ive tried to keep the numbers of unit names as low as possible. To help distinguish one side from another, I have used a form of vernacular, styling German and Italian units more or less as they would be written in German and Italian not to be pretentious in any way, but just to reduce the potential for confusion. Having said that, it seemed to me that to describe a Tiger tank company as the 2. Schwere Panzerkompanie was perhaps taking this too far, so I have called it more simply 2. Heavy Panzer Kompanie.

For those who are not familiar with the scale of wartime units and the numbers involved, the basic fighting formation on which the size of armies was judged during the Second World War was the division. German panzer divisions were an all-arms formation of motorized infantry, artillery and tanks; panzer-grenadier divisions had fewer panzers tanks and more motorized infantry: a grenadier was simply an infantryman who was provided with motor transport to get from A to B. Infantry divisions had much less motorization by 1943 as fuel and other shortages were increasingly keenly felt within the Reich.