March on Rome
On all the world's major battlefronts, the Allies moved forward this week. The Russian line crackled along its 1,500 miles and the Red Army's counterattack brought it almost to the gates of Orel. In the Pacific the Americans and Australians, crept nearer Munda, nearer Salamaua. Over German Europe, U.S. and British bombers continued their destructive missions. TIME will report these actions fully next week.
But this week U.S. interest was centered on Sicily. The historic invasion of that historic island was more thoroughly reported, by correspondents with the invaders, than any military operation of World War II. To do full justice to it, TIME this week devotes all its World Battlefronts pages to the Battle of Sicily.
In Sicily last week flamboyant General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery gave a whirlwind interview. Asked how long the Sicilian campaign would last, he said:
"Oh, I can't say. It may take a month, but then it may take six months or two weeks. . . . We have really hit them for six."* Then, waving his black beret, Monty rushed off, saying: "I must go now. Things to do."
The old cricketer and his reorganized Eighth Army looked as if they really had hit the Germans and Italians for six. They landed at Cape Passero, moved on to Syracuse, took it (with the help of naval and air bombardment), moved on to Augusta, took that, lost it, recaptured it, moved on again, past a difficult stretch of broken escarpment and many a toughly defended hill and mountain pass, to stand on the plain before Catania. By then half the eastern coast of Sicily was in their hands.
Montgomery's was almost an invisible operation, so fast did he move, so meagerly was the Eighth's progress reported. Most of the vivid news from Sicily came from the southwest, where the U.S. Seventh Army had landed. Only the Eighth's Canadians, advancing at the center of the entire invasion front, were thoroughly reported in the first eleven days, and they fumed because they had so little fighting to do.
The Plan. But the bare references in the communiques revealed the plan of the Fifteenth Army Group.* The essence of the plan was simply that if you take the coasts of an island, you have the island. The air attacks on Sicily's center and its northerly ports of entry, even the ground marches toward railway and other inland centers, supported the battles for the coasts. The U.S. Seventh Army, seizing the southwestern coast, conducted a great backstopping operation, holding down and drawing off sizable enemy forces from the decisive eastern sector. To that canny soldier and conqueror, General Montgomery, fell the task of taking the eastern coast.
The Objective. The decisive objective in the east was the port and railway center of Catania. As Montgomery's troops stood at the threshold of Catania, a British battleship came up to shell the port. Planes bombed it. The Italians confessed that its fall was near. General Montgomery's eyes must have glinted as he remembered the interview he had given. Once Catania was his, the battle for Sicily could be little more than a battle for more coastland, then for Messina, if the Hermann Goerings survived in enough strength to fight for that port. In Messina, Monty could look across three miles of water into Italy itself.
** 8th + 7th = 15th. In the Battle of Tunisia it was: 1st + 8th = 18th.
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