Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [203]
The British case was that the immediate strategic priority was to seize the chances of the moment in the Mediterranean, rather than to stake everything upon a highly dangerous and speculative cross-Channel attack. In war, they argued, circumstances were always changing. They were more realistic than the Americans, in their understanding that a decision to enter Italy was irrevocable: “If we once set foot on the Italian mainland,”756 wrote John Kennedy, “we are in for a big commitment … The Americans I am sure do not realise that limited operations in Italy eg against Naples, are impossible. We must either stop at the Straits of Messina or go the whole hog.” On August 17, Churchill received a characteristically triumphalist signal from Alexander: “By 10 am this morning, the last German soldier was flung out of Sicily.” The prime minister’s enthusiasm for his favourite general seldom flagged, and he applauded the Sicilian operations as “brilliantly executed.” Yet it had taken thirty-eight days for much superior Allied forces to expel less than three German divisions. Far from being “flung out” of the island, Gen. Albert Kesselring’s troops had been inexcusably allowed to withdraw in good order across the Straits of Messina with most of their vehicles, guns and equipment.
At all the wartime conferences there was a notable contrast between the strains upon the principals, middle-aged and elderly men contesting great issues day and night, and the delights afforded to hundreds of attendant supporting staff who did not bear their responsibilities. The latter—staff officers, officials, clerks, ciphering personnel—worked hard at the summits, but also played hard. Duty officers were always in attendance upon the Teletype machines which rattled forth signals and reports around the clock. Typists composed minutes of that day’s meetings, and planners prepared drafts for the next. But it seemed miraculous to these young men and a few women to be delivered for a few weeks from rationed, battered, darkened England, to bask in bright lights and prodigious quantities of food and drink, all of it free. Most danced and partied enthusiastically through the nights, while their great men wrangled. The English visitors revelled in shopping opportunities unknown in Britain for four years.
Events did more than changes of heart to patch up Anglo-American differences at Quebec. The known readiness of the new Italian government to surrender made it plain to Marshall and his colleagues that Allied forces in Sicily must advance into Italy. It seemed unthinkable to leave a vacuum, which the Germans could fill as they chose. The British, for their part, professed to endorse the Overlord plan presented by Morgan and the COSSAC team. There was much bickering about a cutoff date at which Allied divisions earmarked for France would have to be withdrawn from the Mediterranean, and thus about what objectives in Italy might feasibly be attained beforehand. Churchill, who dreamed of Allied armies driving towards Vienna, instead reluctantly endorsed a line from Livorno to Ancona by November, saying: “If we can’t have the best, these are very good second bests.” In the event, of course, Livorno and Ancona would not be taken until late June 1944. But in the heady days of August, the Allies still supposed that,