[Slipdigit]

Gerry,

Thanks for your kind reply.

As you may have noticed, I am a Southern-American (I'm keeping up with some in our country who think it is important to add a prefix to our national origin). I read a great deal, but living here in the colonies, I don't have much access to information regarding the British Army. I found this forum and it has been interesting to read.

It's almost as if our version of WWII history is "oh yeah, the Brits were holding our left flank as we landed at Normandy, charged across Europe and fought the only real battle-the Battle of the Bulge, all the while cutting wide swaths throught the Nazis." Well, maybe it's not that bad, but you get the picture as Hollywood sees it. But they have gotten somewhat better lately.

I agree with you that North Africa was more or less thrust upon the British Army. Italy and Sicily were a bit more problematic. While it seems obvious that both had to be taken, and for several valid reasons (securing the sea-lanes being one) it is still more or less was a matter of fighting the enemy where you are able to and in July 1943, Italy was about all that was realistically available to the Commonwealth and US forces.

The Balkans were good opportunity for political reasons, as the Prime Minister pleaded, but would it have been successful militarily? With terrain at least equally vicious as the Appennines, I don't feel that we could have had success even on par with the Italian campaign and with larger expanse of territory to cover, more divisions would have been neccessary there than were required by the 15th AG in Italy. We could have possibly cut the Russians off at the pass as they moved toward the west and ultimately saved parts of Eastern Europe from about 40 years of the Warsaw Pact, but would we been able to prevent a Russian push that stopped at the North Sea or the Channel? As it was, Dempsey had to hoof it to beat Simonyak to Lubeck and seal off Schleswig-Holstein and that was with our main effort in Northwest Europe.

Possibly Winston would not have been "dragooned" into Operation Anvil, if for no other reason than the lack of available troops. I know that the story about the name of Operation Dragoon is probably not true, but it does sound like something you'd hear from him.

Anyway, the North African, Sicilian and Italian campaigns served their purposes, even if they seem to be analogous to sticking your hand into a tar baby. One just seemed to follow the other and when you put your hand in, you can't get it out. It was not always the best place to fight militarily or politically, but it's what we had.