| Many years ago, when hurricane "Betsy" stalled over Eastern Louisiana /Western Texas, I lost far too many books, due to flooding, which were in temporary storage while our home was getting ready for occupation. Gradually, but oh so slowly, replacements have been found the most recent being "The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Alexander." The forward brings back vividly my feelings when first it was read.
"Two years ago I returned to the battlefields of North Africa and Italy. I am glad to have undertaken this pilgrimage because I feel that a commander should file for the record the work of his armies in the field. In particular, I was concerned that the Allied camXpaign in Italy should receive due recognition in history for its contribution to the general victory in the west. Strategic consideraXtions apart, the seemingly unending succession of mountain ranges, ravines, and rivers of the Italian terrain demanded the soldierly qualities of fighting valour and endurance in a measure unsurpassed in any other theatre of war.
Thus it came about that in the autumn of 1960 I left England for Cairo, by way of Athens, and thereafter followed the tank tracks of the British Eighth Army and of the Allied Armies, on the ground or from the air, across the Western Desert into Tunisia, and thence, by way of Malta and Sicily, the length of Italy to Trieste. I was accompanied by my two former Chiefs-of-Staff, Field-Marshal Lord Harding and General Sir Richard McCreery, afterwards to succeed to command of the famed Eighth Army, and by another friend, my collaborator, Major John North, who undertook the task of committing my thoughts to paper.
In the narrative that follows the reader will learn what reXflections passed through my mind as I revisited those battleXgrounds of the Mediterranean war which, although they have now passed into history, still vividly remain on the horizon of memory for the officers and men who fought over them."
Gerry |