Remind me not to play poker with Monty. He keeps an ace up his sleeve.

When we met to plan the DECATUR/BROKE landings, I noticed a lot of airfield construction going on near Monty's HQ. They'd even put a couple of new infantry battalions to work lengthening runways.

It turns out that BROKE force (named after aBritish navy captain of the War of 1812, not because it's going to end up that way) faced nothing but Italians around Taormina, and they surrendered faster than the Brits could haul up the rations to feed them. So pretty soon there was lots of elbow room, with the Germans not doing anything except long-range artillery shoots and a few patrols.

Inside their perimeter was a partly finished airfield. They filled in craters, hauled wrecked enemy planes away, and got a bumpy runway long enough to land gliders and fighters. Then last night fifty Wellington bombers flew over, towing gliders with troops and antitank guns. As soon as the runways were clear, the RAF started landing P-40 Kittyhawks.

Meanwhile, the Wellingtons flew back to the just-extended runways, landed, bombed and fueled up, and took off for a maximum-effort raid on Messina. They hit the port facilities so damned hard I doubt if we'll be able to use them to jump the Straits. Just maybe, though, the Germans won't be able to use them to evacuate Sicily!

So now we have stuck our fingers all the way down the Krauts' throat. So they'll have to either choke to death or bite back hard!

Germans definitely trying to evacuate. They've broken contact along at least half of the Allied line, stopped raiding the BROKE and DECATUR beachheads, and aren't trying to give air cover to anything much south of Messina.

Reports coming in, from Italian prisoners, that the Germans have been keeping Italians off German vehicles at gunpoint and even confiscating Italian vehicles. They've also started blowing up heavy equipment.

Rumors going around that some Palermo Communists stole guns from Italian Army depots and helped round up the German paratroops. I am giving orders to squash those rumors. Right now the Germans have to treat Italy as some kind of ally. If they learn that even some Italians have changed sides, they'll retaliate all up and down the penensula, occupy everything they can, and wreck everything they can't.

Not as worried about squashing the Palermo Communists. Right now, anybody who wants to fight Germans is doing more good than harm. We can sort them out after the Germans are down for the count.

Don't know what the politicians are doing. At least the Palermo Communists have the guts to come out shooting. But if the politicians won't give us orders, Ike and Alex [Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander] and Monty and I are all going to have to sit down and make up our own.

Decorated several Air Force pilots today. One of them had been with Eagle Squadron during the Battle of Britain. Said that he felt he'd earned this Distinguished Flying Cross even more than the first one. The air fighting was just as heavy and you couldn't be sure of landing in friendly territory!

Mass surrenders of the Italians. Surviving Germans are going to be lucky if they escape with their clothes and personal weapons. The British aren't ready to send heavy ships into range of the big shore batteries at the Straits of Messina. But they are bombing the ports on both sides every night, and have sunk quite a bunch of the lighters and coastal freighters the Germans will need to evacuate artillery and vehicles.

Already beginning to capture German supply dumps before the rearguards can destroy them. Not so many Italian supplies, but the Italians may not have much left to capture!

Note from Monty-we should meet to suggest modifications in the existing plan for knocking Italy out of the war on August 20. I have asked the engineers if we can mountanything out of Palermo before the middle of September. It would be a good deal easier if the Italians would surrender now. Then we could enlist all the POWs into the Royal Italian Army Engineers and watch the dust fly.

From The New York Times, August 19, 1943:

Sicily Falls to Allies

25,000 German, 150,000 Italian POWs

Rumors of Crisis in Rome

From Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery's Mediterranean Campaigns:

— triumphal entrance into Messina was simply not on, because there was hardly any Messina left to enter, triumphantly or in any other manner. It is more than a little difficult to maintain a conqueror's pose when one stumbles over rubble at every step and coughs on the smoke of burning buildings at every third breath, if one wishes to do so at all.

None of the Allied commanders wished it. It seemed a vulgar display worthy of the formerDuce, and not of liberators. Had we known at the time the debates among Italian and German leaders (each keeping their debates secret from the other), we might have taken even further measures to adopt a conciliatory position toward the Italians.

If I had known at the time how little diplomatic intelligence Eisenhower was receiving, I would have been less hostile to his apparent obliviousness to political considerations. I now think better of him, and rather less well of those parties responsible for his ignorance. One would almost think they were prepared to sabotage any American support for a joint Mediterranean strategy, lest it threaten the primary emphasis on the cross-channel attack.

Fortunately Eisenhower also seemed willing to find excuses to continue the pressure on Italy, at least until the country surrendered and remaining Germans were expelled or neutralized. Possibly this was the beginning of an awakening sense of field strategy, or perhaps he was as lacking in initiative as ever, but even more willing to listen to Generals Patton, Bradley, and Clark.

I was least surprised at Patton's commitment to forcing Italy out of the war. Since Operation Torch, he had exhibited a singular instinct for seeking and severing the opponent's jugular vein, even if he also wished to adopt methods for doing so that enlarged his own role. We had fewer objections to a larger role for Patton now than a year ago, when Alan Brooke [Chief of the British Imperial General Staff] said that the American could only be useful in a situation requiring boldness, even rashness. From appearing to be fit for no larger command than a regiment of cavalry, he had developed higher military qualities in abundance. He was also noticeably more agreeable in person than he had been previously. The burdens of command over the previous month seemed to sit lightly, even gracefully, on his shoulders, and he was firm and fair in his praises of the British share in the greatest Anglo-American victory of the war to date. I began to see him as one who would return in full measure all the respect shown to him-and to his officers and men, toward whom his loyalty was, then and ever afterward, utterly unswerving.

To be brief about General Clark, on the principle ofnihil nisi bonum: since his recently activated Fifth Army would include all the American and some of the British ground forces assigned to the invasion of the Italian mainland, it was clearly in his interests to execute that invasion. The bitter fighting in Sicily had also put us somewhat behind schedule for the next operation, and used a number of transports, landing craft, and warships intended for that operation, so both suitable weather and suitable sea transport might be lacking. Finally, one can only conjecture at this date, but Clark might well have possessed more information than the rest of us about the political circumstances in Italy.