Kesselring felt sure the Via Casilina could be successfully blocked. Ten miles south-east of the Liri Valley, the road passed through a narrow defile, ideal for mounting artillery, and known as the Mignano Gap. Then, at the mouth of the Liri, were the twin guardians, Monte Cassino and Monte Maio and the mighty ranges beyond. It was for this reason that first the Mignano Gap, and then the main Gustav Line at Cassino, at the mouth of the Liri Valley, were to be the strongest and most heavily protected points of these new defensive systems. And there was another advantage to the Gustav Line: it ran across the narrowest point of the peninsula. Because the Allies would have to channel most of their forces along a comparatively narrow point, it would require, in theory, fewer men to defend it than the wider, more accessible Pisa– Rimini position further north.
‘Smiling Albert’ had, in early September, set out clearly his arguments for heavily defending southern Italy, but in this case it had been his actions that had spoken louder than his words. While Rommel had continued to urge Hitler to fall back as far as the Alps, on this occasion it had been Kesselring who had won the debate. Not only had Grand Admiral Dönitz, of whose views Hitler had been increasingly taking note, agreed with Kesselring’s view, the High Command had even begun to come round to his way of thinking. Sure enough, on 4 October 1943, Hitler had ordered Kesselring to continue his defence south of Rome. He had impressed to such an extent that by the third week in November, Rommel had been moved to northern France, his lustre further dimmed by suspicions of defeatism – something that could never be directed at Kesselring. Nor was his loyalty in question: Kesselring had made his oath to serve Hitler and he would stick to it; honour and obedience were part and parcel of the soldier’s creed.
After Rommel’s dismissal, Kesselring was, on 21 November 1943, appointed Commander-in-Chief Southwest and Army Group C, with direct command of all German forces in Italy. Furthermore he no longer had to weave his way through a political minefield, since the defence of Italy had become his show, and his alone.
Yet by May 1944, Feldmarschall Kesselring faced one of his toughest challenges thus far. His troops had been caught off guard by Alexander’s new offensive, his HQ had been badly bombed, and the phone lines to headquarters AOK 10, who were bearing the brunt of the Allied attack, had been destroyed.
And too many of his senior officers were far, far away.
For the best part of two years Kesselring’s opposite number had been General Sir Harold Alexander. No two commanders had battled it out for longer in the European war, and they would be pitting their wits against each other for a while longer yet. They were certainly aware of each other, although neither had ever tried to make the kind of mileage Montgomery had done from his professed rivalry with Rommel, and nor would they; both were far too modest. Self-glory was not their game at all.
There were other similarities. Alexander, or ‘Alex’ as he was universally known, was every bit as genial as Kesselring and he shared the German’s unflappability, but in many other ways they had little in common. Kesselring, for example, despite more than thirty years in the armed forces, had limited experience of battlefield command – he was a Luftwaffe field marshal, after all. Alexander, on the other hand, was one of the most experienced Allied battlefield commanders of the entire war. In a long and distinguished career he had fought in more battles in more countries and alongside more nationalities – including German – than any contemporary commander with whom he served.
And unlike Kesselring, his background was distinctly aristocratic. Born in December 1891, the third son of the Earl of Caldeon, he spent much of his childhood at the Caldeon estate in Northern Ireland, where he indulged in his lifelong passions of shooting, fishing and painting. At Harrow he excelled at sports, and then seamlessly progressed to Sandhurst, passing out in July 1911. As a fiercely proud Ulsterman – he carried an Irish flag with him throughout the war – he joined the Irish Guards, a regiment created by Queen Victoria only eleven years before, and although in those final pre-war years he had little opportunity to show his promise as a soldier, he did develop into the perfect gentleman, a tag he would never lose. Handsome, charming and athletic, he played polo, boxed, raced motor-cars at Brooklands and, at Easter 1914, entered Ireland’s most famous run, the Irish Mile, and won quite effortlessly.
The First World War developed him as a soldier and revealed extraordinary bravery and leadership. In November 1914, he was seriously injured in the thigh and was invalided home, but was determined to get back to the front as quickly as possible. To prove his fitness, he walked and ran sixty-four miles in one day, and by February 1915 he was back in France. Later that summer Alexander led his company at the Battle of Loos. He was wounded twice more, survived the Somme, Cambrai and Passchendaele, and in 1917, still only twenty-five, became acting lieutenant-colonel commanding the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards. By the war’s end, he had won a DSO and bar, an MC, the French Légion d’Honneur, and had been mentioned in despatches five times. Adored by his men, he combined courage and compassion with ice-cool composure and decisiveness: in combination, rare gifts in a soldier.
There was no sign of Alexander’s career faltering with the end of the war. In 1919, he was sent to command the Baltic Landwehr, part of the Latvian Army, in the war against Russia. Most of the men under his command were of German origin, so he had the unique distinction amongst Allied commanders of having commanded German troops in battle. Staff College and subsequent staff appointments were followed by stints along the North-West Frontier in India, experience that would not be forgotten in the equally mountainous terrain of Italy.
By the outbreak of war in 1939, ‘Alex’ was one of the youngest major-generals in the British Army and commanding the 1st Division. In France, he supervised the final withdrawal of British troops from Dunkirk and was the last senior officer to leave – on the penultimate day of the evacuation.
Remaining in England for the next two years, Alexander did much to revolutionise the way British troops were trained, developing battle schools in which troops were taught simple combat drills and, by using live ammunition, were given a much-needed dose of realism. It was during this time that he began increasingly to catch the Prime Minister’s eye, and in early 1942 Alex was posted to Burma to oversee yet another retreat from defeat. This time, with his usual unflappability, he safely oversaw the British crossing of the Irrawaddy River, and with it – for a time at any rate – saved British forces from the threat of annihilation at the hands of the Imperial Japanese.
In August 1942 he was sent to Cairo to become British Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, with Montgomery, as Eighth Army commander, as his subordinate. While Monty commanded on the battlefield, Alex improved the administrative and supply situation, played a vital buffering role between his forces and London, as well as adding his military advice on the ground; El Alamein was his victory too. By the beginning of 1943, with the Allied campaign in Tunisia stalling badly, Alex was given command of the newly formed 18th Army Group and took over direct control of the campaign. In a little over ten weeks after taking command, he had improved almost every aspect of the Allied war effort in Tunisia and had won a great victory, with the capture of more than a quarter of a million troops.
When he had taken over in Tunisia, Alex had been justifiably concerned about the greenness of American troops, but had handled the firebrand, General Patton, with firmness and skill and had earned the respect of not only Patton, but another future star, General Omar Bradley. By the time of the Sicily invasion, however, he had still had certain reservations about the effectiveness of American troops, and this had led to a potentially damaging dispute in which he had allowed Montgomery and Eighth Army to gain a priority over the American troops that they did not deserve. That it was Montgomery who bore the brunt of understandable American grousing says much about
