The Sicilian Campaign: A Brief Summary, July–August 1943

“Attack both by day and night to the limit of human endurance and then continue to attack.”

Patton’s Field Order No. 1, Sicily

Even before the Allies expelled the Axis from North Africa in May 1943, they laid the groundwork for their next operation in the Mediterranean: The invasion of Sicily.

Operation HUSKY, the Allied codename for the invasion, was the largest airborne and amphibious invasion to date. For thirty-eight continuous days, American, British, Canadian, and French Moroccan forces fought Italian and German soldiers across rough, mountainous terrain baked dry in the summer heat.

150,000 Allied soldiers landed on Sicily’s southeastern coastline on July 10, 1943. Over the ensuing weeks, two Allied armies raced to cut off the enemy’s retreat to Messina—Sicily’s northeastern port and the narrowest point between Sicily and Italy.

Capturing Palermo on July 22, Patton’s U.S. Seventh Army meandered east to Messina along the northern coastline; Montgomery’s British Eighth Army took the more direct, albeit treacherous route driving north up Sicily’s eastern shore. German forces waged a stubborn tactical withdrawal, inflicting and sustaining heavy casualties even as Italian soldiers under Mussolini’s faltering regime wavered.

To the Allies’ despair, before they reached Messina more than 100,000 Axis soldiers slipped safely across the narrow strait back onto the Italian peninsula. On August 17, 1943, the Sicilian campaign came to a close—a clear Allied success—but a hollow victory nonetheless.

Sicily’s central position in the Mediterranean afforded the Allies newfound strategic abilities to project air and naval power into continental Europe. In just three short weeks, Anglo-American forces would stage a follow-on assault of the Italian peninsula itself.

Further Reading:

• Atkinson, Rick. The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2007.
• Holland, James. Sicily ’43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020.
• Zaloga, Stephen. Sicily 1943: The Debut of Allied Joint Operations. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2013.