ABSTRACT
Following the success of ‘Torch’, Roosevelt suggested to Churchill that the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) should be requested to ‘make a survey of the possibilities including forward movements directed against Sardinia, Sicily, Italy’ and other parts of the Mediterranean. Marshall demanded, however, that Sicily be the last of Mediterranean operations and rejected an invasion of mainland Italy. The CCS recommended that 'Husky', the invasion of Sicily, should take place in June or July 1943. Cunningham had always felt that the possession of Tunis and Tripoli offered an acceptable degree of convoy safety and was one of the few favoring an attack on Sardinia, an easier proposition requiring smaller forces; control of Sicily, however, would raise shipping security from 85 to 90 per cent. The commanders based themselves in the insalubrious Lascaris Bastion, where their austere offices looked down on a giant relief map of Sicily and various wall charts.
