The Sicily Campaign: Recollections of an Infantry Company Commander, July-August 1943 - Book Review

By Major General (Retired) Albert II. Smith, Jr., USA. Society of the First Infantry Division, 2001. 291 Pages. $21.50, Softbound.

The author, who served with the 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division throughout World War II, has had a long-standing and personal interest in the Sicily campaign, Operation Husky, an off-forgotten Allied military operation of the war.

This is understandable, considering that he commanded a rifle company (Company L, 3d Battalion) of the 16th Infantry in Sicily and gave us his earlier recollections in a two-part article published in 1993 in Infantry Magazine. (Both parts are reproduced in this book.)

He has done a fine job in taking material from a variety of sources and presenting it in a well-thought-out and well-designed final product that recalls for all of his readers, and particularly for past and present members of the 1st Division, the outstanding role that division played in the campaign from its initial landings in early July 1943 to the end in mid-August of the same year.

As co-author of the official U.S. Army history of the Sicily campaign and the surrender of Italy--parts of which are also reproduced here--I can vouch for the author's knowledge of the campaign. He has also taken material from various 1st Division sources that bear directly on Husky.

He has seasoned all of this with several excellent photo essays, and wraps up his efforts with an afterword and four appendixes. In the afterword, Martin Blumenson, an outstanding military, historian, details his reasons for believing Husky, was so meaningful (p. 208).

General Smith has prepared, essentially, two books in one--the first, a discussion of the campaign itself; and the second, a history of the 1st Division's participation in the operation. Perhaps the second part is the most important, for as the publisher puts it, the "book honors our beloved Division's achievements in a tough combat campaign over awesome terrain."

COPYRIGHT 2002 U.S. Army Infantry School
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group