Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Casualty record for William Martin. https://www.cwgc.org/ [Records the grave in Huelva and the dual inscription.]
—
EXPANDED COVERAGE: THE STRATEGIC CONTEXT AND THE PROBLEM OF SICILY
B. WHY THE ALLIES NEEDED THE ENEMY TO LOOK ELSEWHERE — DEEPER CONTEXT
The decision to invade Sicily in the summer of 1943 was not made lightly, and the difficulties it presented were not hypothetical.
By the end of the North African campaign in May 1943, the Allies had cleared German and Italian forces from the continent’s northern shore. General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps had been defeated. More than 270,000 Axis troops surrendered in Tunisia. This was the largest single Axis capitulation of the war up to that point. It was also the end of a very long, hard road.
The question of where to strike next had been disputed between British and American military planners since the Americans formally entered the war in December 1941. The Americans, initially, wanted to cross the Channel and attack Germany through France as directly as possible. The British, drawing on their experience of continental warfare and what they knew of German defensive capability, argued for attacking the “soft underbelly” of the Axis through the Mediterranean.
The compromise reached at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 was Sicily. The operation was codenamed Husky. General Dwight D. Eisenhower would be supreme commander. British General Harold Alexander commanded the ground forces. General Bernard Montgomery led the British Eighth Army. General George Patton commanded the American Seventh Army.