Inside Seventh Army headquarters on the southern coast of Sicily, a scowling Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., greeted Lieutenant General Omar Bradley with bad news. ‘We’ve received a directive from Army Group, Brad,’ Patton said between puffs on a cigar. ‘Monty’s to get the Vizzini-Caltagirone road in his drive to flank Catania and Mount Etna by going up through Enna. This means you’ll have to side-slip to the west with your 45th Division.’
‘My God,’ Bradley replied angrily, ‘you can’t allow him to do that!’
But Patton had nothing else to say on the subject. ‘Sorry Brad,’ he said evenly, ‘but the changeover takes place immediately. Monty wants the road right away.’
To Patton, Bradley, and just about every other senior United States Army officer, British General Sir Bernard Montgomery got his way entirely too often. This time, just four days into Operation HUSKY (the code name for the Allied Invasion of Sicily), Montgomery had convinced 15th Army Group Commander General Sir Harold Alexander to grant his Eighth Army exclusive use of a highway previously promised to the Americans. Patton and Bradley considered the decision an insult to American military prestige.
