The troops who fought their way up through the Italian peninsula in 1943 were labelled the ‘D-Day Dodgers’, but for the tens of thousands of men who were seriously wounded in the first months of the campaign, the mocking phrase was loaded with irony. It had all started so positively on 10 July 1943, when 2,600 ships landed more than 180,000 Commonwealth and American troops on the island of Sicily, part of what Churchill had described as the ‘soft under-belly of Europe’. This amphibious assault, supported by airborne landings, marked the start of the Italian Campaign. The Allies’ military planners thought it might be possible for a concentrated invasion to quickly knock Italy out of the war. The reality, however, was completely different. The situation was compounded by Italy’s surrender on 3 September 1943, an act which forced Hitler to launch Operation Axis, the occupation of Italy. In the months that followed, Allied troops were required to perform multiple amphibious assaults,