Gela

Again, strenuous urging not to do so from General Matthew Ridgway, one of America's greatest field commanders, and Admiral Kent Hewitt, who was in charge of the naval flotilla off the coast of Sicily in 1943 during Operation Husky and the invasion of Sicily.

of Sicily, he was urged not to order a drop of a regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division onto Patton's own division in Sicily at the city of Gela.

He overruled those objections, he ordered it, and it led to the US Army's worst friendly fire incident of World War II.

And afterwards, he refused to take any responsibility and basically wrote that shit happens in war, and so that's the reason for it.

And he did this east of Magnassi in El Guitart in Tunisia, at Troina in Sicily, and at Metz in France.

And of course, these are not place names or battles that most Americans who idolize Patton ever hear about, write about, talk about, and try to ignore.

And then, of course, in terms of tactics, there was that issue, that paratrooper drop at Gela in Sicily that caused such a bad friendly fire incident.

This leads us into the next question, the penultimate question.

Okay

... at a beach called Gela, G-E-L-A.

The British troops were landed on the southeast coast of Sicily, presumably by other British landing craft, but-

Okay

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

I can.

I can summarize it quite simply that if it wasn't for Operation Mincemeat, I probably wouldn't be sitting here because my dad was on the first wave of landings on Gela Beach on July, the, the early morning of July the 10th.

And in his notebook, which I have, his navigation officer's notebook, it says, "Landed troops against virtually no opposition."