BRITISH HEROES PUSHED TO MUTINY BY INCOMPETENCE

BRITAIN’S battle-hardened troops who had just helped defeat the Nazis at El Alamein were dumped in an Italian field due to an administrative blunder.

- Ian Hernon

They had been misled by their Second World War commanders and discontent turned to fury.

The anger 80 years ago led to that rarest thing in the British Army – mutiny.

Almost 200 men laid down their arms outside Salerno in Italy.

Three sergeants were swiftly sentenced to death, and the rest were given long prison terms.

The event shows the often shambolic incompetence of senior officers as the tide of war was turning towards the Allies and against Adolf Hitler’s Germany.

The Allies under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had won the North Africa campaign against Erwin Rommel, Germany’s top general, and had successfully and swiftly invaded Sicily the previous month. The next stage was mainland Italy and Allied forces landed at Salerno in Operation Avalanche. Around 1,500 men of the 50th Northumbrians and 51st Highland infantry divisions sailed from Tripoli on the understanding they were to join the rest of their units on newly-liberated Sicily and then to return to the UK to prepare for the next year’s D-Day Normandy landings.

They had fought across North Africa and many had been wounded or were suffering from malaria or dysentery.

Montgomery had instilled an indomitable fighting spirit based on comradeship and regimental pride. Some had won battleground medals. All were exhausted by the experience of relentless combat in unforgiving terrain.

But once aboard ship, the men were told they were being taken to Salerno instead, to support British and American units under pressure from German and Italian counterattacks. Many felt they had been deliberately misled.

It was later revealed that due to an administrative error, the message requesting reinforcements that should have arrived in Algeria was instead sent to Tripoli.