Mutiny at Salerno, 1943

by Saul David

First published 1995

Amazon

4.1(384)

In September 1943, nearly two hundred veterans of the British 50th and 51st Divisions refused orders to join unfamiliar units at the Salerno beachhead. Many believed they had been promised return to their own formations after recovering from wounds or becoming separated during earlier campaigns. Instead, they were treated as reinforcements for units of the US Fifth Army fighting in Italy.

Saul David reconstructs the arrests, courts martial and sentences, some initially carrying death or long terms of penal servitude. He argues that the protest was not a refusal to fight but a defence of regimental loyalty after confused and contradictory orders. The book follows the subsequent commutation of sentences, the loss of medals and the victimisation that continued after the men returned to duty.