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The Wide Advance. Such was the fighting for Gela and its beaches, the fighting which made the rest of the U.S. invasion possible. On the ist Division's left flank, 48-year-old, Texas-born Major General Lucian K. Truscott's 3rd Infantry Division seized Licata and its neighboring airfields, then expanded its position westward and inland to take Canicatti and seize the old walled port of Agrigento and its innumerable, well-placed gun positions.
On the right, Major General Troy H. Middleton's 45th Infantry Division moved in from the beaches toward and through Vittorio and a juncture with Canadians of the Eighth Army. Some of the fighting was hard, the deeds of these divisions were valiant, but the detailed accounts were delayed. Inland, early in the advance, Major General Matthew B. Ridgway's 82nd Air-Borne Division preceded the other divisions to Sicily. Unannounced in the first eleven days of the fighting were the positions and accomplishments of the 2nd Armored Division, commanded by 47-year-old Major General Hugh J. Gaffey, who had been General Patton's Chief of Staff in Tunisia, but an Italian communique said that heavy tank battles occurred in the 3rd Division's area.
There were many local battles for towns and airdromes, of great moment to the men in the battles, dismissed with a sentence or no mention whatever in the communiques. One such engagement was the battle for the town of Butera, eight miles inland from Gela. Butera was taken by Rangers on the march toward the inland communications center of Enna, which Canadian and U.S. troops approached this week.
General officers had thought that Butera, perched on a hill behind deep and well-gunned passes, might require a month of siege. It fell in a matter of hours to a Ranger detachment of 50 officers and men. After a tense, hard march in the night, Privates John C. See and John Constantine crept within earshot of the garrison, lolling and chatting beside their guns and trucks at the top of a high pass. Constantine, one of the many Italian-speaking soldiers in the Seventh Army, called upon them to surrender. The few German officers with them tried to make the Italians fight. After a few halfhearted shots the Italians refused. The Germans escaped, and the town with its half-starved, emaciated residents fell to the Rangers.
The Sword. At week's end, General Patton returned briefly to North Africa. Ahead of him came stories befitting the Patton legend. According to one story, a visiting major general accosted Patton at Gela. Patton promptly ordered him to the top of the hill, "so that you can get shot at a bit." Patton went with the major general. After a suitable number of missiles had fallen suitably near, Patton said: "All right, you can go down now."
Patton's colleagues smiled at such stories, believed some of them. But in the early months of the Tunisian fighting, in the later months when he was shaping the Seventh Army, a more balanced impression of General Patton had got about. "Gorgeous George," "Old Blood & Guts," who had once cultivated the spectacular impression, was also a patient and careful and studious man, a field officer with a good staff mind.