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40 Insights into the Lives of Famous War Veterans

Khalid Elhassan July 13, 2019 26 min

22. Alec Guinness launched the invasion of Sicily an hour early

Alec Guinness, middle row, third from left, with his landing craft and crew. Star Wars

In 1941, Alec Guinness enlisted in the Royal Navy Reserves, and was commissioned a naval officer the following year. He was ordered to Boston in 1943 to take charge of his first command, a freshly built landing craft. He sailed his ship and new crew across the Atlantic to North Africa, where they began training for the Allied invasion of Sicily. On July 9^th, 1943 he took 200 men to land on Passaro, Sicily, but due to a communications breakdown, was not apprised that the landing had been delayed. So Guinness arrived on the beach alone, and disembarked his troops an hour early.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.