had proven himself to Montgomery in Sicily as "...an able field commander. No other Canadian would ever quite meet Monty's standards." At Agira and Regalbuto, Simonds won "costly, difficult battles" over the Wehrmacht who used the mountainous terrain of Sicily to their advantage. The victories were not cheap, as the 1st Division had suffered 2,310 casualties in Sicily, losing 562 men killed in action or dying of their wounds, with the rest being wounded or taken prisoner. Italy 1943−1944 The campaign in Sicily was over by mid-August and, after a brief rest, on September 3, 1943, Simonds and the 1st Canadian Division, now serving alongside the British 5th Infantry Division as part of British XIII Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey (whom Simonds was to form a high opinion of), landed on the mainland of Italy in Operation Baytown, part of the Allied invasion of Italy. Meeting light resistance, the division suffered only nine casualties on the first day. Falling ill on September 22, he was replaced as commander of the 1st Canadian Division by Brigadier Christopher Vokes, the former commander of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. Subsequently, he replaced Major-General Charles Stein as GOC of the recently arrived 5th Canadian (Armoured) Division when it arrived on the Italian Front in November 1943. Simonds viewed this, along with the arrival of Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar and I Canadian Corps, as something of a comedown, although this was not the intent of CMHQ. Montgomery had wanted Simonds to command an armoured division to give him experience with commanding tanks, though the mountainous terrain of Italy was hardly the best place. Simonds was furious when he learned that, to save shipping, his new division would have to take old equipment from the veteran British 7th Armoured Division (famous in the Western Desert as the Desert Rats). Crerar nixed an idea to use 3,350 brand-new I Corps headquarters vehicles to equip the 5th Canadian Armoured Division. The division would not be fully equipped until the end of January 1944. His initial meeting with Crerar went poorly (possibly strained by Simonds' illness), and relations further deteriorated when Simonds ejected an officer sent by Crerar to measure his headquarters caravan. Crerar was fascinated by Simonds's caravan, and sent an officer to take its measurements without informing Simonds, who expelled the officer when he discovered him in his caravan. Crerar had become jealous of Simonds, who had