of the Allied resources were transferred to the Western side of Italy, to Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark's American Fifth Army, and was to hold a 30-mile sector of the front with just two divisions. In July, with progress for the Allied Armies in Italy (AAI, formerly the 15th Army Group) returning, pursuing the Germans to the Gothic Line, Allfrey's V Corps returned to the control of the Eighth Army, now commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese in place of Montgomery who returned to the United Kingdom to take command of the 21st Army Group. Leese did not think highly of Allfrey, a view shared by his predecessor. Montgomery had, at least initially, believed Allfrey to be too slow and cautious, writing on 14 October 1943 to General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), that V Corps was "fighting in the line. I have not had Charles ALLFREY under me in battle before; he is not yet up the standard of my other Corps Commanders; he is inclined to fiddle about with details, is very slow, and is inclined to bellyache". After severely castigating Allfrey over a month later, where he "told him [Allfrey] that his Corps was completely amateur according to Eighth Army standards; there was a lack of 'grip' and 'bite'", he wrote to Leese, who was then in England, that "Charles Allfrey and 5 Corps H.Q. are very amateur; they have never been properly taught and I have to watch over everything they do". He blamed this not on Allfrey himself, but on his former army commander in Tunisia, Anderson, who Montgomery was highly critical of, believing that his performance in Tunisia to be lacklustre. Leese, doubtless influenced by what Montgomery had said of Allfrey, tried through the first few months of 1944 to get him sacked, and, as Richard Mead writes, it is significant that, during the Second Battle of Monte Cassino in March, rather than using Allfrey's by now highly experienced HQ, Leese ordered Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg, GOC of the 2nd New Zealand Division, to create a new, and therefore completely green and inexperienced, HQ for the battle. However, General The Hon. Sir Harold Alexander, Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the AAI, made the decision not to use Allfrey's V Corps in the belief that the two division GOCs, Freyberg and Tuker, of 4th Indian Division, both possessed very