In March 1944, the army group was renamed Allied Armies in Italy. Throughout this period, the army group was under command of the British General Sir Harold Alexander. By late 1944, the army group had pushed northward through Italy, capturing Rome, and driving the retreating Axis forces into Northern Italy. Despite and due to the rapid advance of the Allied forces in Italy in June–July 1944, after the liberation of Rome, the high allied command in Western Europe decided to take away from the Italian front the French Expeditionary Corps and the U.S. VI Corps, reassigned for landing in the South of France in support of the advance in the north of that country, and to liberate southern France, including the huge port complexes of Marseilles and Toulon, and bring into action the seven divisions of the French 1st Army (1st and 5th armored, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 9th infantry) that had been reequipped in French North Africa by the United States. The gap in the ranks of the U.S. Fifth Army caused by the withdrawal of seven divisions (three US Army, the 3rd, 36th, and 45th infantry divisions; and four French, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th divisions) was filled in 1944-45 by five US Army (10th Mountain, 85th, 88th, 91st, and 92nd infantry divisions) and one US-equipped Brazilian Army division (the 1st). Additional replacements and service elements were provided by conversion of the US Army's 2nd Cavalry Division, which had arrived in the theater in 1944.