Remaining virtually unemployed for the next few months, in late April 1944 Dorman-Smith learned that he was to be given command of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, part of the 1st Infantry Division, commanded by Major-General Ronald Penney, then fighting on the Italian Front in the Anzio beachhead. By now, however, his reputation was such that all the senior British commanders in Italy, from General Sir Harold Alexander, C-in-C of the Allied Armies in Italy (AAI), who had succeeded General Auchinleck as C-in-C Middle East in August 1942, along with his chief of staff, Lieutenant-General John Harding, and Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, the Eighth Army commander, all wished to turn him down, but were overruled by Brooke, who made it clear to Dorman-Smith that this was his "sink or swim" moment. Alexander, Harding and Leese had all been fellow students at Camberley in the late 1920s, Alexander in the year senior, Harding − "independent of mind and short of stature" − and one who Dorman-Smith greatly respected, in the year below, whereas Leese had been in Dorman-Smith's year.