Friday,
November 09, 2007
Book:'The
Day of
The
ANNOTICO Report
This
Review is by Tony Perry of the LA Times. 'The Day of
The
fight for Sicily and then up the rugged, heavily defended Italian coastline to
Rome and beyond is
largely forgotten
beneath the avalanche of journalism and movie-making that chronicles the
grand crusade from the beaches at Normandy to Hitler's bunker in Berlin.
The
fight to liberate
Atkinson
states: "War was never linear, and in the Mediterranean (
The
Americans, FDR, and Eisenhower, correctly argued that the The
Italian Campaign would be a diversion, and a mistake. They felt that a assault on
Churchill
the architect of the greatest Debacle of WWI: The Gallipoli Campaign, for
which he was shunted aside for 25 tears, now was able to be the architect of the
greatest Debacle of WWII: The Italian Campaign. However, Good
Public Relations made a Genius out of a Bumbler.
With
a Terminally flawed Strategy to start with,
BOOK REVIEW
The
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist details the fight for
By Tony Perry, Staff Writer
November 9, 2007
Near the end of his copiously reported, briskly written "The Day of
Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944," Rick Atkinson quotes an
unnamed BBC reporter who burst into Allied press headquarters in Rome on the
morning of June 6, 1944. The Allies had just liberated the
And so it's been, for six-plus decades. The fight for Sicily and then up the
rugged, heavily defended Italian coastline to Rome and beyond is largely
forgotten beneath the avalanche of journalism and movie-making that chronicles
the grand crusade from the beaches at Normandy to Hitler's bunker in Berlin.
If the Allies' middle campaign, between defeating Rommel in North Africa and
storming ashore at Normandy, is to get its due, it may very well be from
"The Day of Battle," the second volume of Atkinson's planned World
War II trilogy. His first in the series, "An Army at Dawn" (2002) won
him his second Pulitzer Prize.
The reporting is meticulous and heavily footnoted (173 pages of notes and
sources). Much of the sourcing is from letters and after-action reports written
as the troops slogged from one battle to another. The book is not cast in the
current mode of World War II accounts drawn from the memories of veterans. To
be sure, the author's res pect for the troops is
immense, but he avoids the "greatest generation" template. The troops
-- officers and enlisted, American and British -- fought with bravery and
tenacity, but they also made mistakes, grumbled and engaged in petty rivalries.
Much of Atkinson's attention is on familiar figures: Patton, Bradley,
Montgomery, Kesselring, Eisenhower. He is no
hagiographer. Patton was charismatic but sloppy logistically, often failing to
get the proper equipment and medical care to his frontline troops. Bradley was
more than the "GIs' general" of lore: tough-minded, often intolerant,
sometimes eager to sack a successful division
commander. Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, commander of the 5th Army, was smart and
relentless in combat, but he could also be vainglorious and duplicitous with
fellow commanders. He shared the BBC reporter's disappointment: "They
didn't even let us have the newspaper headlines for the fall of
The Allied strategy is laid out in detail, with maps and lengthy explanations
of the disagreements among officers. Atkinson does not try to settle the myriad
disputes that linger among World War II buffs about the Italian campaign. He
describes the assault at Monte Cassino but does not
try to settle the argument over whether the aerial bombardment of the abbey was
necessary.
Atkinson's previous works -- including his "In the Company of
Soldiers," about the 2003 assault on
"The Day of
Two soldiers were accused of murdering prisoners: One was acquitted; the
other spent a few months in confinement and returned to duty after a
"sympathetic congressman" intervened. "Classified top secret,
the records of the courts-martial would remain locked in the secretary of the
Army's safe for years after the war lest they 'arouse a segment of our citizens
who are so distant from combat that they do not understand the savagery that is
war,' " Atkinson writes, quoting a confidential report.
When German planes bombed Allied ships in the
"Rumors spread that the Germans had used gas," Atkinson
writes. The Army quickly learn ed
the truth: The gas canisters were aboard the
One of Atkinson's triumphs is his ability to capture the specific incident and
the lesson that lurks beneath: that war changes and yet remains the same.
"War was never linear, and in the
The fight to liberate
tony.perry@latimes.com