Sunday, December 30, 2007

"The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944: The Day of Battle" by Rick Atkinson

The ANNOTICO Report

 

"War was never linear, and in the Mediterranean its road seemed especially meandering and desultory,"

 

The fight to liberate Italy took 608 days and cost 120,000 American casualties, including 23,501 deaths. About 750,000 Americans took part. Atkinson does not try to settle the myriad disputes that linger among World War II buffs about the "wrongheadedness" of the  Italian campaign.

Much of Atkinson's attention is on familiar figures: Gens. 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 be vainglorious and duplicitous. He shared the BBC reporter's disappointment: "They didn't even let us have the newspaper headlines for the fall of Rome for one day," he complained to an aide.

 The troops - officers and enlisted, American and British - fought bravely and tenaciously, but also made mistakes, grumbled and engaged in petty rivalries.  The Allied strategy is laid out in detail, with maps and lengthy explanations of the disagreements among officers. He describes the assault at Monte Cassino but does not decree whether the aerial bombardment of the abbey was necessary. [ Not only was it NOT necessary, since the Germans honored their pledge not to occupy it, BUT the ruins made for outstanding cover for the German troops after the Abbey was bombed to rubble by Allied planes]

"The Day of Battle" honestly reports incidents that today would have been instant scandals, had they not been "covered up" to save careers, maintain troop and back home morale, all under  the basis of "National Security", like the failure to block German soldiers from fleeing Sicily. the venereal disease that crippled Clark's Army. The claim that the Germans used Mustard Gas, when  it was an Allied supply that was detonated.

A careful read, constantly reinforces the significance of the "Law of Unintended Consequences" as Geo Bush re-learns every day.

Unvarnished History of Fight to Liberate Italy in 'The Day of Battle'

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Tony Perry

Sunday, December 30, 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 media headquarters in Rome on the morning of June 6, 1944. The Allies had just liberated the Eternal City, but elsewhere in Europe it was D-Day.

"Boys, we're on the back page now," the reporter said. "They've landed in Normandy."

And so it has been, for six-plus decades. The fight for Sicily and then up the rugged, heavily defended Italian coastline to Rome and beyond largely is forgotten beneath the avalanche of journalism and moviemaking 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 well might be from "The Day of Battle," the second volume of Atkinson's intended trilogy of World War II. His first in the series, "An Army at Dawn," won him his second Pulitzer Prize in 2003. The reporting is meticulous and heavily footnoted - 173 pages of notes and sources.

Much 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 fad of World War II accounts drawn from the memories of veterans. To be sure, the author's respect for the troops is immense, but he avoids the "greatest generation" template. The troops - officers and enlisted, American and British - fought bravely and tenaciously, but also made mistakes, grumbled and engaged in petty rivalries.

Much of Atkinson's attention is on familiar figures: Gens. 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 be vainglorious and duplicitous. He shared the BBC reporter's disappointment: "They didn't even let us have the newspaper headlines for the fall of Rome for one day," he complained to an aide.

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 decree whether the aerial bombardment of the abbey was necessary.

Atkinson's previous works - including "In the Company of Soldiers," about the 2003 assault on Baghdad, Iraq - have been criticized for depicting warfare largely from the viewpoint of the generals and field commanders rather than the infantrymen. Here, Atkinson has Ernie Pyle stroll onstage at various points, a technique only partly successful. Pyle's approach was so different from Atkinson's that the effect is jarring, and the inclusion of a few paragraphs of a Pyle column leaves the reader wanting more.

"The Day of Battle" does not glamorize incidents that today would have been instant scandals, like the conduct of individual American soldiers or the failure to block German soldiers from fleeing Sicily. Once the German and Italian troops were routed, Allied soldiers faced another enemy: venereal disease, which raced through Clark's Army. Italian gonorrhea was resistant to sulfa drugs, and soon "whorespitals" sprang up for the infected. To oust soldiers and prostitutes from one rendezvous spot, "an exasperated major" used tear gas.

When German planes bombed Allied ships in the harbor of Bari in December 1943, dozens of Allied personnel died agonizing deaths, some after showing no signs of immediate distress. Soon it was discovered that they had died of mustard-gas poisoning.

"Rumors spread that the Germans had used gas," Atkinson writes. The Army quickly learned the truth: Gas canisters aboard the U.S. ship John Harvey burst when the Luftwaffe scored a direct hit. President Roosevelt and his field commanders were sure the Germans would use gas, which had caused more than 1 million casualties in World War I. To be ready to retaliate in kind, the United States had shipped its own supply of mustard gas to Italy, with tragic consequences. The investigation was suppressed until long after the war.

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 Mediterranean its road seemed especially meandering and desultory," he observes. "Yet sometimes a soldier in a slit trench saw more clearly than the generals on their high perches."

The fight to liberate Italy took 608 days and cost 120,000 American casualties, including 23,501 deaths. About 750,000 Americans took part....

Perry wrote this review for the Los Angeles Times.

 

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