“An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943. Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy”, by Rick Atkinson

736 pages, Holt Paperbacks, ISBN-13: 978-0805087246

This is the first volume Rick Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy”, which is essentially the story of the U.S. Army in the African and European Theater from 1942 to 1945. This is a detailed and magisterial account of the battles themselves and of the politics and politicians involved, and for me, at least, this first volume is the most revealing: we’ve all read previous histories of the North African campaign (right?), but often with an unjustified concentration on Patton and Rommel. This volume covers everyone, including some American generals less flamboyant, but also less uncaring of the lives of their men who were equally successful. Rommel’s devolution toward exhaustion and defeat is affecting; the continuing agitation between American and British generals – particularly the interestingly awful Montgomery – is fascinating, as is Eisenhower’s progress from relatively clueless to relatively determined and focused. Another issue that Atkinson focuses on, that I don’t think gets much shrift in other histories, is just how brutal the war in North Africa was; and some military, both officers and enlisted men on both sides, just as cruel and sadistic as military in the war in the Pacific against the Japanese and in subsequent wars.

The battle in North Africa showed the deficiencies of logistics early in the war: the planners estimating ammunition needs based on World War I “discovered that modern divisions, although comprising half the manpower of their Great War counterparts, used more than twice as many shells and bullets” [whoops] “Other deficiencies could hardly be blamed on green soldiers. Virtually no bazookas had been shipped to Tunisia; Patton had plenty in Morocco, a thousand miles from the front”. But as on British soldier said, “’The American Army does not solve its problem’, one general noted, ‘it overwhelms them’”. Damn straight, Brit. Eisenhower had much to learn on how to balance his time between politics and strategy. He also had to learn how to be more ruthless in making sure his orders were followed, in replacing poor performing generals and in ordering men to their deaths. Prior to reading this book my knowledge of the North Africa campaign came from the movies Patton and The Big Red One; but Patton played a smaller role than I had been led to believe (he was replaced by Omar Bradley in the early spring so Patton could concentrate on the Sicily invasion), and the suffering of the common soldier was worse than that shown in the latter movie.

The allies also had much to learn in how to coordinate tanks, armor and infantry and needed to learn to work together. High ranking generals such as Patton, Alexander, and Montgomery could be extremely self-centered and distrustful of their counterparts. This was a great read laying out the problems and successes of this campaign. Atkinson does an excellent job of weaving personal stories with the facts and figures of the events.