“The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944. Volume Two of the Liberation Trilogy”, by Rick Atkinson

848 pages, Holt Paperbacks, ISBN-13: 978-0805088618

This is the second 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. Atkinson has a gift for description, evoking a scene, and bringing together details to highlight a situation, writing history the way I would aspire to: so that just about anyone, even with a breadth of previous knowledge of the war or military in general, could pull at least something interesting, and human, out of the narrative. He must have read boxes of letters by individual soldiers, depicting as he does the campaign from the grit, exhaustion, hunger and fear in the trenches to the comforts of Army headquarters and the settings of the great Big Three conferences that debated and then set overall policy. The level of research is as exhaustive as possible and beyond reproach; as a result, even persons knowledgeable about the campaigns and the war in general can learn something new or an interpretation not considered. It was not at all certain the campaign reviewed in this book would occur at all (indeed, many US generals opposed it), and he does not let the generals – all the way up to and including Ike – off easily. Their blundering and slow learning are disheartening to read about, as well as several ghastly operational blunders that led to legendary fratricidal incidents where brave men died needlessly.

What is obvious is that the Allied leadership – Yanks and Brits alike – were a very, very mixed bag; most are regarded by historians as brilliant generals (and there’s no disputing they won the war in the Mediterranean against a fanatically determined enemy) but, damn, at what a price. Especially illuminating are the point-counterpoint disputes, the rivalries and the blunders involving the Allied leadership who ran the war in the Mediterranean theater. Winston Churchill, who pushed for this whole campaign, arguing that after Italy’s official surrender pushing up the peninsula would be relatively easy. Dwight Eisenhower, whose inept strategy for the invasion of Sicily allowed hundreds of thousands of German troops to escape to the mainland and bedevil his soldiers for months to come. Mark Clark, whose paranoia toward the British and desperate need for fame led him to disobey an explicit order and drive his troops to liberate Rome instead of tending to the strategic business of demolishing the German armies in central Italy. George Patton, whose disdain for logistics led his troops to run short of ammunition, his medical corps to lack medicine and bandages, and other vital supplies to languish in North Africa.

As Atkinson notes: “the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again…as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.” Would that more leaders learned these terrible lessons.