The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend THE HARROWING STORY OF ONE OF HISTORY'S MOST COMPELLING MILITARY CAMPAIGNSIn An Army at Dawn -- winner of the Pulitzer Prize -- Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943, attack Italy two months later, and then fight their way, mile by bloody mile, north toward Rome.The Italian campaign's… Product details and pricing info |
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98 Customer Reviews Posted
- I think that the World War II American Army has found its Historian
- I found this book to be one of the best telling of the American Army in the ETO. The Author has told the story with some very telling insight (He was with the Army on its march to Bagdad) Using both broad and small strokes, he has told the Story of one of the Army's toughest campaigns The Liberation of Italy & Sicily.
I especially like the "Kitchen Details" for example on how some of the 36th Infantry Division went into Salerno with out having Weapons. Also he does a 1st rate job of telling of some of the key and otherwise interesting characters of this saga. (Ike, Patton, Kesselring, Alexander, Eric Severide, Darby, Ridgeway, Montgomery, Bill Mauldin) also interesting is the Military Politics like when Bradley sacked the Generals of the Big Red One . Or of the infamous slapping of the shell shocked Privates by Patton.
Altogether, This Book is well worth the time and money if this is your interest in history. I can also highly recommended his other book of the trilogy- An Army at Dawn. - 2008-04-06, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Solid but not Definitive History of the Campaign
- Atkinson is a good writer and he tries to accomplish much here in 600 pages. He is trying to describe in good authoritative narrative style the causes, courses and consequences of the Italian campaign. It is a worthy ideal, but, given the nature and scope of the campaign, almost doomed before from the start.
But Atkinson does write well enough and on engendering sheer excitement he passes very admirably.
What this book is about:
This is primarily an American description of the campaign in Italy. He does an great job of rendering the reality of some of these men who are larger than life and (much to Atkinson's credit) all flawed. From the odious Patton to aloof Alexander, British and American, NewZealander, Canadian and French Commanders all come up for their very necessary critical analysis. I liked this very much. Atkinson destroyed a few of my heroes (Terry Alan, General Alexander), chipped a few down a block (Churchill and Eisenhower). And shreds a few all to pieces -- Patton, Dawley. Some are flawed but tragic, Lucas (Anzio beachhead commander) and Walker (Texas Div Commander), and Freyberg, the crusty and incorrigable New Zealand Commander. For better or worse there are almost no military commanders who survive being anything else than tragic -- in that sense they are complete mirrors of this campaign.
Atkinson also describes the folley of waging war without specific objectives. It is clear that at almost any part of the campaign, there were no solid objectives: the first objective was to be Sicily, if that went well, according to the judgement of the theatre commander, they were to have a go at the boot of Italy. Then Salerno and then Anzio and the creep up and battle at the Gustav Line. Plans were haphazard at best. At no point was any commander endeared with forsight,tactical or strategic genius. When resistance was encountered, it was addressed with frontal assault and heavy artillery in much the same way as WWI. And the Allied grunts and many Italians sufferred.
What the book is not about:
Atkinson has an American feel to his writing and is best at home when he describes American unit action (in which he weighs the narrative). It is clear that the British Commonwealth regimental sctructure is not his forte. He refers to British regiments in ways that are not normally used and he he rarely uses the British shorthand terms. While he refers to Americans and there hometowns by state, Brits are just Brits. Indian division officers are quoted -- they are not however Indians, they are British officers attached to the Indian Divisions. How were these divisions structured? What makes the fact a person is attached to the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada is part of a regiment and not a division that defines him? What and how were the Poles integrated into the British Commonwealth Armies? All of this is a rich narrative that most Americans find confusing and have traditionally little understood. It does however go to the heart of the British way of war.
Having said this he almost pulls off a good overview of both sides in a balanced fashion at times. But while there is good description of the American Battle at Triona in Sicily, there is virtually nothing about the British battle at Catania -- which consumed many more troops and casualties. Nothing of the War north of Rome. This is the nub of the matter. In overall terms of troops deployed and casualities taken, the Commonwealth forces contributed more men and took more casualties than their American cousins. This should not detract from this book as a great read. It should encourage American readers to move beyond their often rather narrow interpretation of WWII. I should note in tribute to Atkinson, that he does included a 10 page segment -- and even an map!! -- on the pointless and particularly brutal battle of the Canadians at Ortona.
There are other things that should be included: there is nothing on the use of airpower or history of the Air Forces in this sector (ditto for the Navy). There is also an annoying use of contemporary terms such as "parse" which Atkinson seems to use to mean everything from "to sort" or "arrange" to also mean "separate." Also using the contemporary term "tube" to describe any artillery piece does little for understanding the discrepancy between allied and German artillery power and usage. As mentioned by another review Nebelwerfers were rocket launchers, not mortars.
The book does give and excellent idea of the tragedy of this campaign, the personalities and the parts they played. The tragedy comes from the fact that not only do we know ex post facto that these men will be thrown into many hopeless battles, but that their commanders on the ground at the time also knew. A magnificent book that pleases warts and all... maybe being flawed is an essential element to great narrative.
- 2008-04-02, 6 of 6 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- The Hard Way
- Early in the Allied invasion of Italy, U.S. forces commander Mark Clark cautioned his wife: "You must look upon this Italian campaign as one little part of a world war where perhaps we do something the hard way in order to makes successes in other places either."
Decades later, debate continues. Was the awful toll in life and property that resulted from the invasion an almost-total waste? Or did it begin in earnest the process of ridding the world of Hitlerian terror?
Rick Atkinson comes down on the latter half of the argument, but with reservations. His latest and middle volume in "The Liberation Trilogy", which covers the Allied invasion of Europe, is too full of the facts of the matter. There were atrocities aplenty on both sides, pointlessly bloody attacks, destroyed works of art, and enough light shed on the evil of men to make one sick. "War is corrupting," Atkinson writes, and this was especially true in a country where the toll so often ran so deep.
Atkinson's vision is relentless, which is part of the problem. Reading about children buried alive, men falling out of aircraft, and sudden acts of meaningless cruelty played over again is downright depressing, however on point and accurate. This is why I don't read Martin Gilbert. I think you can't knock Atkinson for making an unpleasant book about such a thing, but unpleasant it is.
Another problem is Atkinson's justly-won Pulitzer Prize for his previous book in this series, "Army At Dawn", seems to have gone to his head. A sometimes pompous style undercuts his better points. He never uses a word like "toughening" when "annealing" can be employed instead, and strives throughout this book to make some parallel to classical fables, which come off stretched. He has a rich vocabulary, and used it in "Army At Dawn", but I missed the almost accidental eloquence with which Atkinson made his points.
I can't fault him on his facts, except for the utterly minor point of a Washington Nationals game being played in 1943. Atkinson may use secondary sources, but he draws a lot of value from them, and produces for the reader a lucid and, at times, intoxicating distillation of many learned, contemporaneous voices, both in academia and on the battlefield. He is a frustrating fencesitter regarding the generalship of many, including Clark, but it beats blowhards like Stephen Ambrose riding their favorite hobby horses every 15 minutes, however entertaining that can sometimes be.
There's nothing so entertaining in "Day Of Battle"; it's a good tough book I doubt I will read before reading "Army At Dawn" a third time. You feel like you know more about combat, though not the way you might want to. One British soldier describes its capricious workings like that of a purblind officer, telling a random group of men. "You and you - dead. The rest of you, on the truck."
So much for glory. In Italy, most of the glory was getting out alive. - 2008-04-01, 4 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Revelations of a 'forgotten' sector of WWII
- I had read Rick Atkinson's book, An Army at Dawn and found myself with renewed interest in studying the history of World War II. Set in the battles between the Allies against the Axis in North Africa, it had won the Pulitzer Prize, and I was eagerly looking forward to the second volume in The Liberation Trilogy.
Now Atkinson turns his skills to the next move in the war. Napoleon had said that Italy was shaped like a boot and to conquer it, you had to treat it like a boot and enter from the top. Unfortunately, the Allies didn't have that option -- France and Germany and the Balkans were in Nazi hands, and there was just one route that British and American forces could take -- first the triangular island of Sicily and then to invade the mainland. On maps it looked easy enough -- all they had to do was bring men, tanks and supplies from Tunisia, move over Sicily, and then head for Rome.
Part One describes what it really took to take Sicily, and the personalities of both the troops, and the generals that led them. Several vibrant generals come through -- especially George Patton, Omar Bradley, Lucian Truscott and Eisenhower. In the second half of the book, when the action shifts to the 'boot' of Italy, a majority of the details shift to other generals, especially the commander of Fifth Army, Mark Clark, and British general Sir Harold Alexander. But most of all what caught my attention was the ordinary soldiers who fought for the Allies, and hailed from ordinary towns in the States, Great Britain and even from France and India, and especially the New Zealanders. There are journal entries, letters and offical reports, all of which give life to what appears to be an ordinary campaign.
But it wasn't. As I read, especially when it came to the assaults on Salerno, Naples, Monte Cassino, and Anzio, I realized what a truly tragic undertaking all of this was. From the never-ending lack of shipping, to bungling in intelligence, lousy air recognance and bombing (with one very notable exception), miscommunication, and the fact that many of these generals that were involved were just plain human and egotists to boot, it helps to understand the immense amount of courage and determination that it took to not just fight but also survive in situations that appeared to be a 'no-win' scenario. What struck me the most was the not just the desperate fight of the Italian people to survive, but that many of them wanted nothing at all to do with their fascist overlords, and the German troops that had moved in after the collapse of Mussolini's government. While they did take opportunities whenever possible to help themselves, many of them fought right along side the Allies, provided transportation in the form of mule trains over mountainous terrains and guides.
But there are some moments of truly black humour that made me both cringe and laugh out loud. Some GI's in Naples paid the local prostitutes with Monopoly money, insisting that it was military 'scrip;' the working girls in return set loose an epidemic of the clap that proved to be resistant to all forms of treatment -- a fair exchange in my opinion. Or the tactics that many of the troops holed up at Anzio waiting for the breakout resorted to relieve boredom -- horseracing, farming, and the camp favourite, cockroach racing.
Sometimes, the story takes on a surrealistic appearance, and Atkinson gets downright poetic when describing the firestorms that occured during bombardments, or the men who fight on despite horrific wounds. It were these that broke my heart to read, as men before heading off into battle write up 'just-in-case' letters to loved ones back home, speaking of the terrible situations that they are facing, but never revealing the details. Instead, the reader discovers that that the reality of warfare is not the santized, bloodless versions that tend to creep over our televisions and movie screens, but a truly awful business that most civilians can not even begin to comprehend.
It's not surprising that as I read this account that I found myself thinking of the never ending situation that the United States finds itself embroiled in today. Nowadays it seems that the politicians are running the wars, and the generals caught in crossfire, and the ordinary soliders and airmen paying the final price along with unnamed, unknown civilians. Atkinson doesn't preach to his readers, he just assembles the stories into sections and uses an immense amount of research to let the reader decide for themselves. Reading of the treatment of Italian civilians by the Germans, and the atrocities committed, it's pretty clear that World War II had to be fought, and that it was run on propoganda as much as on ammunition. How this current conflict sixty years on will be read in a century from now is impossible to predict.
But what I was left with was a sense of the sacrifice paid not just by the troops, but also those who worked and waited back home. I had known very little about how the Allies drove the Germans out of Sicily and Italy, but after reading this I had a great appreciation of what it took. Atkinson's research is very detailed -- there are more than 200 pages of notes, along with an extensive bibliography and index. There are two black and white inserts of photos, and many maps showing not just the movements of armies, but also gives a good idea of scale as well.
For anyone insterested in what happened in Italy, this is bound to become a classic. Second in the proposed trilogy by Atkinson that details the Allies in North Africa and Europe, titled The Liberation Trilogy, this makes for excellent reading by both those familiar and unfamiliar with the topic. While it did get to be rather dry reading in spots, once I started reading about the conflicts to take Monte Cassino and Anzio, I realized that I could not put the book down.
Overall, a five star read. - 2008-03-29, 4 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Excellent Addition to the Historiography of the MTO
- Rick Atkinson's latest book is a sprawling epic that vividly captures the humanity of those who planned, led and executed the invasions of Sicily and Italy during the struggle in the MTO during World War II. Mr. Atkinson's character sketches are priceless and are full of interesting details not seen in other similar works. His grasp of the subject matter is outstanding, and the prose flows from one narrative event to another with compelling ease. Without a doubt, this is one of the best single-volume accounts of the campaign in the Med., and it is a book that belongs on the shelf of every historian--academic or otherwise--who has even a passing interest in the Second World War.
John R. Bruning Jr. - 2008-03-18, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
