When it comes to writing military history, Rick Atkinson's narratives, in my view, are as good as it gets. I have an entire bookcase devoted to books about World War II and I would argue that very few, if any of them, meet the standard set now by Atkinson as far as depth of research, a flair for the truly visual and personal, and where an easy and readable prose-style is of concern. So I would not hesitate to nominate Atkinson as the best living author of books about World War II, if not of history in general. This current effort is the second volume of a proposed three-volume set of works about that devastating war. The first book in the series was "An Army at Dawn" -- a winner of the Pulitzer Prize -- which dealt with the North African campaign. Now, in "The Day of Battle," Atkinson takes on the campaign in Sicily and Italy in 1943 and 1944. And does he ever!
I have a large collection of videos dealing with WWII and, of course, one can get "up front and close" to the action when watching them. The images, combined with the narration and the accompanying music in the background, provide the viewer with a true "you are there" experience. I felt almost the same experience while reading this book. Atkinson's ability to linguistically describe a situation so that the reader feels he or she is right there within the phenomenal frame of a battle is awesome. And I don't use the word "awesome" very often. But in this case it is genuinely applicable. I could actually visualize all the action as it was occurring; such is an excellent writer's ability to translate words into mental pictures.
There is one other thing I found absolutely compelling about this book. Over the past few years, I have been studying (revisiting again for the umpteenth time, but more in-depth) the history of ancient Greece and Rome. Sicily and Italy, of course, played a significant role in the history of that era. One of the things that Atkinson does in "The Day of Battle" is correlate the geography of the exploits during the Sicilian and Italian military campaigns to activities that occurred and places that were important during the period when the Greeks and the Romans were active there.
For instance, in the first chapter in a section titled "Calypso's Island," he relates the following information: "Over the millennia, a great deal had happened on the tiny island [Malta] the Allies now code-named FINANCE. St. Paul had been shipwrecked on the north coast of Malta in A.D. 60 while..."; in the second chapter we read: "Few Sicilian towns claimed greater antiquity than Gela, where the center of the American assault was to fall. Founded on a limestone hillock by Greek colonists from Rhodes and Crete in 688 B.C. ..."; and in the tenth chapter we read: "Not far from here, in 217 B.C., Hannibal had found himself hemmed in by the mountains and Roman troops."
And the above are just three of the numerous references that Atkinson gives us as a classical background to what is going on during the 20th-century conflict. I love it, of course, because it makes the narrative so much more meaningful. One can say, "Well, men were there a couple of thousands years ago, basically doing the same thing and in the same places where the action was occurring in 1943-44." This goes a long way toward placing the whole narrative within a sweeping historical context.
And who can resist being impressed when, on page 573, Atkinson relates to us, when describing the entry into Rome of the American commander, General Mark Clark, that "In classical Rome, a triumphant general returning from his latest conquest made for the Capitoline, ... His face painted with vermilion, his head crowned with laurel ..." and so on; unfortunately this paragraph is too long to be quoted here, but it should be noted that Clark was not the first military commander to enter Rome triumphantly, although in this case with less pizzazz than did the ancient Roman generals.
I really think what separates Atkinson from other military historians I have read is the way in which he puts a "human face" on the whole subject. He provides us with the thoughts and feelings of the individual soldiers on both sides in the heat of the battles. He quotes from letters sent home to loved ones from both the men on the front line as well as from the officers in charge. He informs us intimately of the sufferings endured, the human toll incurred, the grand strategies and tactics planned, the successes achieved and, of course, of the fatuity displayed and the foibles exposed. No battle plan is ever perfectly executed and Atkinson does not shrink from critically evaluating those that took place in Sicily and Italy during World War II.
Now, I do not want to give the impression that "The Day of Battle" ignores the "big" events and personalities of the Italian theater during this conflict and is nothing more than a somewhat "soap-opera" presentation or a "made-for-TV tear-jerker." Atkinson writes serious military history. The Allied and Axis commanders, the presidents and prime ministers, the major military conflicts, the politics involved, and so forth -- all the things that one would expect to be covered in any scholarly work in military history -- are discussed and analyzed. What I am saying is that the author goes beyond the usual, to include the "bricks and mortar" of the wartime experience as well as the grand issues and characters involved. It is truly comprehensive in its scope. It is military history at its best.
Furthermore, the book is more than generous with its aids and references. There are twenty maps, including a two-page spread of the entire Mediterranean and European theaters on the endpapers, two 16-page sections of relevant photographs, 140 pages of reference notes, a selected bibliography that runs to thirty pages, and an extensive topical index to top it all off. What more could a World War II history buff ask for? Well, to be honest, one thing right now. And that is the third volume of Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy" which will cover the final struggle for Western Europe, from the dawn of the Normandy invasion to the final victory in Berlin. I definitely look forward to reading it.
