The Day of Battle

The second book in Rick Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy," following An Army at Dawn, is The Day of Battle, which covers the European theater of World War II from the invasion of Sicily to the liberation of Rome, as the Allied troops moved up the shinbone of Italy, pushing the Germans back as the Italians switched sides.

The Italian campaign doesn't get as much discussion as it probably should, since the Normandy invasion, which happened only days after the rescue of Rome, got all the headlines. But from the landing at Sicily to the end it was almost a year of brutal fighting, massive losses of life, and widespread destruction, which Atkinson captures in vivid detail.

The choice of Sicily, which would be called Operation HUSKY, was not a foregone conclusion. Some in command favored Sardinia, Churchill was obsessed with Greece. The Americans agreed with Napoleon, who said that Italy should only be invaded from the top, like a foot going into the boot. But it was a closely held secret, and Operation Mincemeat, involving a corpse laden with false information, was used as a ruse.

Atkinson follows the allies as they slog across Sicily, with George S. Patton colorfully leading the way, slapping a few soldiers and getting in trouble along the way. After taking Sicily, they land at Salerno, and then make the painful crawl northward, getting bogged down as the Germans held a strong line around Anzio. Squabbles between commanders, notably American general Mark Clark and British general Harold Alexander, exacerbate things. Clark was vainglorious, and forever had to live down a fiasco at the Rapido River, and was keen to be the first riding into Rome.

We also learn about the bombing of the abbey at Monte Cassino, which was founded by St. Benedict himself. There was much dithering about whether to destroy such an important historical building, and reading about this so soon after seeing The Monuments Men was interesting. In the end, though, it was thought that Germans were hiding in it, and it was reduced to splinters.

Atkinson relies on many first-hand accounts, from Audie Murphy to Ernie Pyle to Eric Sevareid to Bill Mauldin to the average G.I. We learn about soldiers from various nations who did their part, such as Canada, New Zealand, India, and the Berbers from North Africa, who were particularly fierce fighters, and well appreciated until they started raping women. Also, "It was said that in Sicily they took not only enemy ears as trophies but entire heads."

The book is not stilted academic prose, as Atkinson writes in narrative style, accounting for the weather and flora. At times his prose gets a little too purple, using Crayola as a thesaurus: "The dappled sea stretched to the shore in patches of turquoise and indigo. Beyond the golden ribbon of sand, the Sele plain spread in a silver-green haze. But there the arcadian vision abruptly ended in banks of gray and black smoke, and a pale penumbra of fire hinted at violent struggle and death ashore."

Better is "Toward Naples they pounded, long columns of jeeps and truck and armored cars with German coal-scuttle helmets wired to the radiators as hood ornaments. British military policemen in red caps and white canvas gloves waved them north beneath the rocky loom of Vesuvius, through Nocera and Angri and Torre del Greco. Jubilant crowds strewed flowers beneath their wheels, and priests in threadbare cassocks crooked their fingers in benediction."