Book Recommendation

In February 2007 while we were staying in Florence, Italy, we took a day trip by bus to Siena [ed. note: A traveler's tip: travel by bus to Siena is better than travel by train. Trust me]. From the highway I noticed something that I was unaware of: The Florence American Cemetery and Memorial. I was, frankly embarrassed by not being aware of the cemetery. My sole relative killed in WWII was a great uncle killed on a submarine.

I was also embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about the military campaign to liberate Italy from the Nazis. I knew some basic place names: Anzio, Monte Cassino, San Pietro and Salerno. I knew a few facts such as the Nazis destroying every bridge across the Arno in Florence except for the Ponte Vecchio; that Rome was left an open city when the Nazis fled. I did not know much of the details including the wholesale and horrid destruction of Naples by the Nazis.

There is no better nor readable book on this subject than The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson. The book is not light reading, but it is comprehensive and, indeed, one can marvel at the amount of detail invested in the book: there are some 135 pages of endnotes.

One of its greatest strengths is the ability to draw the reader into the lives of soldiers of all ranks: hundreds of personal narrative from enlisted men, NCO's, lieutenants through the 5th Army commander, General Mark Clark are interwoven with accounts from the enemy and civilians.

While many of the participans are glorified, you cannot read the book without feeling a sense of the appalling waste of war: the wholesale destruction of the countryside, the tens of thousands of lives destroyed, the horrific human suffering both among the civilian population and the military. One need not deny the necessity of driving the Germans out of Italy by being horrified by the events that took place in order to effect the liberation.

There is no greater human failing than war. As Bill Mauldin witnessed General Lucian Truscott on Memorial Day 1945 at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, turn on his back on the living and addressed the dead:

He apologized to the dead men for their presence here. He said everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but every leader knows in his heart that this is not altogether true. He said he hoped that anybody here through any mistake of his would forgive him, but he realized that was asking a hell of a lot under the circumstances . . . .He promised that in the future he ran into anybody, especially old men who thought death in battle was glorious, he would straighten them out.

Amen.

Comments

[Jamie]

I also really enjoyed that book. I thought its portrayalof Patton is interesting and its descriptions of the Itlaian civilians very moving. Another good one is The Coldest Winter, about the Korean war