An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

"Yes, it did, in 2003. I would actually recommend the whole Liberation Trilogy , because they’re all excellent and he means for you to read them together. He describes it as a triptych. Panel one is North Africa, panel two is the war in Italy and Sicily. And then panel three is D-Day and the European war. His point is that you cannot understand the success in Europe unless you watch the countries building their military from North Africa on—particularly the United States, which was totally unprepared to go into World War Two. The book is from an American perspective, he says that very clearly at the beginning. Montgomery plays a large role, as one would expect, but his focus is really on the American commanders. He also makes the point that there are many excellent books on British commanders and the British military written by the British. So, should you want to read more, you’re better off reading those than him scrambling to do the research. So he stays focused. Where it becomes interesting to everyone is it’s World War Two. For Americans—I know this as somebody that taught history for years—we tend to go, ‘There’s North Africa, Rommel, bye!’ and then we move on and focus elsewhere. I’ve always felt bad about that. Then I read this book and I felt really bad about it. “We really live in a golden age of narrative history” In the book he develops two key ideas. One is, how do you take men that were civilians one day and turn them into soldiers the next day? And then, within a very short period of time, into battle hardened veterans? What makes Atkinson so good is he tells two stories at the same time, and shows how they influence one another. There is the story of these men. And you get letters and so forth, he singles out maybe three as the key ones that you keep going back to. And that’s partly so when, inevitably, one of them dies, you’re just sad. But then he also talks about the commanders and that’s the second theme in the book. The commanders have to learn too. What does it take, first of all, to figure out who has the real gift of command, who has the ability to see the big picture? Who is good at the diplomacy that it takes to keep all of these various countries playing happily together, so that we can be allies? And that, of course, was Eisenhower’s claim to fame. He was very good at the other. But what he was really good at was keeping everybody together. That’s one reason he ended up the supreme commander. It was not Montgomery’s greatest strength, by any means. So you watch them over the three books. You watch them grow up. And I must say, it’s a little frightening reading the North Africa book, because they are so bad. They make terrible errors and men die. And I just wonder, how did we win? Italy was worse. I had not realized till I read the Italy book, that they were back to World War One there, with trench warfare. There were all kinds of comparisons, particularly for the men who had served in World War I, who were now commanders. They were literally freaking out because we might as well be in the Somme. North Africa was much more mobile. Yes, but the thing that threw them is that they didn’t know how cold it got. They didn’t bring anything for winter. And because, inevitably, everything was delayed, they landed in winter with summer gear. And not enough of that. They hadn’t learned how to pack transport ships. So everything had just gotten thrown every which way. And then they arrive, and there’s boxes and boxes of socks, and no food. It’s certainly top of the list. Right now, because of where we are, there’s enormous interest in reading about Reconstruction and the Black experience. The American Revolution is tremendously popular. The Civil War probably would be, except in this period, and frankly most people are pretty well informed on the Civil War. Surprisingly, they’re not as informed on the American Revolution, the various theatres of war—rather than just the big battles. We’ve only read one book on Vietnam because I have a number of men who served in Vietnam. They’re in their 70s now, and they still can’t deal with it, it just brings up too many memories. One of the books that really hit home with them was David Halberstam’s book, The Coldest Winter , which is about the war in Korea . They knew very little about that. That was my dad’s war, but I didn’t know that much about it either. That one really got to them. So that worked out quite well."