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Book Review: “The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944”

A big book with a big story, “The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944” is the second volume in Rick Atkinson’s trilogy about the liberation of Western Europe by American and Allied armies in World War II. Atkinson writes about everyday soldiers carrying out flawed battle plans made by leaders who are at loggerheads with one another. Too young to have experienced the war himself, Atkinson wields graphic descriptive power when he re-creates scenes such as the city of Algiers in 1943:

“Soldiers crowded the shade beneath the vendors’ awnings and hugged the lee of the alabaster buildings spilling down to the port,” Atkinson writes. “Sweat darkened their collars and cuffs, particularly those wearing heavy herringbone twill. Some had stripped off their neckties but kept them folded and tucked in their belts for quick retrieval. The commanding general had been spotted along the wharves and every man knew that George S. Patton Jr. would levy a $25 fine on any GI not wearing his helmet or tie.”

In the first book of his trilogy, “An Army at Dawn,” Atkinson wrote of poorly prepared American soldiers fighting in North Africa. He interrupted the project to cover Iraq and write “In the Company of Soldiers,” an embarrassing hagiography of then-Maj. Gen. David Petraeus.

The author returns to where he belongs with “The Day of Battle,” about the American-led invasions of Sicily in July 1943 and Italy two months later.

The campaign started out disastrously. Col. Reuben H. Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment — the “devils in baggy pants” — suffered most of the damage during the first hours in Sicily when panicked Navy gunners shot down 23 C-47 Skytrain transports, killing 220 paratroopers. Atkinson relies on the words of the men who were there to recount later foul-ups, such as the landing at Salerno, Italy, that almost turned disastrous when German forces found a gap in Lt. Gen. Mark Clark’s line and punched the Americans back toward the sea.

When they landed at Anzio, indecisiveness by the Americans’ leaders led to their being pounded by German artillerymen on higher ground. Atkinson describes the nastiness of fighting in the Italian winter with his account of the assault on the Rapido River, Jan. 20-22, 1944. The Germans were ready for the assault in a “bleak, disturbing place” by men in boats crossing dark water against the current. As a member of the British army said, “Nothing went right.”

Atkinson does not overlook the contributions of sailors and airmen. But he reveals too little of the feuding among Allied leaders. Some historians wonder whether the campaigns in North Africa and Italy were necessary, and whether President Franklin D. Roosevelt should have ignored British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and insisted on an early, cross-channel invasion of Western Europe and a drive for Berlin.

Although this thick, pricey book is filled with accounts of actions during which nothing went right, Atkinson’s admiration for the American citizen-soldier — a product of an era before Americans had, or wanted, a warrior ethos — shines through.

Their leaders make mistakes, their weapons don’t work, plans go awry, but the American GI wins anyway. There is no nonsense about a “greatest generation” here, no pretense of a “good war.”

Yet, in the end, the good guys triumph. Atkinson should take no further detours before completing the trilogy with his planned account about the fighting between Normandy and V-E Day.