Why this book:  I had heard from several sources that Atkinson’s trilogy about the war in Europe was superb.  He won the Pulitzer Prize for History for the first book in the series, about the North Africa campaign.  I had read his superb books The Long Gray Line, and Crusade and so thought I would add his perspective to my reading on D-Day

Summary in 3 sentences:   This book is broken into 4 Parts covering chronologically the allied assault on and retaking of Europe.  I only read Part 1 (thru page 185, of the book’s 641 pages), which covers the D-Day invasion, the consolidation of the beachhead and the move through France to retake Paris.  The 40 page Prologue provides an excellent and entertaining look at the preparations that allied forces took in the UK to conduct the invasion, and provides perspectives on some of the cultural challenges in the building of the alliance.

My Impressions:  The most literary and beautifully written of the 7 books I’ve read on D-day.  His descriptions are sometimes poetic – the images he evokes describing the land, the events, the people and how they behave, fight, live and die.

Atkinson is clearly one of the pre-eminent American historians of our time – not only    because of the research and material he covers, but also because of the beauty of his prose and the very articulate and insightful manner in which he describes the events.  He is not hesitant to share irony and humor in his history, and sometimes I felt like I was chuckling with him as he pointed out some of the absurdities, human foibles and pettiness that are inevitable in such a very human endeavor as war.  All this mixed in with the horror and tragedy, the mistakes, the role of luck and fate, the heroism and examples of humans at their best.

In his prologue of about 40 pages he describes the build up in the UK to the actual landing, highlighting challenges and processes, and giving a warts-and-all look at some of the cultural tensions that grew out of so many American men “over-paid, over-sexed, and over-here” in the UK.  I also heard the GI response to that jibe, that British soldiers were “under-paid, under-sexed, and under Eisenhower.”  The American military had to put statutory obligations in place for many GIs who fathered children out of wedlock during their pre-invasion training and build-up time in the UK.

Part 1 of 4 Parts  begins with the men in the assault boats and continues through the difficult stages of consolidating their gains, putting Germany on the defensive so that they could carry that momentum through to Paris and eventually into Germany.  Parts 2 thru 4 cover the remainder of the retaking of France, the failed Market Garden and Holland initiatives, the Bastogne and Ardennes campaigns and the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, and then on into Germany, and finally victory. This review only covers Part 1.

What struck me most about this book, apart from the joy of reading Atkinson’s prose, was the carnage, death and destruction that were required to simply move 30 miles beyond the Normandy beachhead and develop some momentum over the next 4-6 weeks to be able to retake Paris and then get to the Rhine and Germany.

The allies caught the Germans by surprise in their landing at Normandy, but after the Germans realized that this was THE invasion, they moved resources into that area to do all they could to halt the allies, and push them back into the sea.  They did not count on the overwhelming amount of force and resources that the allies brought into this invasion – and no matter how well the Germans fought, they were not going to stop this juggernaut.  Also absolutely key to our success was unchallenged air superiority, with huge numbers of aircraft and seemingly unlimited supplies of ordnance.

I was also amazed at the amount of fratricide – thousands of our soldiers were killed by mistakes, errors in judgment and planning on the part of their own side.  In one case in Operation Cobra, hundreds of Canadiens were repeatedly bombed by British bombers after pulling yellow smoke to indicate the location of friendly forces.  Except that to the British bombers, yellow smoke marked a desired target.

Of the three books looking at the broader picture of the invasion, this was my favorite, and I intend to read Atkinson’s descriptions in Parts 2-4 of the rest of the story about the Allies and their fight to Berlin and victory.

A few quotes to give you a sense of Atkinson’s almost poetic prose in describing the this multi-faceted and multi-dimensional key event in the history of the 20th century:

“Darkness also cloaked an end-of-days concupiscence, fueled by some 3.5 million soldiers now crammed into a country smaller than Oregon. Hyde and Green Parks at dusk were said by a Canadian soldier to resemble ‘a vast battlefield of sex.’  A chaplain reported that GIs and street walkers often copulated standing up after wrapping themselves in a trench coat, a position known as ‘Marble Arch Style.’….Prostitutes – ‘Piccadilly Commandos’ – sidled up to men in the blackout and felt for their rank insignia on shoulders and sleeves before tendering a price: ten shillings (2 dollars) for enlisted men, a pound for officers.” 2

The British displayed forbearance despite surveys revealing that less than half viewed the Americans faovoabley…”Loud, bombastic, bragging, self-righteous, morals of the barnyard, hypocrites.’…An essay written for the British Army by the anthropologist Margarete Mead sought to explain ‘Why Americans Seem Childish.’ George Orwell groused in a newspaper column that ‘Britain is now Occupied Territory.’ ” 22

Occasional bad behavior reinforced the stereotype of boorish  Yanks.  GIs near Newcastle at the swans at a  grand country estate, Thomas Hardy be damned.  Paratroopers from the101st Airborne used grenades to fish in a  private pond, and bored soldiers sometimes set haystacks ablaze with tracer bullets.  Despite War Department assurances that ‘men wo refrain from sexual acts are frequently stronger, owing to their conservation of energy,’ so many GIs impregnated British women that the US government agreed to give local courts jurisdiction in ‘bastrday proceedings’; child support was fixed at 1 pound per week until the little Anglo-American turned thirteen, and 5 to 20 shillings weekly for teenagers.  Road ssigns cautioned, ‘To all GIs: please drive carefully, that child may be yours.’ ” 22-23

“The conversation took a choleric turn: Churchill, who was said to speak French ‘remarkably well, but understands very little,’ subsequently proposed sending De Gaulle ‘back to agers, in chains if necessary.’  De Gaulle, who at six feet, six inches towered over the prime minister even when they were sitting, pronounced his host a ‘gangster.’ ” 34

“For those who outlived the day, who survived this high thing, this bright honor, this destiny, the memories would remain as shot-torn as the  beach itself.” 66

“Dusk sifted over the Seine valley.  Swallows trawled the river bottoms, and the day’s last light faded from the chalk cliffs above the chateau, where antiaircraft gunners strained for the drone of approaching bombers.  Telephones jangled in the salon war room, and orderlies bustled across the parquet with the latest scraps of news.”  83

“A monstrous full moon rose over the beachhead, where 156,000 Allied soldiers burrowed in as best they could to snatch an hour of sleep.  Rommel was right: the invader’s grip on France was tenuous, ranging from six miles beyond Gold and Juno to barely two thousand yards beyond Omaha. ” 84

“West of Bayeux, the Norman uplands displayed the gnarled visage that had been familiar to Celtic farmers even before the Romans marched across Gaul.”111

“Down metalled roads and farm lanes they pounded, columns of jeeps and tanks and deuce-and-a-half trucks snaking though the shot-threshed fields and the orchards heavy with fruit….When the trucks halted for a moment and GIs tumbled out to urinate in squirming echelons on the road shoulders, civilians rushed up to plead for cigarettes with two fingers pressed to the lips, a gesture described by Forrest Pogue as the French national salute.” 148

” ‘There are apparently two types of successful soldiers,’ Patton had recently written his son. ‘ Those who get on by being unobtrusive and those who get on by being obtrusive.  I and of the latter type.’ ” 149