Deja Fu

Author: Rick Atkinson
Pages: 768
Year Published: 2002

Long before the now-celebrated D-Day invasion of Europe, the United States and Great Britain conducted their first combined amphibious invasion of the more remote and distant shores of North Africa in Operation Torch. It was the first actions of the nascent United States Army, recently built up over the previous year after the United States had formally entered World War II. Unlike the later operations of the war, it was to serve as a showcase for the enormous gap between planning for war and experience in warfare.

This is the stage set for Rick Atkinson’s An Army at Dawn. Spanning the time period from November 1942, when Operation Torch commenced, to May, 1943 when the Axis retreated to Sicily, Atkinson, a former, multiple Pulitzer-prize winning reporter, tells the story of an army that had yet to learn how to fight the Germans and Italians. Initially bloodied by the Vichy French, who resisted for three days before finally joining the Allies after the Germans occupied southern France, the army is sluggish to move onward to capture Tunisia. The result is a campaign that was to last for six months when originally thought to last no longer than a few weeks.

However, the book doesn’t harp on the insufficiencies of the Allies for no reason. Atkinson’s larger premise for what he calls the “Liberation Trilogy” is that in order to fully understand the more famous campaign in northwest Europe, one must understand the lowly beginnings of the American Army in North Africa. This makes a lot of sense. Our army did not spring forth whole, like Athena from the head of Zeus. We didn’t even really have an army before we declared war in 1941. Even after a year, we had not yet tested ourselves against the Germans and had only fought a few battles against the Japanese. We were, in a word, green.

However, the progress of the Allies is remarkable. After suffering defeats at Kasserine Pass, a curious thing begins to happen. Natural leaders begin to emerge; soldiers learn to fight rather than flee; they begin to care more about letting others down than saving their own lives. In short, we witness the beginnings of the fighting army into which they will eventually evolve.

Atkinson is a fine writer who not only gives us the “thousand foot view” of general strategy, but also individual soldier’s accounts, which serve to anchor all these facts and numbers into reality. Reminding us that these were real people, yanked from their civilian lives, and pressed into service to fight for their country. Their sacrifice is always honored, even when their naivety and errors are laid bare.

I thoroughly enjoyed An Army at Dawn, even though the sheer length of the book put a crimp in my “52 in 52″ reading schedule. I highly recommend it and look forward to reading the second volume of the “Liberation Trilogy:” The Day of Battle.

Other participants in the “52 in 52″ meme who reviewed books recently include:

• Jeremy reviews John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War.
• Jamie reviews The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.
• Heliologue reviews Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason.

-K