Revisiting Rick Atkinson

Part I: An Army at Dawn

Heavy days of travel may keep me from blogging, but it does help free up time for reading in airports and on planes, as I am just finishing up a book that has been near the top of my queue for awhile – Rick Atkinson’s An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first volume of his World War II Liberation Trilogy,

 Last September, my friend Denise and I saw Atkinson when he was at the Decatur Public Library discussing the second book of the trilogy, The Day of Battle, The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944. For some one as knowledgeable and celebrated as Atkinson (he won the Pulitzer for An Army at Dawn) the author was a humble and gracious man perhaps from the realization that his work as a military historian will always be secondary to those brave men who fought.

 Atkinson’s book reminded me of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative trilogy because his ability to seamlessly mesh the facts (the troop movements, the geography, the generals, the type of armament the armies needed and used) with epic storytelling.  In Army at Dawn, he uses the personalities of the commanders including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General George S. Patton and German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel -- none who were flawless in North Africa – to give the reader “hooks” into the main plot which is a  “coming of age” story about  a fighting force that launched the U.S. as a world power.

 I somewhat pride myself at being better than average military buff, but Atkinson’s detailed book showed me how very little I really knew about Allies efforts in North Africa.  I’ve purchased several copies for friends already.

 

Part II:  Beyond the Call of Duty

 Coincidently, my friend Denise’s father was in the air corps in North Africa in World War II and after Atkinson’s reading we waited in a short line (surprisingly a lightly attended reading…) with a copy of The Day of Battle as a gift for her father Mickey who is now 87 years old. (Mickey had already read An Army at Dawn.) Though he still has a very sharp mind, Denise’s father suffers from excruciating chronic back pain. 

 After listening to the brief stories about our fathers (my father who died in 1985 fought in France) Atkinson signed the book with “Mickey, Thanks for your service -- Rick Atkinson.” Denise sent the book to her father who devoured it in a few days.  For the next week, he talked continuously about the book and the flood of memories that its reading had brought back to him.  In the midst of his endless pain, the book had provided Mickey with some relief and pleasure in the way only a great book can do.