The Day of Battle

[Kool Kat]

Gents:

For any players who have an interest in both the Sicily and Italy WW2 Campaigns - I highly recommend that you pick-up the following book:

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943 - 1944 by Rick Atkinson

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Majestic... Atkinson's achievement is to marry prodigious research with a superbly organized narrative and then to overlay the whole with writing as powerful and elegant as any great narrative of war." --The Wall Street Journal

In An Army at Dawn--winner of the Pulitzer Prize--Rick Atkinson provided an authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa during World War II. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome.

The decision to invade the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was controversial, but once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, the Rapido River, and Monte Cassino were particularly lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.

Drawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, The Day of Battle is a masterly account of one of history's most compelling military campaigns.

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Atkinson writes in a narrative style using recorded dialogue and drawing heavily from material in soldiers' diaries and letters to home.

Here's what one soldier had to say about why the Allies were fighting:

"We little people must solve these catastrophes by mutual slaughter, and force the world back to reason."

- Captain George H. Revelle, Jr., of the 3rd Infantry Division, in a letter to his wife written while bound for Sicily.


The book has twenty maps, Allied Chain of Command for Sicily and Italy, plus 174 pages of notes. It is Volume Two of the Liberation Trilogy.


The New York Times writes: "A triumph of narrative history, elegantly written, thick with unforgettable description and rooted in the sights and sounds of battle."

I've only just gotten into The Day of Battle, but it is an immersive and fascinating read! I picked up my soft bound copy at Barnes and Noble bookstore for only $20.00. It's also available at amazon.com here.

[Mr Grumpy]

Another great read is "Bitter Victory" by Carlo D'Este who goes into great detail on the Sicily campaign.