Tladatsi
June 13th 2008, 11:29 PM
I recently read Rick Atkinson's two books The Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle. He is an amazingly good writer. I don't just mean that he has done terrific research and assembled it into a compelling narrative, which he has. Rather he writes many parts as if it were a novel or even poetry. Here is a brief segment about the very first combat troops leaving the US for the invasion of North Africa.
The dawn was bright and blowing. Angels perched unseen on the shrouds and crosstrees. Young men, gated to survive and become old men dying abed half a century hence, would forever remember this hours, when an army at dawn made for the open sea in a cause none could yet comprehend. Ashore, as the great fleet glided past, dream of them steeped, like men alive, into the rooms where their loved ones lay sleeping.
However what struck me, beyond the scholarship and style, was the incredible waste and tragedy. There were no great, dramatic victories in French North Africa, Tunisia, Sicily, or Italy. The first several battles against Vichy troops were almost like a comic opera, the Americans and British bungling every thing and the French, who had no armor, air power, transport, supplies, or hope of reinforcements insisted on fighting pointless battles and wasting the lives their men for the sake of honor.
Against the Italians and German, there was a long series of just plain ugly, bloody, slaughter-fests. The Americans and British would send wave after wave of troops up some rocky hill to be cut to pieces. When enough Italians were dead the Germans would slip out and dig into another hill a few miles back. The allied troops would storm up the hill and find it abandoned. This would be repeated week after week for years.
No wonder there are so few movies set in these theaters. It is just depressing.
The dawn was bright and blowing. Angels perched unseen on the shrouds and crosstrees. Young men, gated to survive and become old men dying abed half a century hence, would forever remember this hours, when an army at dawn made for the open sea in a cause none could yet comprehend. Ashore, as the great fleet glided past, dream of them steeped, like men alive, into the rooms where their loved ones lay sleeping.
However what struck me, beyond the scholarship and style, was the incredible waste and tragedy. There were no great, dramatic victories in French North Africa, Tunisia, Sicily, or Italy. The first several battles against Vichy troops were almost like a comic opera, the Americans and British bungling every thing and the French, who had no armor, air power, transport, supplies, or hope of reinforcements insisted on fighting pointless battles and wasting the lives their men for the sake of honor.
Against the Italians and German, there was a long series of just plain ugly, bloody, slaughter-fests. The Americans and British would send wave after wave of troops up some rocky hill to be cut to pieces. When enough Italians were dead the Germans would slip out and dig into another hill a few miles back. The allied troops would storm up the hill and find it abandoned. This would be repeated week after week for years.
No wonder there are so few movies set in these theaters. It is just depressing.