It Started with the NYT's Crossword Puzzle

Early in November, I headed to Providence to see the final water-fire spectacular, this one to honor American veterans.  It was especially moving, more so as a young woman sobbed uncontrollably next to us along the river bank.  The evening was mild and the three of us ate at the wonderful Capitol Grille at a window where we could watch the boats re-stoke the bonfires.

Rising early Saturday morning, as usual, but hours before my college roommate makes her entrance, I asked her husband if he minded if I did his New York Times puzzle.  He is a retired physician and this was only the second time in about 25 years that I visited them in Rhode Island.  And as fate would have it, I finished the puzzle.  Some weeks, I never complete Thursday's as the linked clues get more obscure and usually on Saturday, there are no discernible patterns.  As I had lugged my Chernow's with me, he dashed upstairs and suggested I might want to read two of his favorites, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which he gave me and An Army at Dawn, which he wouldn't part from.

Ordered AAAD and eight pages into the Prologue, it joined the ranks of my all time favorites.  Seems like in school, the teachers had a difficult time completing the full curriculum and I don't remember every getting beyond the TVA.  Recent movies like the Longest Day or Finding Private Benjamin did not tempt  my interest to learn more.  But can Rick Atkinson write.  I used up a full pen of ink underlying.

Not only am I now well informed about the North African campaign (previously at the Bogart/Bacall threshold) but it stilled my stress at work as Atkinson writes at length about the talents of true born leaders and who the rest of us have to learn to live with not only the flaws but the internal sniping.

What hooks me the most is not only Atkinson's comparisons of WWII to the Punic Wars and other ancient Roman history and myths, but that most of the WP officers are equally steeped in the classics, and surprisingly, many of the regular soldiers.  The USofA will never have military personnel as erudite again.

I have since passed the book on to a guy on my team whose last generation put their medals in family chests and never spoke of the war again.  I challenged him to see if he would get to Tunis before I reached Rome, already several pages into Atkinson's volume two, The Day of the Battle.  In this book I was more familiar with the names of the Italian towns if still deficient in the generals and their personal feuds.  I was crushed reading about Monte Cassino and held the illusion as I proceeded that it was still intact and I should go to Italy again, this time further south than Milan.

Already a bit into volume 3, The Guns at Last Night, as Amazon delivered my order out of sequence (maybe that best illustrates military ordinance and supply deliveries).  But also spent some time trying to finish off Chernow's Morgan, still about 200 pages to go, but at least I recognize some of the names and events he writes about.  Wouldn't it be just peachy if the Archives inducted Atkinson this year?