Guns at Last Light - a book review

Guns at Last Light is Rick Atkinson's final installment in his "Liberation Trilogy", a history of the US Army in World War II in the European Theater of Operations (North Africa, Italy and France & Germany).

Guns at Last Light is the conclusion to a well-written story of World War II as experienced in 1944-45 by members of the US ground forces in Europe, for a reader who is willing to read through 600+ pages on just that one narrow topic, without analysis, judgment and evaluation. What we learn from Atkinson's book is that the infantry rifleman at the very front edge of battle is often cold, tired and confused, that his officers in the field have lives in America to which they wish to return, often in vain, and that US generals tried their best, but that often was not good enough. We also learn that British General Montgomery and  French General de Gaulle were prima donnas, trying to advance national interests (oh so unlike the US Army), with inflated notions of their competence. Of the decisive Yalta conference in February 1945, we learn of arrangements for transport, liquor, banquets, and the insights of Churchill's personal physician regarding the dying FDR. Of even the results of negotiations we hear but very little. We do get six pages on Task Force Baum, the late March 1945 fiasco wherein General Patton oped to rescue his son-in-law, a POW sixty miles behind the lines. But even with the author's access to the son-in-law's papers, we learn nothing not recorded and released elsewhere.

I note that the back cover has "praise" for the earlier installments of the trilogy (which I read when they came out, in 2002 and 2007). Four of the six blurbs feature the word "narrative." It is a very apt adjective to employ. Narrative is the art of story-telling, the core of entertainment. It creates social identity through its use of description and focus on specific anecdotes over analysis. But I do not, cannot, agree that narrative is history.  History is the study of the past that allows us to understand, it analyzes the why, not simply the who, what and when. Atkinson, in his narrative tale, never scratches at the why, and has not written a history, but merely a story.

I have read, and own, copious amounts of World War 2 and military history, from memoirs and official histories, quasi-fictional retellings, mythological biographies, dry technical manuals, interactive fiction, contemporaneous news stories (did you know the Germans flew the attacking aircraft at Pearl Harbor? So asserts the Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year for 1942). I am glad I finished Atkinson's book, and his trilogy. But I can't recommend it. It is too long and too narrow for the newcomer to WW2, and too anecdotal, too merely assertive for the seasoned reader.