Book Review: THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT, Rick Atkinson

       The third volume of Rick Atkinson's trilogy is a remarkable achievement.   Gathering facts concerning oft told stories and putting them all together in a readable narrative underscores the scholarship and effort of an author with years of experience.  The author brings his writing ability, honed in earlier historical efforts with  Crusade, The Long Grey Line, and The Company of Soldiers, to the final volume of over 600 pages.   This is the story of the war in Western Europe following the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.
       His research, which began in 1999, includes considerable foreign sources: British, French, German, Polish, Italian, and Russian.  As an experienced editor at The Washington Post, and a staff writer there, he brings that background to his research efforts.   Based in Washington, DC, he made good use of the National Archives, Military Historical data centers, and university sites of various individuals' collections of personal papers.
       Like his 2 earlier volumes which cover the first American interventions in North Africa and Italy, Atkinson, weaves a story of personal recollections from multiple participants on both sides: aggressors and defenders.   In many instances, he includes the work of reporters embedded with the troops and with the general staffs of the commanders.  Overlaid are the various interactions of political leaders, namely Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler, and for a time, DeGaulle.   He dissects the conferences that decided long range strategic positions and postwar dispositions.  His insights tell of disagreements among planners, Generals, and  troops in the field upon whose shoulders fell the responsibility of execution of those decisions in frontal assaults.
       From the beaches of Normandy, to the Rhine River, across the plains of western Europe the story unfolds as the legions of Nazis reel under the onslaught of Allied power defined by the unified command under Gen. Eisenhower.   His trials and tribulations dealing with British General Montgomery, Gen. George Patton, and French Gen. DeGaulle underscore the difficulties keeping the many national interests at bay as the Allies struggle in their crusade to eliminate fascism from the world.
       He uses numbers and statistics to emphasize the magnitude of the effort, not the least the horrific number of casualties, both civilian and military.   He also includes personal letters, those individual documents, so revealing of sentiments felt by lowly privates and lieutenants, struggling with the relentless challenges of continuous close combat.   Many of those letters included were the last written before the writers were killed in action.   One scene in particular stands out among the many:
after the surrender and the cessation of hostilities, the immediate post conflict duties included the return of the dead.   One family from southwest Missouri, the Wright family, had to deal with a particularly grim event:  the return of the bodies of 3 brothers- Sgt. Frank H. Wright, killed on Christmas Eve 1944 in the Bulge; Pvt. Harold B. Wright, who died of wounds in a German prison camp on Feb. 3, 1945; and finally, Pvt. Elton E. Wright, killed in Germany on April 25, two weeks before the war ended.   The widowed father, head bowed, followed the caskets to the cemetery where they were buried side by side, on a grey Midwest morning.
         After walking across the Normandy beaches this past October, visiting the American cemeteries in the vicinity, and driving across the entire French countryside, west to east, the  distances became more understood, the effort required more appreciated, the magnitude better perceived.
      As history, it is a fine story.   Atkinson appreciates the long term effects: centuries will pass before the war recedes in collective memories.   The last veterans are projected to pass on in 2056.   Until then, the story will remain alive.
       One can visit the Liberation Trilogy website at www.liberationtrilogy.com .  On this dynamic multimedia site are an interactive time line of the war in Europe; the maps from all three volumes; historical videos, photographs,and documents; information about resources regarding World war II; and interviews with the author.
Rated:***** 5 stars