Volume 55, Number 5 · April 3, 2008
Up Against 'the Finest Soldiers in the World'
By Max Hastings
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944
by Rick Atkinson
Henry Holt, 791 pp., $35.00
After World War II, when American and British veterans were quizzed about which theaters offered the most unpleasant experiences of combat, the Pacific and Burma were agreed to be the worst, but Italy ran them close. Far from being a land of sun, wine, and cheery peasants singing arias at their plows, it proved a hellish battlefield where for two years men strove against mud, mountains, malaria, and a boundlessly ingenious enemy.
Review, 3967 words
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