What it was really like
M. R. D. Foot
WITNESS TO WAR by Richard J. Aldrich Doubleday, 08.99, pp. 718, ISBN 0385606788 (t) £16.99 (plus 12.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 FORGOTTEN VOICES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Max Arthur awry, 09.99. pp. 486, ISBN 0091897343 it £17.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 THE VOICE OF WAR edited by James Owen and Guy Walters Penguin/Viking, £20, pp. 628, ISBN 0670914231 () 118 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 Three long books — they total nearly 1,900 pages — appear at once on the same subject. One is edited by a professor, the others by journalistauthors. They all recount the world wars of 1939-45 in words written down at the time, or soon thereafter, by those who took part in them, or else recollected in some degree of tranquillity onto tape. Aldrich relies mainly on diaries, Owen and Walters on letters, Arthur on tape recordings. All three hooks breathe a sense of immediacy, of being there on the spot; and the spot is, only too often, a place of horror. Smells do not come across well on paper, but the noise is here, often appalling; so are some of the horrific sights and sensations. What does it feel like to be raped? When you are flying a Hurricane in combat and your cockpit fills with flame, what do you do? Read these books and find out. They cover most aspects of war, by land, by sea and in the air. Aldrich also takes in the once deadly secret work of the Special Operations Executive, and collects notes by Noel Coward and an MI6 interrogator.
To keep a diary at all was, for a fighting man, against orders; luckily for history, a great many fighting men disobeyed orders and did keep diaries, headed by the chief of the imperial general staff, who died Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke. Aldrich makes effective use of his diary, recently published in full. He has numerous passages on battle and several accounts of capture: a resourceful prisoner of war could manage to keep a diary if he could get hold of writing materials and had the luck not to have it found in a search. He is also good at juxtaposing British or American with German or Italian accounts, and makes plenty of use of civilian as well as service material. Like the others, his entries follow strictly in order of time.
When it comes to 6 June 1944, he has David Bruce (head of the American Office of Strategic Services in London) being taken across Utah beach by his boss General Donovan, in absurd circumstances: they get out in front of the leading infantry. Neither has brought a suicide pill. Donovan explains that, as the senior officer, he will shoot Bruce before himself if they are about to be captured. Aldrich follows on at once with Anne Frank, the Jewish schoolgirl in hiding in Amsterdam, who hears of the landings on the family's secret wireless set and conceives the approaching end of Nazi dominion. Donovan and Bruce survived — the latter became US ambassador in London; she was betrayed by a neighbour, and died of typhus in Belsen. Max Arthur deals with the opposite flank on Normandy D-day, with several accounts from the gliderborne soldiers who captured Pegasus Bridge over the Caen-Ouistreham canal. He also quotes Yvonne Cormeau's Resistance friends, deep in Gascony, getting their arms out that night from the beehives in which they had been hidden.
The concentration camps and the Gestapo resound through Aldrich's and through Owen and Walters's books, and Arthur has some ghastly pages on Belsen as well.
Owen and Walters pick on some of the crucial instants of war. For example, they quote a biplane Swordfish pilot who torpedoed Bismarck, as well as two German sailors who survived her sinking; they quote a leading pilot who took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, as well as two Americans who endured it below; they quote Gibson's account of the dambuster raid in which he earned his Victoria Cross. Aldrich has glimpses of the highest command on both sides, and a keen eye for the unexpected detail, such as Hankey and Cadogan complaining of Churchill's methods of dictatorshp by monologue, or Morrell on how to alleviate the Fiihrer's nervous indigestion. He is also right there in the wrecks of bombed houses, or in the midst of convoys under submarine attack, or with a land girl learning to drive a tractor. There is some pathos, much bravery, no false sentimentality.
Arthur's book, a sequel to his popular Forgotten Voices of the Great War, is more concentrated than the others on British Commonwealth accounts, because it is drawn from the vast sound archive at the Imperial War Museum. He shares Owen and Walters's nose for the telling story; all three books are thoroughly readable by anyone who wants to know what it felt like to be engaged in a world war. Only the tedium is missing. Of the four editors, Aldrich emerges on top; he understands better than the others the general shape of the war. From his chair at Nottingham he has already established himself as a leading figure in the world of intelligence studies; here he shows himself a firstrate military historian as well. He introduces each month with a judicious summary of its main events. Moreover he has collected outstanding illustrations, a few familiar, most startlingly new.
Ile does not attempt to cover the war in the Far East; the other two books do, often with telling effect. Owen and Walters cross-cut battlepieces from the Japanese-held islands with 'Mad Mike' Calvert's account of how he met a Japanese officer by accident — both were unarmed and naked, they were bathing — and had to kill him with his own hands. All three books have accounts of land battle at its grimmest; all express those feelings of comradeship that keep fighting men still fighting, however grim their surroundings. That war is horrible, no sensible reader can doubt; that this war was worth fighting, to get rid of barbaric regimes, comes across as well.
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