Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

     “GENERAL LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT JR – Quite a talent for fighting” by Glyn Harper (Exisle Publishing, NZ$44.99)

 

Glyn Harper is one of New Zealand’s most skilled historians dealing with war and military matters. He has written 20 books for adults as well as books for children. On this blog you will find reviews of some of his books -  Images of War presented as “New Zealand and the First World War in Photographs”, Dark Journey, presented as  “Passchendaele, the Somme and the New Zealand experience of the Western Front” and The Battle for North Africa  his very even-handed account of the battles of El Alamein. All these are books that show a strong interest in New Zealand’s part in both the First and Second World Wars. But “General Lucian K. Truscott” is something quite different. This is the biography of an American general who might be quite unknown to most New Zealanders. Think of American generals in the Second World War, and most [older] New Zealanders would easily think of Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, perhaps Omar Bradley and perhaps Mark Clark. But Truscott? Who has heard of him? In his acknowledgments, Harper says that his book is one of a series called Great Combat Commanders, created to make known “lesser-known battlefield commanders” and to analyse their military leadership and success on the battle field.  

Glyn Harper takes us through all the development of Truscott’s soldiering. Truscott was a Texan born in 1895. He was unable to go to West Point, but towards the end of the First World War – in which he had not seen any fighting - he became a lieutenant and for a short time he was sent to a station in Hawaii. He learned to play polo. At that time, cavalry was still regarded as necessary for an army. But after the war was over, congress decided to limit the size of the army and bit by bit cavalry became less important. Mechanised weapons – especially tanks –  took over from horses. Truscott married. He and his wife had three children, who later were to see their father as fair but a little authoritarian  - in other words, like most fathers in the 1920s. By the 1920s Truscott had risen to the rank of Captain. In the Depression, in 1932, there was the Bonus Army that took over much of Washington D.C. The army was called to drive the protestors out. Truscott was one of the horsemen who harassed and dispersed the protestors – not one of America’s greatest moments. He did well at Command and General Staff School, became a Major and, from 1936 to 1940, an instructor. By 1940 he was Lieutenant-Colonel and became part of the Armoured Regiment [i.e. what now took the place of horses]. Knowing that war would come to America, Eisenhower organised war games in which Truscott was prominent.

Shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, America declared war against Japan and the Axis. Truscott was made full Colonel and was called to Washington D.C. Surprisingly, General George Marshall sent him to learn how British commandoes used amphibious raids on the coasts of Europe and elsewhere. Officially, Truscott worked with Lord Louis Mountbatten, whom he did not like [so who would?]. He became Brigadier-General and set up the group called the Rangers. Truscott was now transferred to General George Patton. Britain attempted to attack and take the French harbour at Dieppe. The outcome was a disaster and complete failure [leaving many dead Canadians]. Even so, Truscott saw the raid as “an essential though costly lesson in modern warfare”. More correctly Glyn Harper says “It presented incontrovertible proof how difficult amphibious operations were and the Allies were nowhere ready to invade France”.

Operation Torch was America’s invasion of the Western part of Northern Africa, relieving the British and Commonwealth forces who had fought against Rommel in the more Eastern part of Northern Africa. The Americans took over many beaches, took over Vichy possessions, turning them over to non-Vichy French [more or less], and moved on. But taking the beaches meant much loss of life and, as Truscott now knew, they learned that in amphibious raids they were still inexperienced. Truscott was promoted to Major General, Commander of the 3^rd Infantry and now under General Patton. Believing that the infantry marched at too slow a pace, he ordered the infantry to march far more quickly.

Next major event was the invasion of Sicily by American, British, Commonwealth, Polish and other forces in what was called Operation Husk. There was much training, and much information of the topography of Sicily, gained by air-force photos. Patton’s army was to march up the west side of Sicily and capture the city of Palermo, while Montgomery’s armies would march up the east side of Sicily to Messina, the town from which the Allied armies would be able to invade Italy’s mainland.  But, for the sake of his own prestige, Patton made his troops rush, recklessly, from Palermo to Messina, arriving a few moments before Montgomery arrived. As Patton’s subordinate, Truscott could not openly criticise Patton’s behaviour but in private he knew that Patton had behaved badly and unnecessarily put his troops in peril. General Omar Bradley, Patton’s superior, also disapproved of what Patton had done. Bradley said “For the sake of a favourable headline, Patton was placing the lives of many man in jeopardy”. Even so, Truscott still admired Patton. 

 

But Truscott’s greatest difficulty was with another General, Mark Clark. Now on the Italian mainland, Clark suggested that they could out-flank German forces. It took many difficulties to get men and tanks cross the Volturno river, especially because it was winter and Clark insisted on taking one of the many mountains that blocked the way. Then came “Operation Shingle” the Anzio disaster where there was an  amphibious landing but the beachhead went only part of the way intended. For months the Anzio landing was pinned down by German fire and German Panzers. Mark Clark left Truscott to take over the beachhead.  Glyn Harper calls this Truscott’s finest hour. Truscott managed to get an anti-aircraft system, look after the solders and raise their morale and gradually they pushed further and further into the original target. And all the while Truscott was ill and had laryngitis, making his voice croaky.

British and American forces adjusted to “Operation Diadem”, which meant attacking German forces on two sides. But Mark Clark ignored part of the plan and took his troops into Rome partly, like Patton, for his own prestige and showing that he had been the first to “liberate” Rome. Again, though Truscott disapproved of what Clark had done, he still got along with him. By 1944, Operation Overlord was in progress, pushing Germans out of northern France [and Belgium and the Netherlands]. And at the same time, Operation  Dragoon, largely dominated by American forces, was pushing its way through Southern France and much helped by the [anti-Vichy] French army. Truscott and his Division moved up the Rhone Valley.  But he was promoted and sent back to the United States to organise the 15^th Army… after some time he was picked to return to Italy and he commanded the Fifteenth Army facing the last German aggression, holding the Gothic Line in what proved to be in freezing weather. With Mark Clark leading, and with Truscott heading the Fifteenth Army, they pushed the German armies further and further into the northern-most Italian mountains until they surrendered. Six days later, all German forces surrendered. By this stage, at last, Mark Clark admitted that Truscott was a great general, reliable, being able to get on well with the troops and above all understanding what would be the best ways of fighting to the best purpose. Clark described Truscott as having “a thorough knowledge and quick grasp of military problems, particularly in combat and makes sound and rapid decisions…. A quiet but forceful personality, coupled with obvious personal courage and determination, which inspires confidence and loyalty of all personnel associated with him.”

When the war was over, although Patton had done well and made headlines, he became very indiscreet in what he said to the press – especially about the Soviet Union. So Eisenhower told General George Marshall to send Patton back to America… but Patton died in a car crash . Truscott took over the Third Army that Patton had commanded. With this army, Truscott became a sort of military governor in Bavaria and part of Czechoslovakia, sorting out things in post-Nazism. He found that, post war, many of his soldiers became “an undisciplined mob” as they wanted to go home. Truscott also had the task of signing off death warrants for Nazis who had committed atrocities. Sometimes Truscott had misgivings about this, wondering how many Allies also had not played according to the Geneva Convention.

As a matter of course, Truscott had to deal with an army that was still segregated. Only in 1948 did Harry Truman de-segregate the U.S. Forces. In personal matters Truscott had a brief affair with the novelist, playwright and journalist Clare Boothe Luce, unbeknown to his wife in America. Truscott returned to America when the war and his work in Bavaria were over, and for a few years he worked for the C. I. A. Then he retired to Virginia, died in 1965, and was buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington.

How can he be rated as a “great combat commander”? His greatest virtues were keeping a steady head, knowing how far he could push the troops he led without exhausting them, being able to deal with his superiors, and not seeking personal glory – unlike Patton and Clark. As this book says, Truscott had “quite a talent for fighting”. In that respect he was brave;  but, in one oration he gave, he warned soldiers that war was not glory and “he would not speak of the glorious dead because he didn’t see much glory in getting killed in your late teens or early twenties”. A level head indeed.

 

 

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.  

     “FREE FALL” by William Golding (First published in 1959)

William Golding’s first novel Lord of the Flies told us that there is inevitable evil in the human race even if there are some saintly and reasonable people around. His second novel The Inheritors tried to explain how our evil came from our distant ancestors, homo sapiens sapiens. His third novel Pincher Martin in effect has an evil man finally having to admit the evil he has done [wherein the evil man finally faces God… even if the author wasn’t sure whether God existed or not]. But when we come to Free Fall, we have a long confession or self-examination, told throughout in the first person. In many ways this is a very complex novel and one that has baffled many readers. Not only is there much theorising by the narrator Samuel Mountjoy [often called Sammy or Sam], but the novel is not presented in sequence. We go through childhood and early adolescence; then skip to young adulthood; then go through full manhood; then back to young adulthood… and all the while Samuel Mountjoy theorises, justifies himself, and perhaps [but only perhaps] finally understands who or what he has become.

The only way I can navigate through this novel is by looking at it in four blocks.

First – Chapters One, Two and Three, dealing with childhood. Sammy is probably a bastard and it is suggested that his mother is a prostitute. He lives in a slum, not in London but in what is called the “Garden of England” – in other words, a rural area where there are both middle-class people and slum-dwellers. Little Sammy does not fully understand  how adults act and as a very little boy he is influenced by a girl, a little bit older than him, called Evie. She is clever. She spins him stories that he fully believes, even if the reader understands that these are made up. Golding catches exactly the moment when young children make up tales and/or believe them. They both go to an infants’ school, which is presented to us in all its rawness.         A little bit older, Sam goes to a junior  school and makes friends with Johnny Spragg, a bit of a tearabout who is obsessed with aeroplanes and leads young Sam into escapades around the nearby air field, sometimes getting into trouble as when they spy on peoples’ homes. This is open mischief. Quite different is a boy called Philip Arnold who is able to manipulate other boys, getting them into trouble without himself ever being caught. The destructive schoolboys have shades of Lord of the Flies. Philp Arnold, mocking the religion they are taught, gets Sammy to go into the church and piss in the chalice. Sammy is caught in the act. He is dragged off by the verger… and he now has ear-ache, a common affliction in the 1920’s…. He is put in a hospital ward. The deacon forgives him for his misbehaviour. There is at this time much discussion in the Anglican church about high- church and low-church. Sam is more-or-less adopted by the church and given a better home than the one he was born into… but even as a young boy he is very sceptical.

Second -  Chapters Four, Five and Six. Golding skips over Sam’s adolescent years  and goes straight into his young adulthood. Sam, aged 19, is now an art-student in London. He aims to be a painter. He has a deep crush on Beatrice Ifor. In a way he is jealous of Beatrice. She is studying to be a school-teacher, she has polite manners, is somewhat prim, and regularly goes to “chapel” [the condescending term used by Anglicans when referring to non-conforming  protestants]. Sam tries to woo her, but he is inept and they remain “just good friends”. It is the 1930s. Communism is popular with the more naïve young men at that time. Sam signs on. The devious Philip Arnold comes back into his life. Philip is very sceptical of all ideologies and makes Sam a little less interested in the course. Sam is more desperate to make Beatrice his lover – to bed her… But she will not respond to his advances. He seems to love her, but sex is more and more what he wants from her. She fends him off. His frustration grows. Finally she submits on the promise that they will one day marry, and they bed. But soon he thinks that she doesn’t really enjoy sex. Using much self-justification Sam, looking at his painting of Beatrice in the nude, and on his way to becoming a popular painter, he decides he is bored with her… and he takes up with a free-lover Communist nicknamed Taffy, with whom he now sleeps. He moves to a different area and  Beatrice tries desperately to find where he is, with no success. It is now wartime. The bombs are falling on London. Though Sam and Taffy both have adopted the idea of a sort of “free-love”, they marry and Taffy has a baby. In this context, Sam justifies not caring for other people because, after all, the world is a dreadful place anyway.

Third – Chapters Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten. Golding throws us into a completely different environment. In the war, Sam has become an R.A.F. pilot. His plane has crashed. He is in a P.O.W. camp in Germany. Some English prisoners have escaped. The Gestapo suspect that Sam knows how they escaped and Sam is hauled into interrogation. The Gestapo man who asks the questions is Dr. Halde, a sophisticated man, in fact a psychologist. He knows more about Sam than Sam expected. Bit by bit, smoothly, Dr. Halde  attempts to break him down, but Sam insists that he knows nothing about how the prisoners escaped. Finally, to make him confess, Sam is locked into a small concrete room where no light can get in and where there is little space for him to settle…. In the dark, Sam remembers what it was like when he was looked after and more-or-less adopted by the Anglican priest Fr. Watts-Watt. Sam is scared of the dark and matters weren’t helped by the fact that the priest comes close to being a paedophile, though he never literately violates Sam  …In the space of the concrete-made cell in which he physically cannot manoeuvre, and in complete darkness, endless hallucinations, his theories about his body and how he might survive, torture him. He comes to loath himself…. He is let out of the cell, but he now gradually understands himself. He realises that his life has been narcissistic  -  he did not care for others and lacked empathy. He thought about the fragility as well as the purity of Beatrice whom he had tossed away. His friend and former teacher Nick Shales told him that Beatrice had a nervous breakdown after Sam had left her.

Fourth – Chapters Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen. Golding takes us back to Sam’s earlier days.  When he was a teenager at a co-ed school he was taught religious knowledge by a Miss Rowena Pringle. She was harsh, chastising and frequently punished Sam for his lack of studying. By contrast, his science teacher Nick Shales was open-minded and agnostic. This suggests a dichotomy – faith or science… but even though Nick Shales was the better teacher, it was faith that held Sam up when he was imprisoned by the Nazis … he remembers being taught by different teachers, going through puberty being tortured by sex, feeling inadequate, and knowing that he lusted after Beatrice… and later he remembers in full what eventually happened to Beatrice – after Sam had left her, she not only had a  nervous breakdown, but she was permanently confined to a psychiatric ward. Sam had visited her. She could not speak, she urinated in her clothes… and he discovers that another man is now with Taffy… the novel ends with deliberate ambiguity. The commandant of the Nazi prison lets Sam out of the cell and allows him go back to the camp. The commandant says to Sam “The Herr Doctor does not know about peoples.” What does this mean? That Dr. Halde did not know how to deal with people? That the commandant was more humane? That they decided that Sam had nothing to do with the escape of some prisoners?  Who knows? I don’t.

 *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

 

At this point you are shouting at me, because all I have done is to give you a synopsis without helping you to understand what the novel is really about. Bearing in mind that the novel is written in the first person, we have to accept that Sam is often an unreliable narrator – he frequently justifies himself and until the last moment he does not really take responsibility for what he has done in his life. On one level we could say that he was badly brought up, coming from a slum without real parents and moving on to following bad company when he was  youngster. But does this really explain how he became so narcissistic? This is not only a matter of his boasting about having some of his paintings in the Tate. In his quest for sex, he lacks any real empathy and ignores the deep fragility of Beatrice – and his marriage with Taffy is at best shallow  All the while, remember that he is examining himself. Nothing completely damns him. He seems to have some fortitude when he faces his interrogation  In his final thoughts he wavers between the religion of the (very flawed) priest and the (equally flawed) teacher of science… but in the end he needs faith.

What is the Free Fall that names this novel? Possibly it could refer to Sam’s having to fall out of his plane… but more likely Golding is interested the “the Fall” of the Bible, the  original sin. We have free will but we often fail. As in his earlier novels, he insists that we human beings are very flawed.

I am interested in some of the names that Golding gives to his characters. Could the name Samuel Mountjoy suggest somebody who seeks for joy, as in looking only for personal gratification? Could Beatrice be like Dante’s Beatrice, chaste and pious but never fully understood? And for the record, the little story-teller Evie, who leads Sam along when they are tots, has the same name that Golding gives to a character in his later novel The Pyramid – she is a temptress.

 

 

Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.      

                                      WHEN A BRIGHT STAR BURNS OUT                                

Recently my wife and I went to the local cinema and saw Mr Burton, a reasonably good film about the youth of the actor who became known as Richard Burton. Not a great film – it looked like the type of film that would be screened on the B.B.C. for late night cultured viewers - and it was shot in dim, muddy colours. But it was entertaining. It was the story of how the rough Welsh teenager Richard Walter Jenkins, son of an impoverished coal-mining family, was tutored by Philip H. Burton who made him into an actor. Mr. Burton legally adopted young Jenkins, who changed his name to Burton. Philip Burton was a single man, and there have been some whispers about his sexuality; but whatever it was, it had no influence on the young actor who was lifelong lustily heterosexual. The film has some brief moments where young Richard Burton is cuddling and kissing a young Welsh woman – presumably meant to be the Welsh actress Sybil Williams who became the first of Richard Burton’s four wives. And the film ends with the young actor getting a standing ovation for his performance in a Shakespeare play.

I wasn’t too impressed by this film, but it set me thinking about how a bright and charismatic actor like Richard Burton could burn out long before he died. I think about these things because for thirty years I was a film-reviewer when I wasn’t teaching. 

 

In the late 1940’s and up to the late 1950’s, Richard Burton was regarded as the great up-and-coming Shakespearian performer on stage, in the Old Vic, at  Stratford-on-Avon and in New York. He did Hamlet and Othello and Coriolanus and Henry V on stage and was widely seen as rivalling the likes of Laurence Olivier. These performances were not filmed and they were before my time, so I have to take on trust how good he was. He appeared in some films early in his career. [I can recall as a teenager watching on television one Sunday afternoon the first film in which Burton appeared, in a minor role in The Last Days of Dolwyn, made in 1947.] In the late 1950’s he starred in the film version of John  Osborne’s grumpy play Look Back in Anger, one of his best film performances. He gained a big audience in New York in the musical Camelot. He was nominated for the Oscar in 1964 for his role in Becket but didn’t win it. The following year he was nominated for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold – and I am still angry that he didn’t win it, because I think it was the best performance he ever did on screen – though in fairness I should also say that he did very well in the film of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and he still managed to record excellent readings of poetry by Shakespeare, by many other poets, but especially by his fellow Welshman Dylan Thomas, with his rich, rolling voice.

But by the early 1970s, I can remember one of my lecturers referring  to Richard Burton as just “a rich man with a loud voice”. What had happened? Of course he was ageing but, more depressingly, he was allowing himself to appear in films that were pure trash – cheap war films in particular… and if you don’t believe me, look up Where Eagles Dare and, worse, the abominable Raid on Rommel. He would do anything for the money. I remember him having a bit part in an American sit-com. It was cringe-worthy. Part of the trouble was his need for money, not only for his children but also for being sucked into the glam of Hollywood first when starring with Elizabeth Taylor in the overblown extravaganza Cleopatra. They did at least one good film together [Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ] but Hollywood gave him trash and he knew it. He was no more a “prince of players” [in the 1950s he had starred in a film called Prince of Players].  Well before he died in 1984, he was becoming a parody of himself. Richard Burton was not the only actor who allowed himself to star in rubbish (think of Laurence Olivier in The Betsy ; think of pompous old John Gielgud in the witless Arthur). But Burton was wasting his talent long before he could be called old.

…. My wife and I drove back home after seeing the film Mr Burton, and sat down in front of the television, went to Youtube, and watched as many interviews as possible Burton had given in his later years. He was good at telling anecdotes about his deceased parents and his early years in Wales. He was good at reciting some poems. Sometimes he mimicked a few other actors. But it was clear that he was well past his best years and no longer had his original charisma, even though he was not yet all that old . Pity.