The Ghost Army of World War II

The Ghost Army of World War II sheds light on one of the lesser known divisions - and episodes - of World War II. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, or "Ghost Army" used every form of deception against the German army as Patton and company fought their way from the hedgerows of Normandy and on across the Rhine. The Ghost Army - at 1,100 strong - was often charged with convincing the enemy that anywhere north of 30,000 men were amassing to launch one or another audacious attacks. They did this through the use of multimedia deceptions, using visual, sonic, and radio illusions, the most amusing of which I found to be the inflatable tanks. 

Their work was so secret that other American troops were not privy to it - as evidenced by the quote from one private: "All of a sudden I see four guys, one on each end of a General Sherman tank, picking the thing up. And I practically collapsed, because I thought, 'Gee, I could never pick up a tank.' "  (A couple of unsuspecting Frenchmen were equally perplexed. A farmer had to be restrained from sharing what he witnessed when looking to round up his herd and instead saw his cows pushing an American tank around. Another time, a breach of the security perimeter led to two cyclists being told "The Americans are very strong.")

Generally, The Ghost Army of World War II is a snappy little book, the writing light, the anecdotes frequent, the humor outweighing the grimness of war. The story about measuring signs was my favorite; I'll not spoil it other than to say: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Authors Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles also do a remarkable job of incorporating art and photography into the story they tell. This emphasis is fitting, as many of the men in the 23rd were artists - their numbers included the likes of Bill Blass, Arthur Singer, Art Kane, and Jack Masey - and by incorporating their photographs and their artwork, works made during the war itself....well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

While plenty has been written about espionage in war, from Operation Columba to Operation Mincemeat, The Irregulars to Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, this is the first work I've encountered devoted entirely to the art of wartime deception. (Perhaps that's not surprising: you can spend a day at the International Spy Museum, and while the museum may boast the occasional exhibit that falls under deception, it's all much more James Bond than David Copperfield.) More disappointing, the National World War II museum lacks a permanent exhibit on the Ghost Army; when I checked their website to see how I had possibly missed it, I was instead met with an announcement that, in fact, there's a special, temporary exhibit on the Ghost Army from March 2020 to January 2021. Thanks to covid, I'll have to give it a pass.

 

The Ghost Army isn't a must read in any traditional sense. It's not the story of major battles, overall strategy, soaring rhetoric, or historical antecedents. That is, it's easily overlooked for those who are interested in the war in the broadest sense. Like Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, though, it's one of those books focusing on a smaller episode that collectively lends richness to the our understanding of World War II. That it does so with humor, rather than a body count, is the cherry on top.

Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution

Helen Zia's phenomenal Last Boat Out of Shanghai focuses on the personal stories of four Shanghainese who fled from Mao. Annuo, Benny, Bing, and Ho came from vastly different circumstances - Benny, the scion of a comprador family and WWII collaborator; Ho, the second-son of a land-owning family whose greatest aspiration is an advanced education; Annuo, the disdained daughter of a Nationalist general; and Bing, a spunky orphan who must learn at the knee of Elder Sister how to watch out for herself - and how the game is played.

In the late 40s all were faced with the same decision: stay or go. Their choices would ripple through the years, impacting their lives and the lives of their descendants. All of this Zia presents in eminently readable prose, retelling their lives such that the reader cannot help but root for all of them. More than capturing their personal histories and the logistics of fleeing Mao's army, Zia also draws an astonishing portrait of China through the ages, of the corruption and incompetence of the Nationalist government, of the wavering support of the United States, of Shanghai at a time when it was known as the Paris of the East. (Side note: Shanghai is everything I love about Asia and some of the things I don't. It is glitz, and grit, and glam, high tech as all get out and inefficient as hell. It's futuristic skyscrapers along side alleys that were once opium dens. Laundry hanging from trees next to hotels whose marble lobbies gleam. Enough neon to turn daylight to night, and the mingling scents of incense and cigarette smoke. Food that is to die for and water that will literally kill you. Pollution thick enough to leave a layer on your tongue, but the sunsets sure are gorgeous. Millions and millions of people living and laughing and loving and also shouting, frequently shouting, cheek by jowl. It is awesome in the original sense of the word. My experience in Shanghai is obviously many decades after Benny, Annuo, Bing, and Ho haunted the international concession, but the essence of the city must remain largely unchanged even as the topography dances on, for I recognize in her words this city that is so magical.)

Like The Long Way Home and 97 Orchard, Zia also captures the broader immigrant experience, tinged, of course, with the massive dose of racism that Chinese encountered in the era of McCarthyism and a quote of 105 per year. In doing so, she also brings to life the Embarcadero, Times Square, and points in between (such as Ho's time at Michigan - Go Blue!) circa 1950. Every aspect of this book is top notch, and I cannot recommend it enough.

5 stars.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

If I were to rank Erik Larson's books, which I suppose I am about to do, I would rank them thusly:

1) In the Garden of Beasts
2) The Devil in the White City
3) Isaac's Storm
3) Thunderstruck 
5) Dead Wake
6) The Splendid and the Vile

That's not to say The Splendid and the Vile is a bad book. It's not. The first issue for me, no doubt, is that having recently read Lady Clementine, I had already reached my Churchill quota. Yes, yes, the two books are entirely different, but, and this brings me to my second issue, however great a leader Churchill may have been - and I'm not disputing that he saved the free world in no small part through sheer grit and determination - he was also, excuse me, a bit of an ass. This is a man who gave dictation from his bed or his bath, or wherever else suited him. He once expected Roosevelt to carry on a conversation with him while he (Churchill) was in the nude, as if this were entirely normal. In debt up to his eyeballs, he demanded his private secretary "fix it."

In many ways, both Lady Clementine and The Splendid and the Vile created the impression of Churchill as a caricature. I don't doubt it, but that render the lack of Larson's asides and flippancy more puzzling. (The example that jumps to mind from Dead Wake is Larson's note that a family by the name of Luck booked passage on the doomed liner, which causes Larson to add, "Why in the midst of great events there always seems to be a family so misnamed is one of the imponderables of history.") I couldn't say whether the change owes to Larson's (presumed) respect for Churchill or other factors, but I missed the zest.


While the bite may have been missing a bit, Larson was up-to-snuff in bringing to his work the multiple perspectives readers have come to expect. From Lord Beaverbrook to the teenaged Mary Chruchill to a private secretary by the name of Jock Colville, Larson has incorporated the views of those who surrounded Churchill...and then there's the German high command. Hermann Goring in particular features prominently (and is the subject of more than a few Larson barbs); it is one of his diary entries that, in fact, creates one of the most poignant lines in the entire book: "How beautiful the world can be! ... Human beings are so stupid. Life is so short, and then they go and make it so hard for themselves." Even evil can teach us something. Sweet mercy.

Four stars.

Lady Clemetine

Marie Benedict's Lady Clementine is the recounting of Clementine Churchill's life with Winston from their original meeting in 1908 to their marriage six months later, and then through much of their marriage, into the waning days of World War II, where Lady Clementine leaves off.

What I liked: Benedict does a fine job of highlighting Clementine's complexes and complexities. There's much here for which Clementine could be either condemned or condoned, but the well-roundedness of the character development allows the reader to assume a bit of distance and to observe rather than judge. I was also very much a fan of the style of the book. Lady Clementine covers a period of roughly 40 years, and does so in 300-ish pages. To accomplish this, Benedict's approach was to select episodes from Clementine's life and for the protagonist to narrate those key moments, such that the reader might lose 5 or 10 years at a time, but can still feel the keys bits are all captured. Any other approach would have likely felt tedious and overlong, and would have certainly been less readable.

What I didn't like: I would have liked for the book to continue beyond the war. Winston lived until 1965 and Clementine until 1977; given that the scope of this book was far beyond World War II-era, ending as it did came across as abrupt. That said, this is a minor - and stylistic - quibble in the scheme of things, and I certainly much preferred Lady Clementine to Carnegie's Maid, though the books don't purport to resemble each other, after all Lady Clementine was one of the best known English women of the 20th century, while Clara Kelly was a fictional maid to the Carnegie's. Enough said.

Four stars.

The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel

The Last Collection opens with the receipt of a telegram in 1954 that calls Lily Sutter to return to the Paris she left on the very brink of war. The vast majority of Jeanne Mackin's novels is set on that brink though, in the two years Lily Sutter spends in Paris following the tragic death of her husband. It's Lily's brother, Charlie, who calls her aware from the gray English boarding school where she teaches art classes to posh daughters with significant health challenges...like Marie "Gogo" Schiaparelli, whose childhood bout with polio has marked her gait and her relationship with her famous, fashion-designer mother, Elsa.

It's Charlie, too, who introduces Lily to the aristocratic Madame Bouchard and the world of French fashion, dominated by Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. In Paris, as she becomes a friend and confidante to the two arch-rivals, Lily also re-learns to paint, and to live.

Having previously read both Mademoiselle Chanel (fiction) and Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life (non-fiction), I was familiar with Chanel and her rivalry with Schiaparelli. Mackin imparts more color, and also more of Schiaparelli, who largely emerges as the central character. Although Lily is a young widow and Paris is on the brink of a war that will nearly destroy it, to Mackin's credit, The Last Collection is not overly heavy, and manages to feel even hopeful. Certainly, it's a book to be enjoyed by those who love Paris, and all things Parisian.

Four stars.

Marcel's Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man's Fate

I was drawn to Marcel's Letters for their central feature: letters from a gentleman by the name of Marcel written from Berlin at the height of World War II and mailed to France. An avid reader of WWII histories, and particularly those with a connection to France, I thought this would be right up my alley. I couldn't have been more wrong.

For starters, the letters themselves are a scant handful covering a few months' time. They're interesting, sure, but don't form the bulwark I had expected. More problematic for me was the overbearing presence of author Carolyn Porter, and all her various neuroses. Even having read the book, I cannot understand how or why this woman became obsessed with uncovering the story behind these letters, nor how, even upon ultimately uncovering what happened to Marcel she still could not let go of the questions around how the letters ultimately made their way to her. (Or, more specifically, to a flea market in France where they were purchased by the owners of antiques stores in the U.S., where she ultimately purchased them.) Her (fairly vicious) comments in the afterward in regards to a woman who may or may not have other letters added a level of acidity to otherwise run-of-the-mill annoying.

The full backstory is that Porter purchased the letters because she was drawn to the handwriting and wanted to use it to design a font. Great. The font, which she ultimately named for Marcel, could also be called classical French, so typically traditional was his handwriting. I will grant that no such font existed, and I might have been more interested in the process involved in designing a font, if the process, in this case, were not rife with commentary on everything Porter did not know about World War II and tears, tears, tears. Everything gets to her. The project - not the font, but the search for the man - consumes her life. Her coping skills seem to be minimal.

The unexpected star of the book is Aaron, Porter's husband, who maintains a sense of humor, calm, and equanimity throughout. The glimpses the handful of letters do offer into life in Germany during WWII are interesting, but in hindsight it would have been more enjoyable for me to read only the letters.

Two stars.

Gone to Soldiers

I won't go as far as the LA Times, which declared Marge Piercy's Gone to Soldiers "the most thorough and most captivating, most engrossing novel ever written about World War II," but certainly this epic novel is heroic in scope and well worth the time it takes to read the 750+ pages.

Piercy has created an entire cast of characters - ten separate narrators - and has given each of them a unique voice, compelling story, and impressive cast of supporting characters, in additional to intricately and believably linking together many of their stories, often in ways such that the characters themselves may not even realize they are linked to one another. In other words, like life.

Most, but not all, of the narrators are Jewish, some living comfortably in the U.S. while struggling to come to terms with what is happening to their relatives in Europe, others struggling daily under the heal of the Gestapo, watching in horror as friends, neighbors, family disappear, wondering when they themselves will be rounded up and departed.

From the jungle-covered islands of the Pacific, to the horrors of Auschwitz, to the factories filled with women churning out planes and tanks, and the halls of bureaucracy and secrecy in London and DC, Piercy explores the war from all angles. The final product is a carefully-crafted, thought-provoking work, admirable for what the author has done, as well as what she has written.

Five stars.

Summer at Tiffany

Summer at Tiffany is Marjorie Hart's delightful, fast, fun, nostalgic memoir of the summer of 1945, when she and her best friend, Marty Garrett, traveled to New York City for the summer and became the first women to ever work at Tiffany's. (Yes, as in, little blue box baubles.) Not only did she and Marty make history becoming the first women ever hired at the iconic flagship, but they also had a front row seat the V-E Day and V-J Day celebrations that punctuated the beginning and end of the summer. In between, they flirted with sailors, rubbed elbows with the rich and famous, worried over news from the Pacific, and experienced the joys and perils of life in the big city, a day at the ocean, and so much more.

The idea to spend the summer in New York came from some of Marjorie and Marty's Kappa sisters at the University of Iowa. Convinced it would be easy to find jobs as shop girls in the best department stores, Marjorie and Marty take the train east, only to be turned away from a succession of top stores. Through a combination of grit, pluck, luck, and a fortuitous reference through a previously-unknown family connection, they land jobs as pages where everyone from Judy Garland to the Windsors to the top mafiosos shop.

Remarkable as the stories about Tiffany are, it's the overriding sense of an era, the zeitgesit, that sets this memoir apart. The little details - about fashion, news reports, food, curfews, college songs, and attending church - are in many ways the heart of the book. I tore through this in a couple of nights, and it left me wanting more. It also left me a bit awed by Hart herself, who the internet tells me is 95 and still going strong. She's even on Twitter, which is more than I can say.

Five stars, for the book, and the author.

Lilac Girls

I could not finish Lilac Girls. A little background: the three protagonists are Carolina, an American socialite whiling away the years in a plum positions in the French consulate; Herta, an ambitious doctor with a dark past who accepts a post in Ravensbrück to advance her career; and Kasia, a naïve Polish teenager who joins the Polish resistance for love and for excitement. Their paths begin to intersect when Kasia is arrested and shipped to Ravensbrückalong with a goodly number of those she knows. 

Lilac Girls is beautifully written, the characters well-developed and sympathetic (yes, even Nazi doctor Herta). It’s a visceral, moving story. And therein lay the problem. At the end of the day, I simply didn’t want to read anymore horrors, real or embellished or otherwise. Enough terrible things fill our newspapers and news feeds for me to force myself through a book, thoughtfully written and engaging or no. That’s not a criticism of the author or her work, and I’m certainly not recommending against reading it. But me, today, I need lighter fair, words that feed the spirit rather than ravage it.

Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War

Lynne Olson’s Last Hope Island is a fine, but deeply maddening work. Olson does a formidable job of illustrating the ways in which all roads led to London during World War II. The roads range from governments-in-exile, to the management of war strategy, including intelligence and resistance work, to the importance of foreign troops in the Battle for Britain. Olson mined some terrain that was already familiar to me (such as the sabotage of the heavy water plant in Norway), and quite a bit that was new (the depiction of Dutch Queen Wilhelmina was easily my favorite).

Olson also illustrates the many ways in which the import of Britain was unfortunate because the British seemingly seized every opportunity to be pigheaded, careless, and incompetence, and above all arrogant. I was struck more than once by the ways in which the Great Victoria and her descendants managed to wreak havoc across the world, resulting in the deaths of tens (hundreds, perhaps?) of millions and creating the quagmires from which the world still has not extracted itself. Ghastly, just ghastly, as a Brit might say.

Of course, the British were not the only ones who could be stubborn, shortsighted, and arrogant. FDR could play at the game, too, as Olson showcases most aptly in describing his attitude toward Poland and Czechoslovakia: “…he also felt that the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain had the right to dictate to the less powerful states, not only during the war but afterwards as well.” It's should come as no surprise, then, that Warsaw's final act in the war was tragic, while that of Paris was jubilant.

At regular intervals, I was angry, rather than inspired, which is perhaps Olson’s masterstroke. (Olson, too, can be assumed to harbor a bit of anger; passages such as “the amateurism of SOE was, more often than not, as inept, careless, and downright stupid…” or “cannon fodder for British Intelligence, that’s all we were” are not infrequent.) While some might argue that such a focus detracts from what the British did accomplish, I think it’s worth remembering that the heroics have all been bought and sold by the dozen, but the mistakes and miscalculations are less known, and offer the greater lessons.

Once a Midwife

Once a Midwife is the sequel to Patricia Harman's fantastic The Midwife of Hope River, and on it's own merits, it would be a more-than-fine read. It does pale a bit in comparison to the original work, though. But, first:

Once a Midwife jumps ahead from the early days of the Great Depression to the early days of World War II and finds Patience and Daniel long-married and with a houseful of children, some born to them and some adopted through the hardships of 1930s life in West Virginia. In the run-up to Pearl Harbor, both Patience and Daniel are staunchly isolationist and anti-war, but when Pearl Harbor is attacked and Hitler's madness becomes clearer, a wedge grows between them as Patience tries to reconcile the man she believed Daniel to be with the man he has become.

Ultimately, the relationship between them, and Daniel's continued refusal to register with the selective service, is the main plot. And it's not a bad plot, but it's not what I was expecting, either. I better enjoyed the first book, with its focus on Patience and her work as a midwife and the patients themselves than I did their domestic discord. What's more, in writing the conflict as she did, I felt Harman did a disservice to Patience. Specifically, we see Patience worrying, constantly, over the threat of Daniel going to jail, and what that will mean for her and the children and their little farm.

I don't doubt she would have worried, but give the steely empathy Patience showed repeatedly in the first book, and sporadically throughout this sequel, it would have felt more authentic to me had she reflected more on the parallels of their situation and that of every other family where the husband, son, father, brother was being sent to fight. Patience reflects repeatedly on the difficulties of being apart, but given the broader circumstances of the time, this rang a bit hollow for me.

Sequels are rarely, in my experience, as good as the original (I'm looking at you, This Side of Glory and Heaven and Hell), and this one isn't bad. But if the first book was five stars, this one is three-and-a-half or four.

In This Grave Hour: A Maisie Dobbs Novel

I have been in need of some serious escapism these past few weeks and when I was much younger, Agatha Christie was my go-to for escapism reading. I decided to stick with the same genre this time, and dove into Jacqueline Winspear's In this Grave Hour, the second Maisie Dobbs novel I've read (and liked - really liked!). Although the circumstances are heavy - Maisie hires onto her latest murder case on the very day England declares war on Germany - there's nothing too heavy or heady about this book.

So. The Belgian Embassy hires private investigator Maisie following the death of a Belgian refugee from "the last war," who has lived quietly and worked hard right up until he was robbed and murdered in broad daylight, but with no witnesses. Having no leads and diminishing resources (the toll of the nascent war, already), Scotland Yard has given the case short shrift, but the Embassy wants answers...before there is another murder. (Which, c'mon, this being a murder mystery, you know there's going to be.)

I'm realizing belatedly that, unlike Agatha Christie novels which had virtually no continuation of plot themes from one mystery to the next, Winspear has seemingly constructed a series, and what struck me initially as similarities between elements of the plot in both books is actually a continuation of the story. As I will undoubtedly work my way through more of Maisie, I'll have to remember that for the future!

Four stars.

Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service - The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe

Gordon Corera, a BBC correspondent, happened upon a trove of World War II-era files that detailed a relatively unknown pigeon service that relied on the homing ability of the birds to carry messages from occupied Europe back to Britain. Operation Columba is the result of his find, and subsequent research.

Essentially, the British security (espionage) services, devised a plan to drop pigeons into Europe and then request those who found the birds to complete surveys about the German occupation, clarity of BBC reception, and a host of other factors and then release the pigeons for the return to Britain.If only it were that easy. The bird might not survive the initial drop, or might be turned into the Germans, or might be devoured by the starving populace, or might become a hawk's dinner on the return flight to Britain. And even if it made it, the intelligence might be worthless, or might have fallen out along the way, or, or, or. Yet, one of these messages returned such a trove of intelligence as to be shown to Churchill himself.

I found the most troublesome aspect of the history to be the hope that it inspired in the Belgians, particular those whose christened themselves the Leopold Vindictive, which simply could not be realized. As Corera explains, it wasn't as simple as being able to deliver a pigeon on command (see the reasons above!), but the Belgians could not know that and some risked - and lost - everything in a desperate bid to contact London. Whether the British had considered such possibilities is unknown and unknowable, but I couldn't help but feel that to a certain extent the British were "using" those in occupied Europe, even if their intentions were noble.

Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service is not at all a bad book. It simply suffers from being of the exact same genre as The Winter Fortress and, in comparison, pales a bit. The action wasn't quite as fast, and the intrigue wasn't quite as high.

 Three stars.

The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb

Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress is an in-depth look at the British-Norwegian operations to cripple the Norwegian heavy water plant in the midst of World War II.

First, a little science. Heavy water is one of the necessary ingredients for the production of an atomic bomb. In the early days of World War II, before the Manhattan Project and Little Boy and Fat Man and Hiroshima, scientists were fairly certain of this, but hadn't yet put the pieces together, on either side of the Atlantic. As the war progressed and the Allies became more confident of the nuclear recipe, the necessity of destroying Norway's Vemork plant, the only plant that produced the heavy water the Nazis needed.

Bascomb provides a bit of the science background early and then delves into the top secret operations devised by the British and Norwegians to sabotage the plant. These operations are fascinating the way Operation Mincemeat was fascinating: it's incredible to think that someone came up with such multi-faceted, ingenious, hard plans. And that they worked!

Admittedly, I previously knew next to nothing about Norway's role in World War II, and so this book also served as a bit of a primer for me in that sense. Ultimately, though, one can't help but be struck by the indomitable spirit of those who were determined to resist and the ability of the human body to adapt and survive. (The will to survive: feasting on reindeer parts for months on end while skiing a dozen miles a day charging and recharging massive batteries in the hope of making contact with London with a makeshift radio. In the midst of blizzards dumping four feet of snow and producing ferocious winds capable of sailing you off the roof.)

Five stars.