We can be happy author Rick Atkinson's book, issued by Henry Holt & Company last year, isn't caught up with the blatant sugar-coating of the post-World War II novels, histories and biographies written for and by generals. When you read self-serving tales from Montgomery, Patton, Bradley, MacArthur and even the relatively-modest Eisenhower, every operation went exactly as planned. By the way they tell it, their personal genius and the valor of their troops overcame the enemy in glorious victories.

Of course, for anyone who wore the British, Canadian or American uniform at the time of the Sicily and Italy operations in 1943-5, whether buck private or general, knows the truth is always somewhere else. In fact, no invasion or battle ever goes as planned, and even the most boastful general, men like Montgomery and Patton, made terrible mistakes that needlessly cost the lives of thousands of their troops. Atkinson gives specific examples of these disasters, some culled from interviews with now-aged soldiers who were there.

Before he wrote "The Day of Battle", Atkinson won a Pulitzer Prize for the first book in what will be a trilogy, "An Army at Dawn", about the 1942-43 North African Campaign. According to his reported plans, the third book will be about the ultimate World War II battle that began with the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944 and ending with the German surrender in May 1945.

To give some schoolbook history, the Allied invasion of Sicily in July, 1943, was called Operation Husky. It was to be the first step in reconquering Italy, France and the Low Countries. As Atkinson points out, the politicians had differing opinions about its necessity.

Churchill, under pressure from the USSR's dictator, Stalin, was determined to introduce it as the so-called Second Front, intended to draw German troops away from their operations against Russia. Roosevelt, whose troops would make up the major force in the invasions of both Sicily and Italy, preferred to begin the liberation of Europe by an invasion on the French coast, starting with a feint landing on the Riviera Coast, and then the major thrust in Normandy.

Churchill's plan prevailed, and to almost everyone's surprise, both Allied and German, Operation Husky was a huge success, with all Germans and Italians captured, killed or off the island within six weeks. To add to the celebration, the Italian government surrendered and put strutting dictator Benito Mussolini in jail. He was freed later

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