Atkinson’s narrative covers the Allied invasion of northern Africa in late 1942 up through the taking of Tunis the following spring. He tells of an American army largely unfamiliar with war in need of martial maturity. The problems were legion: the peace-time officer corps needed a good shaking out, its foot soldiers did not as yet hate the enemy enough to battle ferociously, the various branches of the service were unable to work in concert, Eisenhower had to learn to change a command on paper into a command in fact, the best American weaponry was unknown on the front lines, and Allied relations were often tenuous.

It was this somewhat miraculously succeeded in invading northwest Africa in November of 1942. The weather and the enemy cooperated spectacularly. The seas were unseasonably calm, the French ambivalent and undermanned, and the Germans absent from the theater during the landing window. Had any of those elements been otherwise, the landing’s success would have been far less likely. The Allied forces were often wildly confused and unprepared.

Things did not get immediately better as they headed east to meet the Germans, especially the formidable Rommel. The German panzer divisions were generally better equipped and much more battle-hardened. German air divisions stationed in Tunis and Italy wreaked havoc as Allied ground and air forces failed to cooperative effectively.

By the end of the eastward march, however, Allied forces had done a lot of growing up. Atkinson argues that the Army in mid-1943 was far better prepared to invade Europe than the one that hit the African shores in late 1942. Strategically, the war in North Africa allowed the Allies to steal the initiative and the recently ambivalent French forces from Hitler. Militarily, unfit officers were replaced. The rank and file learned war and learned to hate Jerry enough to keep fighting at full steam. Eisenhower had begun to grow into his command. The American industrial complex was delivering better materiel—and more of it was being delivered as the Navy learned to counteract the German U-boat threat.