A Zinger Wrapped in an Enigma

"Now back to June 6, D-Day in Normandy, France. As the senior Canadian D-Day Veteran, I accompanied the P.M. to an elaborate luncheon put on by French President Hollande for the Allied Heads of State — including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. As the celebrated heads were filing into their special dining room I edged toward the line. I missed Obama by three steps, but caught the incoming president of the Ukraine who was followed by, yes, Mr. Putin. I am in my full RCAF General’s uniform with medals (permission of the Chief of the Defence Staff). Putin stopped, looked at me, stuck out his hand. I took it and while shaking his I shouted one word at him. CANADA! No response and he was gone."

Putting Putin in His Place
(column by Richard Rohmer, Collington Enterprise Bulletin, November 18, 2014)

"After a time the king of France sent Jacques Cartier to explore the new land.  In 1535 he sailed up the St Lawrence River.  He landed where the city of Quebec now stands and found an Iroquois village called Stadacona. The Indians were friendly. They pointed up the river and said 'Canada', a word whose Indian meaning we do not know."

A Picture History of Canada

And that's that

Before we move on from Rommel & Patton, I’ve told Brian and Chris in e-mails what bothered me about the book, so I figure I should just blog about them. First, the haphazard structure of the book

drove me crazy. From the title and premise, what you would expect is a book that interweaves fictionalized accounts of the two title characters against the backdrop of post-D-Day Normandy and speculates on a plan to, without Hitler’s knowledge or consent, attempt to negotiate an armistice to save Germany from total defeat when things looked bleakest on the Third Reich’s Western Front.   

You’d also expect character portraits of the two that created some sense of their personalities. Humanizing them, if you will. How this is accomplished is to plod day-by-day through the story, meaning Rommel’s story takes place in the first half of the book; Patton’s the second. The trouble with this is that Rommel gets gravely injured, but the story (and premise for the book) have to play out. This means for the second half of the book, Feldmarschall Hans von Kluge has to take over as the main German character. It undercuts the whole idea of Rommel being considered a main character – and by extension also undercuts any contrasts/parallels you were drawing to Patton. 

The dialogue also sinks it for me.  Once again, people speak in facts. The British cannot say anything without a “jolly good” or “my dear chap” or “chop, chop” thrown in. I’m aware this might be legitimate idiomatic speech; it just feels strained and forced.

I will say this though – Patton’s Gap was written to assign blame to Montgomery and to portray Patton in an heroic light for the incident of the Falaise Gap; Rohmer has not forgotten this, and here that is taken to the extreme. Rohmer’s prejudices are transparent; Montgomery is portrayed as petty and petulant – and unable to get over the fact he wasn’t getting credit for the Allied offensive. Rohmer can’t resist having him whine about it at every opportunity and to describe him that way: As Monty is speaking, his assistant listens like so: “Corby sat listening intently, fascinated as always by Montgomery’s high-pitched, nasally voice with it’s peculiar lisp.”  In the same paragraph he is described as “the scrawny general”. A bit later – in case you didn’t get the message – Monty goes on a rant about how he’s being slighted: “And who’s getting all the kudos for my planning? Bradley and Eisenhower and now Patton. The great and glorious Georgie, racing across France but only because I made it possible. And what do I get? Nothing but criticism. So here is my chance Freddie, my chance to demonstrate to the world that I brought this off, not the bloody Americans.” All we need is him chortling evilly to complete the scene.

By contrast, Patton can do no wrong. During a conversation when Churchill and Roosevelt are ostensibly talking about a possible armistice offer from Hitler – when the fate of the war is at stake – Roosevelt can’t help but turn into a gushing fanboy. He wants Patton to negotiate with Kluge instead of Montgomery – seemingly because he looks so cool: “When Patton presents himself in front of Kluge for the first time, that poor Prussian bastard will be overwhelmed by what he sees.  Patton will have on his best shiny steel helmet, his battle-dress jacket will be flowing with ribbons, he’ll have on his cavalry jodhpurs, riding boots and spurs, and his riding crop will be tucked under his arm. And on each hip will be a beautiful ivory-handled revolver. And Patton’s tall Winston, he’s tall. Kluge won’t be faced by some little sparrow general in a beret and sweater, no sir. If he was here now, I’d give his knee a manly pat.”  Okay, I added that last line. But they are discussing something of vital importance that could end the war and save countless lives and Roosevelt feels it’s appropriate to describe how Patton looks and take a shot at Montgomery?

Why an Epilogue?… and other questions

"There are several questions raised in the book that should be put to rest", writes Rohmer in his Epilogue.

Questions? This reader didn't have any; this reader just wanted the book to end.

But, but… what happened to Kluge? What happened to Rommel?

Well, they killed themselves, didn't they. You knew that before picking up the book, right? The Kluge and Rommel questions just are filler. The author really wants to pose a question about Patton. No, not what happened to Patton – best not cover that – but whether his hero was a pilot:

To lead you toward the astonishing proposition that General Patton might have been a qualified pilot, I will recount a short anecdote about meeting Old Blood and Guts just before D-Day.

An astonishing proposition? No, not really, but it does give an excuse to reprint the two pages from Patton's Gap in which he describes meeting his hero.

Patton was a pilot? So am I!

This, of course, leads toward the true astonishing proposition that Richard Rohmer might have been the reconnaissance pilot who "found Rommel's staff car on 17 July, called in the fighters that strafed in, and removed Rommel from the Battle of Normandy". Those who miss it this time will find the very same account, using the exact same words, in the second edition of Patton's Gap.

Was it really Rohmer? I like to think so. What irks is that no one – not a single historian, not the three Jabos Rohmer was leading that day – has said as much. The only person who has repeated Rohmer's claim is his friend James Bond The Man Called Intrepid™.

He was in Ontario at the time.

Self-serving? Can we at least agree that this is not, as the publisher claims, a "remarkable non-fiction epilogue"?

A short quiz

So issue # 21 of the Fantastic Four (from December 1963), the villain is called The Hate Monger, an evil genius who develops a hate ray and uses it stir up the masses to bend to his will.  Let's be kind here and say it was unusual for a comic at the time to take on racism;  let's also be honest and admit the last page - when the Hate Monger is unmasked and turns out to be Adolph Hitler - is cringeworthy in the extreme and probably would have been at the time as well.

Rommel and Patton is a novelization of the events surrounding D-Day and fictionalizes the story of the two title subjects, as well as many other historical personages involved in the battle, including Adolph Hitler.  The story is illustrated by photos and maps of real people;  the story told fictionalizes the way Rohmer imagines it may have played out.

But the success or failure of the book will be dealt with later when all of us have actually finished reading it; today I am only here to offer the following quiz:  below are two quote from Adolph Hitler, one written by Stan Lee and the other by Rohmer.  It shouldn't be too hard to figure out which is which.

- " I have already heard six flying bombs take off since we've been here.  Their engines throb, roar, and pulsate with so much power!

- "We must race to the underground command post and prepare for the attack...which is certain to come!"

But still…

Now THIS is Rohmer.

Only fifty pages in and already I have two nominees for the Single Greatest Rohmer Line of All Time:

The Rohmer Military Man, Very Excited About the Meeting He’s Prepared

His telescopic pointer was extended, at the ready.

The Rohmer President, Tough as Balls

“Okay, Gino, it’s sanction time.”

And beaver bashing. And tankers. And a fantastic international plan to buy something, but Rohmer’s not telling you what.  (But come on, it’s an oil company.)  And the purpose of buying this company? To then own it.  It’s so devilishly simple!

And sexy action power salads in the restaurant at the hotel.

This is The Expendables of Rohmer paperbacks.  It has everything.

And best of all, the glorious Rohmer Repeats.

A QUIZ ON RETALIATION PAGE 1 THROUGH PAGE 50

Q: Where did Paul James go when he left the bank? And where is the center of Canada’s oil patch?

Paul James had gone out to the oil patch in Calgary where he had made a fortune.  p. 1

James had left the bank and gone to Calgary, the center of Canada’s oil patch. p. 20

Q: What did Ross Harris do in the war? And when was D-Day?

Captain Harris of the First Canadian Parachute Battalion had parachuted into the beachhead area in France in the early-morning darkness on D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944. p. 20

“I’m an old army parachute battalion man myself—1^st Canadian Parachute Battalion.  We jumped in at the beachhead on D-Day morning.” -- Ross Harris P. 31

Q: What is the SAS? Are its members highly trained?

… the fabled British SAS, the Special Air Service, probably the most highly trained, efficient, antiterrorist military unit in the world.  p. 1

“They’re retired members of a crack antiterrorist British Army organization called the Special Air Service.” p. 31

“Quite, the Special Air Service, Her Majesty’s absolutely top antiterrorist, anti-everything force.  My dear chap, there’s no more highly trained, highly skilled unit in the world.” p. 43

His people were all former SAS colleagues, highly trained… p. 43

Q: What the hell?

“What the hell do you want Arab money for?” p. 22

“But how the hell are you going to bring off this covert business?” p. 23

But how the hell would the senior senator from Florida come up in short order with a researched, intelligent answer to that question? p. 35

“For chrissake, Gino, what the hell do I care what you’re going to do to those dumb Canadians about their goddamn confiscatory National Energy Program…?” p. 37

"What the hell do you mean my that?” p. 41

Q: Tell me something I already know.

And you know, Jim, all of these big takeovers happened because that goddamn government up there has set up a fortress. p. 10

“But, as you know, my people in State and I are sensitive.” p. 33

And the name of that “youthful reconnaissance pilot”?

Richard Rohmer.

I really wanted to like this book. I expected to like this book. So, why didn’t I like this book? Mostly it's because it's not being the book I wanted. My fault entirely. I wanted to read Rohmer’s wartime reminiscences, but instead got something about how “flamboyant” George S. Patton was done wrong by “frail” Bernard L. Montgomery.

I take issue with Rohmer’s contention that the Falaise Gap renders everything achieved on D-Day a dismal failure. Is he right that Montgomery's bruised ego was at fault? Could be. He doesn’t present much of a case because he doesn’t present much. Yeah, I’m going on about the lack of original research again.

Rohmer is pretty quick to dismiss anything that contradicts his argument as the product of a “faultiness of memory”, which is how we get this:

Bradley, in A Soldier’s Story, attempted to recall verbatim conversations and the line of reasoning that led him to the decisions he’d made seven years earlier.

Well, A Soldier’s Story was published in May 1951, not even six years after D-Day. Bradley wrote the memoir with the aid of his World War II files, which are currently held at the Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania… which is a place Rohmer didn’t visit, but should have.

Rohmer’s own memories of the war are heavily reliant on that the Squadron 430 logbook, which in some ways explains the bland, emotionless prose that makes very nearly each and every one of his flights the same as the last. The most memorable is that in which Rohmer writes that he was scared… there's emotion, you see.

What does it say about Patton's Gap that most vivid scene is the one in which Richard Rohmer is slugged by a madam for being an asshole? What does it say about the author that he feels no shame, after all these decades, at having slugged her back?

Q: Shouldn’t the title be Monty’s Gap?

I don’t know, for sure, that the natural gas business is any less boring in reality than it is in a Richard Rohmer paperback.  I don’t know any international gas buccaneers.  The most exciting thing I do with natural gas is turn on the broiler and hope it doesn’t explode.

I’ve met super-nice CIA assassin Robert Baer a couple of times, but the conversation at the table never turned to CIA assassinating, so I don’t know if that’s boring either, like it is when Rohmer writers about it.

Canadian politics? I only know what I don’t read in the paper. But the real politicians must talk more like human beings than Rohmer politicians do.  They’re human beings.  At least in private.

Aerial combat?  I'm the wrong guy to ask.

But if war really was as boring in real life as it is in Patton’s Gap, it would have died out.  

Setting aside Rohmer's style, the core problem with Patton’s Gap is that it seems to believe that it’s blowing our minds about a conundrum that’s been driving us crazy:

Who let more theoretical Germans get out of the Falaise Pocket than might have escaped otherwise? 

I’ve read a certain number of books about World World II – I am a dad, that’s what we do – and this isn’t one of the top 1000 unexplained mysteries.  It’s not exactly “Why Didn’t We See Pearl Harbor Coming” or the Katyn Forest or “What Was Hess Up To?”  It’s revisionist history about an event that was barely visioned in first place.

Which isn’t to say that the Battle of Caen isn’t worth writing about.  The opposite.  It’s history.  It’s fascinating, and inspiring, and horrible. And awesome, in the old-fashioned sense of the word: Inspiring awe.  Nice young men, the sons of farmers and factory workers, who believed in democracy and basic decency, fought horrible monsters, who believed in slavery and thuggery and racism and genocide. 

  

And it’s still morally complicated.  What is war good for?  Let me think… absolutely nothing. The expression “We sure liberated the hell out of this place” was coined in Normandy.  They destroyed Caen while they saved it.  70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied bombs in the course of the war, which is more people than were killed in England by Nazi bombs, and on D-Day the same number of French civilians and Allied soldiers died.

Which doesn’t take away from the sacrifices made – and he heroism exhibited – by the Canadians (for instance) who did it.  They’re braver than me every day.

We should think about Caen.  Every time a politician suggests a problem could be solved with a little bombing.  You know, as long as good people are doing it to bad people.  For instance in Fallujah.

But the mystery of why the Falaise Gap wasn’t closed faster?  I’m sorry, but unless there’s some sort of larger message about management or something – or anything -- who cares?  Whose hash is being settled? Why is this a book?

James Jones’ books are too long.  But here’s Patton’s Gap, in 100 words from James Jones:

“Good old Sir Bernard Law.  He was always great copy for the newsmen.  His men adored him (newsmen said) because he had once whipped Rommel at El Alamein, he was the needed popular British hero, and he could be depended on to grab for more than his fair share of notoriety.  But this time he had really fucked up seriously.

Asking for, and getting, an advance meeting line with Bradley and more territory than he could in fact take and hold…

In spite of the mistakes, the Allies took fifty thousand prisoners and counted ten thousand German dead.”

There.  How hard was that?

Dialogue from the Days of InDesign

Stan: OK – now about Patton's Gap. Why is this book taking so long to read? I have 40 pages left but it might as well be 400. I can't seem to read more than a couple of pages at a time – even if it is enlivened by the occasional Madame that punches him or latrine that goes on fire while he's in it. Is it just me, or is there something about it that causes your mind to wander have a sentence or two?

Chris: It's amazing how hard this book is to pick up. I actively repels reading. Why is his writing so bad? It's so short, and the vocabulary is pretty basic, and the subject is interesting – and goddammit he really was there, at 22, flying a goddamn fighter plane and saving the world. Why is it so impossible to even skim?

Stan: That's my problem exactly – the subject is interesting, timely (I was in the middle of the book on D-Day), his writing is more or less straightforward – but I can't seem to follow it. I mean, I can – it's just that I can't stop thinking of something – anything – else while I'm reading. And I'm reluctant to criticize it because I don't know how. "Gee - this book is boring!" I'd sound like a kid in high school having to say something about a book he was forced to read in class.

Chris: Richard Rohmer is what reading must feel like if you hate reading. Specifically if you're a high school-aged boy. You're pretty sure Pride and Prejudice isn't your thing, but maybe something about submarines... There have been times in the last three weeks when I've been so bored reading Patton's Gap that I've actually put it down to read other books about D-Day. I mean, I've been reading it, and my mind has gone... "Wow, this is tedious and lazy... and what's his beef?... why is he telling me this part... where is this leading... I wonder what's on TV…" and I've actually gone into the next room, looked at the bookshelf, and taken down books about D-Day.