A Single Combat Fame Speaks Clear

I surprised myself to have written two book reviews in as many months.

The review is titled: "A Single Combat Fame Speaks Clear"
My nom de plume is: Gussie Fink-Nottle.

You may also read the review on the Amazon link:

A Single Combat Fame Speaks Clear
If you like, you may comment here on this blog or at the Amazon site.

“Dim is the rumour of a common fight,
When host meets host, and many names are sunk;
But of a single combat Fame speaks clear.”

— Matthew Arnold "Sohrab and Rustum" (1853)

The ski resort town Cortina d'Ampezzo is nestled in the Ampezzo valley of northeastern Italy, bordering Austria. The region's scenic Dolomite alps and valley have played host to a number of motion pictures. Classic adventure films such as The Pink Panther (1963), For Your Eyes Only (1981), and the Cliffhanger (1993) were filmed in the area. Cortina was also the site for the 1956 Winter Olympics.

During World War II, Cortina was a vital German army headquarter in northern Italy. It served as the communications and transportation synapse between Italy and Germany. To the west of this alpine village, the Brenner Pass had been the principal artery linking Italy and Austria during the conflict. Even to this day, it is still the lowest and easiest of the alpine routes to travel between the two countries. Its strategic importance dates back to the Roman empire.

One month before the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, the objective of The Brenner Assignment was for small teams of OSS (Office of Strategic Services) operatives, with the aid of local partisans, to disrupt and destroy the road network in the Cortina area feeding into the Brenner Pass. The principals of this true story centered about the Captains Stephen Hall and Howard Chappell.

Hall parachuted into northern Italy in August 1943, a month after the invasion of Sicily. Chappell's charge was to linked up with Hall and provided the latter with a radio operator. Chappell arrived at the Dolomites, the day after Christmas in 1943. By then, it had been three months since the Allied had successfully invaded and secured southern Italy. Consequently, the Allied and Italy declared armistice on 8 September, 1943. With Italy out of the war, the Germans fought on but slowly retreated northward to the Brenner Pass. And the SS were closing in on Hall and Chappell.

Yet, the fate of war barred the meeting of these two brothers-in-arms. Each relied on their skills and endurance to complete the objective charged. An excerpt from the book illustrates what these OSS operatives endured while fighting behind enemy line. In this narrative, the determination of an already ill and frostbitten Captain Hall heads toward the Cortina railroad station:

"An hour after dawn on January 26, Hall pushed off from his safe house in the tiny Dolomite town of Andrich...Hall's journey took him through seventeen miles of some of the most formidable terrain on earth. The miles are not a true measure of the journey, which only takes more than half an hour by car. On skis, the trip moves over mountains, down gullies, and into canyons. Hall's journey would take at least two days."

It's been said the world knows nothing of its greatest men. Books like The Brenner Assignment are answering such challenge and disproving its proposition. Wartime heroic exploits of men like Hall and Chappell are being revealed. There are those like Sartre, however, in their own state of existential existence, reason that wartime heroism is "a false experience". A Kant philodoxer, Sartre is in this instance. Heroism feels and never reasons, says Emerson, and therefore is always right. He further makes the point the things the hero does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers or divines.

Odd and quaint as it may seem, there is an old legal document which brings to bear on the illustrious character and splendid achievements of Captains Hall and Chappell:

"The difference between the difficult and the impossible is as follows: the difficult is troublesome to procure, but though troublesome it is still procured; whereas the impossible is a thing which it is impossible for a person to procure, because it is not natural for anybody to get it at all."
-- Ancient Laws of Ireland: Uraicect becc and Certain Other Selected Law Tract, Vol.5, 1901, page 223.

When viewed in totality of the separately pledged labor of Hall and Chappell, they had, indeed, procured the difficult and the impossible in the Brenner assignment.

With diagrams and pictures, this is an easy and captivating book to read. Notwithstanding, the author should have included a discussion on the Allied invasion of Italy in the prologue. The Baby Boomers and the generations which follow could stand to learn more about World War II. In addition, a brief mentioned of dates and events of the invasion for each chapter heading would have helped. Having this information, the reader would have a better grasp of the dates mentioned the Hall and Chappell narratives, relative to the overall chronology of the invasion.