Review of Days of Infamy by Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen
Days of Infamy is the second in a projected series of novels set in a different, far bloodier, far more horrific World War Two written by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen.
The premise of the alternate World War Two was set up in Pearl Harbor, the first novel of the series written by Gingrich and Forstchen. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, who planned the Pearl Harbor operation, decides to personally lead it in the version of World War Two as written by Gingrich and Forstchen. Two results occur from this decision that did not occur in the World War Two our parents and grandparents lived.
First, Admiral Yamamoto, an aggressive, risk taking commander, launches a third strike against Pearl Harbor which was not undertaken in real history. As a result, the fuel depots and dry docks at Pearl Harbor are wrecked, putting the installation out of action for months.
Second, having learned that Admiral Bull Halsey’s carriers are still at sea, untouched by the Pearl Harbor attack, Yamamoto resolves to remain in the area of Hawaii to seek out Halsey and his battle fleet and sink it. Halsey, himself an aggressive, risk taking commander, is eager to join battle and inflict vengeance on the Japanese for their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor was just the opening act. What happens during the next two days is the subject of Days of Infamy. In Days of Infamy Gingrich and Forstchen recount the story of one of the greatest sea battles that never happened. Gingrich and Forstchen have a narrative genius so that the reader of Days of Infamy cannot shake the notion that it really did happen, even if his or her knowledge of history says it did not.
Days of Infamy is also a meditation on one of the essential truths of war. Whatever the issues, whatever the cause, whatever the failure that led up to it, the one thing that is true of every war, especially World War Two, is that young men die decades before their time. There is plenty of such death in Days of Infamy, much of it heartbreaking.
In Days of Infamy young pilots take off from the pitching deck of a carrier with the dawn, knowing that very likely they will not live to see the dusk. Some face that prospect with resolution, some with terror.
Even more horrendous than the terror of battle thousands of feet over the Pacific, taking minutes or even seconds to resolve, is the horror of the aftermath. Days of Infamy tells about burning ships, taking on water, and crews desperately trying to keep them afloat and operational, or at least moving toward some form of refuge. Death by fire or death by water is the fate of too many long after the din of battle stills.
Days of Infamy gives the due to the familiar figures of the history of World War Two, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and of course the antagonists, Halsey and Yamamoto. The great leaders struggle to comprehend the implications of the conflagration that has been ignited in the midst of the Pacific. One of the delights of reading alternate history is that, if it is done right as Gingrich and Forstchen has done it in Days of Infamy, one does not know what will follow. The other World War Two is unknown history, as if the reader were in 1941 hearing of the events of Pearl Harbor and the fighting in the Eastern Pacific for the first time.
That is different from reading a history book or straight history novel. One knows, even while reading the history of the horror of what really happened at Pearl Harbor, that all will end on the deck of the Missouri. “The representatives of the Empire of Japan will now sign.” The instrument of surrender.
No such guarantee here, though the balance of power, as well as the industrial and military strengths of the two antagonists must give a certain result even in the other World War Two as written by Gingrich and Forstchen. One hopes.
In Days of Infamy, Gingrich and Forstchen honor most those young men who fought this imagined opening battle of World War Two. Days of Infamy makes one weep for those who give that last full measure and sigh with relief for those who survive for another day.
In Days of Infamy Gingrich and Forstchen have done it again, as they did with their epic Gettysburg trilogy, and have captured what war is like, in all of its horror and glory, by showing the reader events in another World War Two that never happened, but might have.
Days of Infamy has but one failing, common to any novel that is part of an uncompleted series. The reader is left yearning to know what will happen next in that other World War Two. As in the real World War Two just after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese are sweeping across the South Pacific, gobbling up the old European Colonial Empires. And what will Hitler do, having heard the news of the other Pearl Harbor and the new, global dimensions of a very different World War Two? Days of Infamy barely hints at what lays in the future.
