The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea — The Forgotten War of the South Pacific, by James Campbell.  Crown, $25.95 (378p) ISBN 978-0-307-33596-8

Campbell (The Final Frontier) was intrigued with New Guinea from his first visit in 1989, and after finding reminders of World War II everywhere, he set out to tell the story of a battle that had languished in the shadow of Guadalcanal for too long. 

The Japanese invaded New Guinea in July 1942 as part of its strategy of isolating Australia.  General Douglas MacArthur, the Allied commander in southwest Asia, dispatched the Army's 32nd — or Red Arrow — Division to the island to reinforce the Australians already fighting there and to dislodge the Japanese.

A Wisconsin National Guard unit, the 32nd was poorly trained and poorly equipped — especially for the nightmarish conditions they encountered on New Guinea: an "inhospitable ... disease-ridden land" whose tropical climate and forbidding terrain made it the "'ultimate nightmare country.'"  The troops of the 32nd soon found themselves in '"a knife fight out of the Stone Age.'" 

The imperious MacArthur, safely ensconced at Port Moresby on the southern coast, demanded immediate results.  Although he never visited the front and was ignorant of the tactical situation, MacArthur blamed the troops failure to secure the island quickly on caution and "wanted to see more casualties" as "a sign of initiative." 

By the time the campaign ended on January 22, 1943, the 32nd had sustained casualties approaching 90% with illness contributing more than half.  Two-thirds of the Division's troops contracted malaria and most lost more than ¼ of their body weight. 

The Marine victory at Guadalcanal and the Army success on New Guinea combined to secure Australia and the supply lines across the Pacific.  And while the fighting on New Guinea wrapped up 2 ½ weeks before that on Guadalcanal, the spotlight shined on the Marine victory — then and thereafter. 

In this compelling and sprightly-written account — grounded in oral interviews with the dwindling list of survivors, diaries, letters, and official records — Campbell shines a long-overdue light on the equally-deserving heroes of the Red Arrow Division.  
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The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, by Rick Atkinson. Henry Holt, $35 (816p) ISBN 978-0805-06289-2

Atkinson (The Long Gray Line) continues his three-volume Liberation Trilogy (after 2002's An Army at Dawn, which won a Pulitzer Prize) with this masterful account of the battles for Sicily and Italy: "the long middle leg" of the war in the European theater.

Operation Husky, the July 1943 invasion of Sicily, was "a postscript to the African campaign," agreed upon by FDR and Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943.  There was, however, no agreement beyond Sicily, which the Allies secured in a bruising 38-day campaign.  Churchill insisted on invading Italy, but American planners (including Eisenhower and Chief of Staff George Marshall) considered Italy "a diversion" from the more crucial invasion of France. 

Churchill finally prevailed, agreeing to a cross-channel invasion in 1944 in return for American support for an Italian campaign in 1943. 

Instead of withdrawing to northern Italy as the British argued they would, the Germans contested every inch of Italy.  A combination of rugged terrain, bitter weather, and stiff German resistance slowed the Allied advance to a bloody crawl.  And, after D-Day, Italy disappeared from the headlines and became "a bloody backwater."

By the end of the 608-day campaign (which ended on May 2, 1945) concluded, the Allies had suffered 312,000 casualties.  Many at the time questioned whether it had been worth it, and the controversy continues.  Churchill consistently defended the operation, but historian David M. Kennedy speaks for many in calling it "'a needlessly costly sideshow.'"

Atkinson's detailed account is popular history at its very best: authoritative and compelling.  Atkinson sketches revealing portraits of the key figures — from the flamboyant Patton to a shy, 112-pound infantryman who would soon "become the most celebrated soldier in the U.S. Army": Audie Murphy, the son of a Texas sharecropper.  He scrupulously dissects the delicate relations between American and British allies, and he recreates the bitter fighting and terrible suffering in vivid detail. 

"All roads lead to Rome, but all the roads are mined." —British General Harold Alexander

"I'm not nervous sir.  I'm just shaking with patriotism." —Army Ranger PFC to LTC William O. Darby at Anzio

"The Arab soldier is interested in just three things: women, horses, and guns." —French officer to American officer in Italy
"The American soldier is the same, except that he doesn't care anything about horses and guns." —American officer's response

"You do the prayin' and I'll do the fightin'." —Audie Murphy to a chaplain in Italy who wanted to counsel him