Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 136

would be used as political pawns for future concessions
and for the return of repatriated Russian army prisoners
who sought asylum in the West. Capt. Trimble operated
in Soviet-occupied Ukraine under the cover of ferrying
American aircraft back to England. He would spend several harrowing months outwitting Soviet authorities in
returning stranded flight crews, liberated Allied prisoners, and displaced civilians.
Capt. Trimble witnessed the horrors of war and a precursor to the crushing brutality of the Soviet oppression
that was to come in Eastern Europe. The author provides
a riveting account of his father’s greatest accomplishment
in rescuing more than four hundred French female forced
laborers despite the fact that alerted Soviet authorities had
set a trap for Capt. Trimble and the French women.
The strengths of Beyond the Call are Trimble’s extensive search of National Archives files in researching
his father’s story and his candid account of his father’s
difficulty in returning home after the war. Beyond the Call
is a remarkable story of courage in the face of incredible
danger. It is also a testament of a son’s love for his father
and the desire to share his father’s heroic story with others.
Beyond the Call is highly recommend for anyone interested in a true story of courage, heroism, or World War II.
Jesse McIntyre III, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

THE FORECAST FOR D-DAY: And the
Weatherman behind Ike’s Greatest Gamble
John Ross, Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut,
2014, 235 pages

A

uthor John Ross admits in his acknowledgments
that he is not a historian or a meteorologist.
While he may not possess a credential that one
might expect in writing such a book, he readily declares
a fascination for “the intersection of natural history and
human events.” This fascination, coupled with an interest in World War II and an awareness that the invasion
of Western Europe in 1944 had been postponed a day
because of weather, motivated Ross to write about the
forecast and the weatherman who advised Gen. Dwight
D. Eisenhower. That weatherman was Group Capt. James
Martin Stagg from the British Royal Air Force.
The reader learns that Stagg, a geophysicist, was
challenged to assemble one weather forecast from three
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independent weather forecasting sources: the British
Meteorological Office, the United States Strategic Air
Force (USSTAF), and the Royal Naval Meteorological
Service. Additionally, at that time, divergent schools
of meteorological thought influenced forecasting. The
civilian meteorological office depended considerably on
the emerging science of atmospheric physics to prepare
forecasts believed reliable no more than forty-eight
hours in advance. The principal USSTAF meteorologists subscribed to analog forecasting that held accurate
predictions could be articulated weeks ahead. Stagg,
fortunately, subscribed more to the former point-of-view
in the face of tremendous pressure to endorse a favorable
forecast. Impatient commanders were anxious to move
forward with the invasion.
Ross is particularly informative when focused on
Stagg. One learns about the weatherman’s personal and
professional background as well as the stress he was under to deliver appropriate advice. To develop this narrative, Ross relies on several sources, including Stagg’s The
Forecast for Overlord, published in 1971. Ross is careful
to add a cautionary note about the reliability of memoirs
and recollections years after an event occurred.
While Stagg is appropriately featured in Ross’s
account, the reader is introduced to others who helped
shape or influence the forecast. C.K.M. Douglas, Sverre
Petterssen, Irving P. Krick, Donald N. Yates, and Edward
H. “Iceberg” Smith are among those who had roles in
predicting the weather or gathering data to do so. Ross
taps interviews, archives, obituaries, histories, and online
sources, including Wikipedia, to develop the story.
Occasionally, Ross is given to speculation, or the “educated guess.” For example, he ponders and suggests how
different the world might have been if “Ike and his meteorologist, James Martin Stagg, had gotten it wrong.” On a
lesser scale, Ross suggests that Stagg at an early age, “may
well have been fascinated by radio;” while later in life,
he may have shared “in the back of his mind, perhaps,”
Douglas’s doubts about the value of forecasts beyond
three days.
Speculation aside, Ross’s book is informative and
worth the read.