Alphabet File page 8
These days, they say Ambrose has assumed an air of military might since his new book, “D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II,” hit the stores.
But Ambrose is wise to the limits of such affectation.
“When I go to Normandy, I’ll swim in the surf, charge the beach, climb the cliffs,” he said. “But I don’t pretend that I was there on D-Day.”
Ambrose, director of The Eisenhower Center for Leadership Studies and head of the National D-Day Museum project at UNO, WILL BE AMONG THE NOTABLES AT Normandy for ceremonies honoring the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. His commentary will be herd of NBC’S “Today Show” Monday morning.
Ambrose is at the pinnacle of a distinguished career, marked by biographies of presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, the bestselling “Rise to Globalism,” and works of military history such as “Pegasus Bridge” and “Band of Brothers.”
Recent events have served to bring him to the nation’s forefront as a commentator on such historical moments as the deaths and funerals of Nixon for ABC and Jacqueling Kennedy Onassis for NBC. The bestselling diaries of H.R. Haldeman feature a foreword and afterword by Ambrose.
Meanwhile, Ambrose’s book about D-Day is being touted as the definitive account. Reviews-including a cover story on the New York Times Book review-have ranged from wildly enthusiastic to deeply respectful. On June 12, the book will debut at No. 9 on the New York times bestseller list.
He obviously is enjoying his role as D-Day official historian.
“I think that on June 6th, people will be deeply involved,” Ambrose said. “I’ve been interviewed by everyone, even Russians and Japanese. The whole goddamn world will be there on Monday.”
Last week, Ambrose and fellow historians Paul Fussell and John Keegan were summoned to the White House to give President Clinton a private tutorial about D-Day in preparation for Clinton’s trip to Europe and a commemorative address Monday morning.
“I talked for 15 minutes and I looked right into his eyes and his eyes never left mine,” Ambrose said. “he wanted to know how did they keep it secret? How did they get that alliance to work? How did they get that deception to work? He kept flipping back and forth to pages he had marked in my book…It was any writer’s dream.
“It was all in the nature of advice,” Ambrose said. “I told him he should stress the themes of teamwork and democracy and what the individual can accomplish. The evening ended most graciously with him saying, “if I do a good job of representing our country, it will be thanks to you gentlemen, and if I screw up, it will be all my fault.”
The nation’s fascination with D-Day shows “how much we yearn for national heroes and unity,” Ambrose said.
And the passion for recognition of these historical events will continue, Ambrose said.
“I think there’s going to be a lasting impression mad and in a lot of ways it well be heightened,” he said. “Just wait until we get to the Battle of the Bulge, and about a quarter of them are still alive.”
But he expects the atmosphere surrounding the 50th anniversary of the VJ-Day to be different.
“There’s a moral certainty to D-Day that won’t be there,” he said. “The celebration will be clouded with international debate over the tactics used.”
Writing about D-Day was a deeply satisfying experience, he said.
“It certainly deepened my already high respect for the soldiers of World War II. I was 10 years old when they came home, and I thought they were giants then. But I didn’t know half of it.”
It is the story of these giants that has propelled him into the public eye.
But as much as he’s enjoying this moment in the spotlight, he is looking forward to his next work. He will retire from the Eisenhower Center this summer to devote more time to teaching and writing.
“I’ll be glad when all this is over,” Ambrose said, “I’ll be glad to be through with all these TV people and reporters.”
After returning from Europe June 20, he will spend the summer in Montana at a house in “Meriwether Lewis country,” he said. Frontiersman and explorer Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition is Ambrose’s current subject. “I’m 16 chapters into that biography. That’s really what I do best—Writing.” TP 6/3/94
OUTWARD BOUND Historian Stephen Ambrose traces Lewis and Clark’s trail and comes back with a surprise bestseller.
Hiking a pristine stretch of the Lewis and Clark trail along Montana’s rugged Missouri River breaks-part of a summer journey he has made for the last 20 years-historian Stephen Ambrose is transported to another time. “You don’t see bridges or ranches. You don’t see power lines.” He marvels. “You don’t see bridges or ranches. You see what the explorers saw.”
Ambrose’s vivid retelling of Lewis and Clark’s journey-Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West-caps a distinguished literary career that includes the 1994 bestseller D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. Clearly the new book’s unexpected success (16 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, last week at No. 6)delights him. Surrounded by the maps, photographs, antique muskets and presidential portraits that fill his red, white and blue office above the garage of his Bay St. Louis, Miss., house, Ambrose, 60, can scarcely contain his glee. “It’s wonderful,” he declares. “I’m sitting in clover!” And he lays his success squarely-and literally-at the explorers’ feet (mainly those of Lewis, whom he considers the more colorful of the two men). “I’ve walked every step of that trail,” he says. “I’ve made wakes [on the river] where Lewis made wakes, and I’ve sat around his campfires.”
Familiar as he is with Lewis’s life, Ambrose has no intention of carrying the parallels too far. As Undaunted Courage makes clear, America’s greatest explorer was as haunted as he was brilliant. “Lewis was a worldwide celebrity at 35 and couldn’t handle it,” Ambrose observes of the man he believes was a manic-depressive who killed himself three years after his triumph. While some historians think Lewis was murdered, Ambrose says the explorer’s many troubles prove otherwise. “He was an opium addict and a serious alcoholic. Had a terrible writer’s block-couldn’t get the journals published-and was bankrupt.” While Lewis’s achievements as the groundbreaking expedition’s primary leader make him a giant, it is his flaws, Ambrose says, that make him compelling. “His breakdown was so modern,” he says. “Everybody can identify with it!”
Many readers might also identify with Ambrose’s own American journey. Born the second of three sons to a U>S> Navy doctor and his wife, a homemaker, he grew up in Whitewater, Wis., a picture-postcard town of picket fences, unlocked doors and, to Ambrose, suffocating conformity. “There was no taste, no culture,” he says. “All these Republicans who make over $10,000 a year ran the town, and my old man was one of them. I couldn’t wait to get out of that godforsaken place.”
Fleeing to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Ambrose studied American history, eventually earning a Ph.D. in 1960 and teaching at the University of New Orleans (he retired last year). His first wife, Judy, whom Ambrose married in 1957, was a manic-depressive who committed suicide in 1963. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira, in 1965.