12 Questions for a Writer: Alex Kershaw

Alex Kershaw is the widely-acclaimed, prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author of twelve books. His latest, Patton’s Prayer will be released May 21, 2024

1.     Who are you, what have you written, and why?

I have  been a journalist for over thirty years, publishing in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, AARP Magazine, The Guardian and many other newspapers and magazines. I also speak on history and I designs and lead history tours around the world. I am the Resident Historian for Friends of The National WWII Memorial and I chair the Colby Award selection committee. I am a Brit, living in Washington D.C., who primarily writes about WWII from a US perspective. My book, Blood and Champagne, is currently being adapted into a tv series and my 2012 book, The Liberator, is now a four part series on Netflix. My latest is Patton’s Prayer.

Patton’s Prayer is about courage, resilience, and faith during the Second World War. In December 1944, General George Patton needed a miracle. The Allies found themselves stuck. Rain had plagued the troops daily since September, turning roads into rivers of muck, slowing trucks and tanks to a crawl. A thick ceiling of clouds had grounded American warplanes, allowing the Germans to reinforce. The sprint to Berlin had become a muddy, bloody stalemate, costing thousands of American lives.

Patton seethed, desperate for some change, any change, in the weather. A devout Christian, he telephoned his head chaplain. “Do you have a good prayer for the weather?” he asked. The resulting prayer was soon printed and distributed to the 250,000 men under Patton’s command. “Pray when driving,” the men were told. “Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle. . . . Pray for victory. . . . Pray for Peace.”

Then came the Battle of the Bulge. Amid frigid temperatures and heavy snow, 200,000 German troops overwhelmed the meager American lines in Belgium’s Ardennes Forest, massacring thousands of soldiers as the attack converged on a vital crossroads town called Bastogne. There, the 101st Airborne was dug in, but the enemy were lurking, hidden in the thick blanket of fog that seemed to never dissipate. A hundred miles of frozen roads to the south, Patton needed an answer to his prayer, fast, before it was too late. I’ve long been interested in Patton and also the notion of faith in wartime. He’s a great character and this was a chance to bring him to life. 

2.     What is it that draws you to writing?

It’s an impossible way to make a good living but great if you can. I’m a journalist so writing books became an extension of that. I love telling stories. 

3.     Tell us about the process you undertook to write “Patton’s Prayer”. 

Lots of research in Library of Congress and on battlefields of Europe.

4.     What did you learn in the process and what surprised you?

Patton was a very complicated, brilliant man and just what we needed in WWII in Europe. He was a true outlier and could not have operated beyond WWII in the military. He was a very educated man of great faith and compassion. 

5.     Would you do it again?

Yes. Why not?

6.     What do you want people to take away from this book?

Believing in something bigger than yourself can save your life, and that others. 

7.     What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

Don’t do it. If you do, get ready to always be starting over, sat alone in a room on your own, often stressed, for the rest of your career. You had better be very, very committed, talented and ready to deal with having worked for decades but still poor. If can cope with supporting a family and paying for health care and make it in today’s publishing world, make sure you write in a commercial genre like crime, spy thrillers, romance etc.    

8.     What is your favorite book and why?

Too many to mention. Endurance by Alfred Lansing is the best non-fiction narrative ever written in my view. I’m a big fan of Hemingway – A Moveable Feast, In The Garden of Eden. 

9.     You’re a European journalist, living in the United States, who writes about World War Two in the European Theater from an American perspective, generally at the more individual, tactical level than the strategic. Why? Do you see yourself as an interlocutor?

Yes, that could be true. I did what I had to in order to support a family – I was incapable of working in a full-time job. I loved the freedom and travel involved in journalism and was lucky to find a subject – WW2 - that was popular and has so far sustained me. You do what you have to in order to get by in a different country with a wife and kid. There are no American writers covering the British POV of WW2 living in the UK. Only posh English blokes are accepted and allowed to enter the club.        

10.  In some ways, writing “popular history” is writing “creative non-fiction”? What is it about these stories that draws you?

They’re the best stories of courage and humanity and heroism I’ve found. Try writing uncreative non-fiction, as academics do, and paying the mortgage. Not going to happen.  

11.  There is a somewhat trite expression that says, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” I have a lot of questions about religion, but can attest that I started making deals with the divine while crouching in a hole as mortar rounds bracketed my position. What pulled you to the story of “Patton’s Prayer”? What does it say about the importance of “something bigger” in war?

There are atheists in foxholes but not many. Some lose faith altogether.  How could there be a divine power amidst such horror and terror? But most people become more religious in prolonged combat – they search for meaning among madness and pray more if they are even slightly religious. Others look for something outside themselves for support. You could be praying to your mother, to the beauty of nature, to anything beyond your own ego. Faith helped countless people get through WW2.     

12.  What have I not asked that I should have?

What was unique about Patton? What should be learn from WW2?