Casemate is please to announce that Author/military historian Flint Whitlock’s new book, IF CHAOS REIGNS: The Near-Disaster and Ultimate Triumph of the Allied Airborne Forces on D-Day, June 6, 1944, is now available.
We caught up with Flint Whitlock to find out a little more about him.
After graduating from the Army’s Airborne School at Ft. Benning, GA, in 1965 Flint spent five years on active duty including a combat tour in Vietnam. He is the author of nine books, six of which are about World War II, and is currently the editor of WWII Quarterly. He has appeared in documentaries on The History Channel and on the Fox Channel’s “War Stories with Oliver North,” and now lives in Denver, CO. Here’s what he had to tell us:
When did you first realize that you wanted to become a writer?
When I was a small child. I have always enjoyed writing and drawing. I grew up writing for my high school and college newspapers and yearbooks. After I received a degree in commercial art and went into advertising, I continued to do as much writing as I did artwork.
Do you have any advice for budding military history authors wanting to get published?
Tell your story from the individual soldier’s point of view. Grand strategy is fine, as far as it goes, but the real story is told by those guys in the trenches, or on the ships, or up in the airplanes getting shot at and putting their lives on the line.
Why did you decide to write this book? What prompted you to put this story down on paper?
Again, it goes back to wanting the public to know more about what these men did. I also wanted to give equal credit to the British and Canadian paratroopers, who have for too long been ignored by American military historians. Because we center so much on ourselves, we have a tendency to forget that other nations did as much, if not more, than America did to win the war.
What do you like most about your book? Why should we read it?
I like most the fact that it encompasses America’s British and Canadian allies. You should read it because it is full of information that has largely been unknown or ignored or glossed over in previous accounts of the D-Day operation.
What are you working on at the moment?
In addition to If Chaos Reigns, I’m working on several book projects: The Beasts of Buchenwald (about the Nazi couple who ran that concentration camp); Hell on a Hilltop (a second book about Buchenwald); and Remember (a guidebook to the WWII battlefields, memorials, monuments, and museums around the world). I’m also the Editor of WWII Quarterly, which keeps me very busy.
Thank you to Flint Whitlock for taking the time to talk to us, and keeping the memories of our heroes alive.
Check out Flint’s August 11 interview with KOA’s Mike Rosen.
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