thedrifter
06-03-04, 07:25 AM
Issue Date: June 07, 2004
D-Day defined
By Don De Nevi
Special to the Times
As nearly definitive an account of the D-Day landings along France’s Normandy coast in World War II as is likely to be published, “Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944” brings D-Day into sharp focus on the 60th anniversary of the greatest and most successful amphibious assault of all time.
Combining more than 500 hitherto unheard oral histories and rare, mostly unpublished eyewitness accounts — many originating just days after the event — with official reports and other sources, Joseph Balkoski concentrates on the brutal realities of combat experienced by those who fought it.
Hour by hour, day after day, readers relive the events leading up to the assault, the heartbreak of the losses of the beach battles that followed, and the tough Allied campaign that broke through the hedgerows to chase Hitler’s armies back to Germany.
Contrasting with Balkoski’s meticulously reconstructed chronicle and fidelity to facts are gritty personal emotions — tense admissions of fear, anger, determination, perseverance and hope — as the grand-scale drama unfolds.
It is axiomatic that in every war, no military operation ever goes according to plan. And using a series of detailed maps to illustrate the progress of the assault, “Omaha Beach” details how D-Day was no exception. But compared to other amphibious operations that preceded it, the Normandy invasion succeeded, primarily because of the enormous buildup of forces and supplies and the intelligence that guided their disposal during the invasion.
Prior to Balkoski, only one person attempted to tell a detailed story of the logistics and intelligence behind the scenes, and that was in 1945. Lt. Col. Charles Taylor, a former Harvard history professor then assigned as U.S. Army historian, wrote “Omaha Beachhead” for a military audience. Published by the War Department, the scholarly text was brilliant.
Six decades and six visits to Omaha Beach convinced Balkoski a second history of the invasion was needed. In his preface, he writes: “My family and I resided in Normandy, a farmhouse in Colleville-sur-Mer, the embodiment of a rural Norman village that also happened to be a crucial American D-Day objective. I walked all points of historical significance on Omaha Beach. Every walk triggered deep emotions, enough for me to track down every archival record available. On the exact spots of forgotten fighting I was filled with deep sadness as I stood at the precise spots where fellow Americans died. I was determined that a thorough story of the landing be written while there were still those alive who had actually lived it.”
Picking up where Taylor left off, and with a fresh perspective, Balkoski resolved to use eyewitness accounts and oral histories selectively in support of a conventional narrative. They testify the events did indeed occur and clarify the complex maneuvers that characterized the struggle.
“They heighten the human story. Any book that does not impart the sentiments within first-person accounts of their overwhelming and dreadful experiences is incomplete,” Balkoski writes. Hence, each eyewitness statement is identified by its originator and his military role at the time he wrote or spoke it.
“Omaha Beach” is the closest you and I will ever come to being at Normandy on June 6, 1944. Remarkably balanced, the result of substantial research, to say nothing of being a labor of love, “Omaha Beach” is not only a fitting tribute to the troops who died there and the veterans who survived, but also an indispensable history of one of our nation’s most critical days.
Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944, by Joseph Balkoski, Stackpole Books, 432 pages, $27
Don De Nevi is a freelance writer and author based in California.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further reading
Other D-Day books available now or coming out this summer:
• D-Day Bombers: The Veteran’s Story, by Stephen Darlow, Grub Street, 256 pages, $36.95, July.
An eyewitness account of the contributions of heavy bombers to the D-Day campaign. Eight different British and American aircrews tell their stories of operations before, during and after D-Day.
• American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy, by Bob Welch, Atria Books, 308 pages, $22, June.
Slanger, the daughter of a Jewish fruit peddler whose parents immigrated from Poland when she was 7, was one of the first U.S. nurses to reach the Normandy beaches in 1944. She tended wounded troops until October of that year, when she was killed as German troops shelled her field hospital.
• The Bedford Boys: One American Town’s Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice, by Alex Kershaw, De Capo, 274 pages, $14.95, paperback edition available in June.
The first wave of the D-Day invasion carried ashore a group of soldiers from Bedford, Va. Within minutes, 19 lay dead. A total of 21 would die at Normandy. No American town suffered a greater one-day loss than the small, impoverished town in southern Virginia, today the site of the National D-Day Memorial.
• Dawn of D-Day: These Men Were There, 6 June 1944, by David Howarth, D-Day 60th Anniversary Edition by Stackpole Books and Greenhill Books, 216 pages, $19.95.
Originally published in 1959, this special edition is based on interviews of D-Day veterans by Howarth, a war correspondent for the BBC in World War II.
• Normandy, The Real Story, by Brig. Gen. Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker with Terry Copp, Presidio Press, 366 pages, $15.95.
Bucking conventional wisdom that sheer force overwhelmed the German defenses at Normandy, the authors, including the late Canadian brigadier general, present the case for how ordinary soldiers took on two better-equipped and, in some cases, better-led, German armies and won the war.
• Ten Days to D-Day, by David Stafford, Little, Brown, 377 pages, $26.95.
Ten days, 10 chapters, 10 characters. Stafford, a former diplomat and the author of critically acclaimed books on intelligence and World War II, examines the actions of key national leaders and ordinary citizens in the days leading up to the Normandy invasion.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2954688.php
Ellie
D-Day defined
By Don De Nevi
Special to the Times
As nearly definitive an account of the D-Day landings along France’s Normandy coast in World War II as is likely to be published, “Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944” brings D-Day into sharp focus on the 60th anniversary of the greatest and most successful amphibious assault of all time.
Combining more than 500 hitherto unheard oral histories and rare, mostly unpublished eyewitness accounts — many originating just days after the event — with official reports and other sources, Joseph Balkoski concentrates on the brutal realities of combat experienced by those who fought it.
Hour by hour, day after day, readers relive the events leading up to the assault, the heartbreak of the losses of the beach battles that followed, and the tough Allied campaign that broke through the hedgerows to chase Hitler’s armies back to Germany.
Contrasting with Balkoski’s meticulously reconstructed chronicle and fidelity to facts are gritty personal emotions — tense admissions of fear, anger, determination, perseverance and hope — as the grand-scale drama unfolds.
It is axiomatic that in every war, no military operation ever goes according to plan. And using a series of detailed maps to illustrate the progress of the assault, “Omaha Beach” details how D-Day was no exception. But compared to other amphibious operations that preceded it, the Normandy invasion succeeded, primarily because of the enormous buildup of forces and supplies and the intelligence that guided their disposal during the invasion.
Prior to Balkoski, only one person attempted to tell a detailed story of the logistics and intelligence behind the scenes, and that was in 1945. Lt. Col. Charles Taylor, a former Harvard history professor then assigned as U.S. Army historian, wrote “Omaha Beachhead” for a military audience. Published by the War Department, the scholarly text was brilliant.
Six decades and six visits to Omaha Beach convinced Balkoski a second history of the invasion was needed. In his preface, he writes: “My family and I resided in Normandy, a farmhouse in Colleville-sur-Mer, the embodiment of a rural Norman village that also happened to be a crucial American D-Day objective. I walked all points of historical significance on Omaha Beach. Every walk triggered deep emotions, enough for me to track down every archival record available. On the exact spots of forgotten fighting I was filled with deep sadness as I stood at the precise spots where fellow Americans died. I was determined that a thorough story of the landing be written while there were still those alive who had actually lived it.”
Picking up where Taylor left off, and with a fresh perspective, Balkoski resolved to use eyewitness accounts and oral histories selectively in support of a conventional narrative. They testify the events did indeed occur and clarify the complex maneuvers that characterized the struggle.
“They heighten the human story. Any book that does not impart the sentiments within first-person accounts of their overwhelming and dreadful experiences is incomplete,” Balkoski writes. Hence, each eyewitness statement is identified by its originator and his military role at the time he wrote or spoke it.
“Omaha Beach” is the closest you and I will ever come to being at Normandy on June 6, 1944. Remarkably balanced, the result of substantial research, to say nothing of being a labor of love, “Omaha Beach” is not only a fitting tribute to the troops who died there and the veterans who survived, but also an indispensable history of one of our nation’s most critical days.
Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944, by Joseph Balkoski, Stackpole Books, 432 pages, $27
Don De Nevi is a freelance writer and author based in California.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further reading
Other D-Day books available now or coming out this summer:
• D-Day Bombers: The Veteran’s Story, by Stephen Darlow, Grub Street, 256 pages, $36.95, July.
An eyewitness account of the contributions of heavy bombers to the D-Day campaign. Eight different British and American aircrews tell their stories of operations before, during and after D-Day.
• American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy, by Bob Welch, Atria Books, 308 pages, $22, June.
Slanger, the daughter of a Jewish fruit peddler whose parents immigrated from Poland when she was 7, was one of the first U.S. nurses to reach the Normandy beaches in 1944. She tended wounded troops until October of that year, when she was killed as German troops shelled her field hospital.
• The Bedford Boys: One American Town’s Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice, by Alex Kershaw, De Capo, 274 pages, $14.95, paperback edition available in June.
The first wave of the D-Day invasion carried ashore a group of soldiers from Bedford, Va. Within minutes, 19 lay dead. A total of 21 would die at Normandy. No American town suffered a greater one-day loss than the small, impoverished town in southern Virginia, today the site of the National D-Day Memorial.
• Dawn of D-Day: These Men Were There, 6 June 1944, by David Howarth, D-Day 60th Anniversary Edition by Stackpole Books and Greenhill Books, 216 pages, $19.95.
Originally published in 1959, this special edition is based on interviews of D-Day veterans by Howarth, a war correspondent for the BBC in World War II.
• Normandy, The Real Story, by Brig. Gen. Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker with Terry Copp, Presidio Press, 366 pages, $15.95.
Bucking conventional wisdom that sheer force overwhelmed the German defenses at Normandy, the authors, including the late Canadian brigadier general, present the case for how ordinary soldiers took on two better-equipped and, in some cases, better-led, German armies and won the war.
• Ten Days to D-Day, by David Stafford, Little, Brown, 377 pages, $26.95.
Ten days, 10 chapters, 10 characters. Stafford, a former diplomat and the author of critically acclaimed books on intelligence and World War II, examines the actions of key national leaders and ordinary citizens in the days leading up to the Normandy invasion.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2954688.php
Ellie