To D Day And Back

In the predawn hours of D-Day, June 6, 1944, which would become immortalized as the Longest Day, Bob Bearden and his comrades in the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped into the inky skies over Normandy. Their mission: defend the west bank of the Merderet River against German counterattack. After long months of training they were finally taking the war to the Germans. Beardens time in combat proved shortlived, however, when he was captured on D+2, June 8. This was only the beginning of a new war for his very survival through multiple German POW camps and ultimately on an epic journey that would take him largely on foot all the way to Moscow on his journey home, all of which makes for exciting reading in this remarkable memoir.

Eisenhower called it "the Great Crusade," but the Battle of Normandy was a nightmare for the rookie soldiers who fought it. Be there if you dare as they storm the beaches, facing assault from every side in a fight for freedom unlike any the world had seen before.

An authentic account of one of the most pivotal battles of World War Two. The World War Two invasion known as D-Day was one of the largest military endeavours in history. It involved years of planning, total secrecy and not only soldiers but also sailors, paratroopers and many specialists. Acclaimed author Deborah Hopkinson weaves together the contributions of key players in D-Day in a masterful tapestry of official documents, personal narratives and archival photos to provide an action-packed and authentic account.

It was a battle that would change the course of World War II... New York Times bestselling author Lauren Tarshis commemorates the Normandy landings in this pulse-pounding story of the largest seaborne invasion in history. Eleven-year-old Paul’s French village has been under Nazi control for years. His Jewish best friend has disappeared. Food is scarce. And there doesn’t seem to be anything Paul can do to make things better. Then Paul finds an American paratrooper in a tree near his home. The soldier says the Allies have a plan to crush the Nazis once and for all. But the soldier needs Paul’s help. This is Paul’s chance to make a difference. Soon he finds himself in the midst of the largest invasion in history. Can he do his part to turn horror into hope? New York Times bestselling author Lauren Tarshis tells the story of the battle that became the foundation for the Allied victory in World War II. Includes a section of nonfiction backmatter with more facts about the real-life event.

The largest seaborne invasion in history began on June 6, 1944, with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments, and an early morning amphibious assault on the beaches of Normandy, France. For two months the battle raged through France, final resulting in the liberation of Paris in August, as Allied forces put yet another nail into the coffin of Nazi Germany’s fate.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The dramatic, untold history of the heroic women recruited by Britain’s elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory in World War II “Gripping. Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and treachery (lots of treachery)—and all of it true.”—Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France. In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently de­classified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There’s Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE’s unflap­pable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war. Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high. Praise for D-Day Girls “Rigorously researched . . . [a] thriller in the form of a non-fiction book.”—Refinery29 “Equal parts espionage-romance thriller and historical narrative, D-Day Girls traces the lives and secret activities of the 39 women who answered the call to infiltrate France. . . . While chronicling the James Bond-worthy missions and love affairs of these women, Rose vividly captures the broken landscape of war.”—The Washington Post “Gripping history . . . thoroughly researched and written as smoothly as a good thriller, this is a mesmerizing story of creativity, perseverance, and astonishing heroism.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

An English literature major at Harvard with a talent for writing, twenty-one-year-old David Kenyon Webster volunteered for duty in the U.S. Army’s parachute infantry in 1943 with the aim of seeing combat first-hand and then describing his experiences. His introduction to warfare came at the invasion of Normandy on D-Day in 1944. Webster went on to see considerable action in the next two years, serving as a combat infantryman in the campaign through northwest Europe, during which he was twice wounded. He wrote Parachute Infantry a short time after the war, relying on his letters home and recollections he penned right after his discharge, making his memoir much closer to the war than most such works. With its abundant dialogue, charged descriptions of places and events, and skillful evocation of emotions, Webster’s narrative resonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel. The memoir is divided into several episodes. The first takes place in May and June of 1944 and provides a detailed, suspenseful account of Webster’s participation in the events of D-Day. The next covers several days in September, 1944, when Webster parachuted into Holland and then as part of a group of soldiers advanced through small towns, freeing them as the Germans retreated, until he was shot in the leg and forced to leave his unit. The narrative then picks up in February, 1945, after Webster has returned to his unit, and describes several weeks near the end of the war in Europe, when German resistance was still strong but weakening. Then comes the Allied victory in 1945. We see Webster’s platoon arriving at Berchtes gaden (Hilter’s vacation retreat in the Alps) right before V-E Day and the celebrations and lax discipline that followed the final collapse of the Third Reich. In the last section of the book, Webster recalls the monotonous routine of occupation duty, concluding with his return to the States in early 1946 to be discharged. Stephen E. Ambrose introduces Parachute Infantry, pointing out as two important strengths Webster’s honesty and his ability to describe so well his fellow soldiers—men he never would have known or associated with in civilian life but with whom he developed the strongest bonds during his wartime experience. Parachute Infantry proves to be a riveting account of a young soldier’s experience of war.

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER - REISSUED WITH A NEW FOREWORD FOR THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY 'Magnificent, vivid, moving, superb' Max Hastings, Sunday Times ______________ This is the closest you will ever get to war - the taste, the smell, the noise and the fear The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was awesome and what followed was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. Antony Beevor's inimitably gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war. He lands the reader on the beach alongside the heroes whose stories he so masterfully renders in their full terrifying glory. ______________ 'A thrilling story, with all Beevor's narrative mastery' Chris Patten, Financial Times 'Beevor's D-Day has all the qualities that have made his earlier works so successful: an eye for telling and unusual detail, an ability to make complex events understandable, and a wonderful graphic style' Ian Kershaw, Guardian, Books of the Year 'D-Day's phenomenal success is both understandable and justified' James Holland 'D-Day is a triumph . . . on almost every page there's some little detail that sticks in the mind or tweaks the heart. This is a terrific, inspiring, heart-breaking book' Sam Leith, Daily Mail