D-Day, What We Haven't Told You

D-Day, What We Haven't Told You
Author: Philippe Bauduin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2017-06-30
Genre: Normandy (France)
ISBN: 9782840484806

The Normandy Landings of 6 June 1944 were a major and decisive episode of the Second World War and have been, for more than sixty years, the object of countless books, films, investigations, reports and television series. However, is it known that D-Day was preceded by, on 27 April 1944, a tragic rehearsal that resulted in over nine-hundred deaths and which remained a secret for decades? Is it known that the beautiful Lily Sergueiev, an artist and great traveller, was considered by the Allies as their best disinformation agent and by the Germans as their most efficient agent in Great Britain? Or is it known that Lionel Crabb, the Royal Navy's star frogman, was the inspiration for Ian Fleming's character, James Bond? Is it known that the Germans' favourite song Lili Marlene, was also very popular with the allied soldiers? These are some of the surprising revelations contained in this book which is both original and informative, based on over half a century of research undertaken by Philippe Bauduin and which casts a new light on D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. Fascinated by new technology that he discovered during the summer of 1944, a time when he was still a teenager, Philippe Bauduin went on to undertake a scientific career which notably led him to set up the GANIL in Caen (Large Heavy Ion National Accelerator). He is the author of seventeen books and numerous articles on various aspects of the Landings. Jean-Charles Stasi has worked as a journalist since 1985 and is the author of twenty books, most of which deal with the Second World War. He was awarded the Prix Grand Témoin 2007 and the Grand Prix de la Légion d'Honneur 2008 for his book L'Épopée du Normandie-Niémen, co-written with Roland de la Poype.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach
Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2006-05-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0811741192

Balkoski's depiction of 'Bloody Omaha' is the literary accompaniment to the white-knuckle Omaha Beach scene that opens Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. -- John Hillen, New York Post

Drawing D-Day

Drawing D-Day
Author: Ugo Giannini
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2019-04-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0486839362

“Drawing D-Day powerfully and poignantly reflects back on the watershed event of the 20th century in a way that is unexpected and completely unique.” — Jeffery R. Fulgham, CFRE, Vice President, Finance and Development, National D-Day Memorial Foundation Drawing D-Day: An Artist's Journey Through War offers an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind testimony in words and images by a soldier and artist who participated in one of the most famous military operations of World War II. On June 6, 1944, Ugo Giannini landed on Omaha Beach with a platoon of military police assigned to accompany the U.S. Army's 29th Infantry Division. Only six of the thirty-seven men in the platoon made it to the beach. Told that he was needed on the bluff above the shore, Ugo climbed the Verville Draw, jumped into a crater made by naval bombardment, and spent that day and part of the next as an eyewitness to the invasion. Remarkably, he began to draw. These are the only known drawings from that historic day. Drawn in pencil and pen, in a gritty, realist style, the images depict heavily burdened infantrymen trying to stay afloat in seawater, crawling on the beach, and dead among the ruins of a bombed-out village. The illustrations, interwoven with Ugo's letters to his family and girlfriend, portray the horror of war in a deep and personal way. Abstract paintings at the end of the book, composed forty years later, make a powerful statement of the enduring power about war on an artist-soldier's psyche.

Voices from D-Day

Voices from D-Day
Author: Jon E. Lewis
Publisher: Robinson
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2014-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472103998

The extraordinary and compelling story of the 6th of June, 1944, Operation Overlord and the Battle for Normandy is told here through first-hand testimonies from civilians and soldiers on both sides. It features classic accounts by soldiers such as Rommel and Bradley, together with frontline reports by some of the world’s finest authors and war correspondents, including Ernest Hemingway and Alan Melville. Highlights of this unique collection include the break-out from Omaha beach as told by the GI who led it, a French housewife’s story of what it was like to wake up to the invasion, German soldiers’ accounts of finding themselves facing the biggest seaborne invasion in history, a view from the command post by a member of Eisenhower’s staff, combat reports, diaries and letters of British veterans of all forces and services, and accounts of the follow-up battle for Normandy, one of the bloodiest struggles of the war. The Allied armada involved over 5,000 craft, which had by the end of ‘the longest day’ succeeded in landing 156,000 men, and in breaching Hitler’s much vaunted defensive wall. Dramatic and historic though the events of D-Day were, they were but the opening shots of a much larger and equally remarkable battle – the battle for Normandy. It took the Allies ten weeks of bloody fighting to get out of Normandy, during which the infantry casualty rate rivalled that of the Western Front in the First World War. This book is the story of that fateful day, the preparations which led up to it, and the ten weeks of fighting in Normandy which followed it, told by the men and women who were there, who witnessed it at first hand. It is compiled from interviews with scores of veterans, from diaries, memoirs and letters. Occasionally, exact chronology has been sacrificed in the interests of communicating better the experience of Normandy, for above all this is a book about how the invasion looked and felt to those who were there. It is often brutally honest, far removed from the comfortable romantic version of D-Day and the battle for Normandy. (For example, there are accounts here of crimes committed against German POWs by Allied soldiers.)

D-Day

D-Day
Author: Michael Noble
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Total Pages: 51
Release: 2019
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1786036266

Relive the events of June 6, 1944, through eye witness accounts that describe 20 real-life stories from the D-Day landings. This book--which presents collated photographs, personal accounts, and testimonies from all sides with full-page illustrations dramatizing individual roles--brings a key moment in history to life for young readers hearing about the event for the first time, as we commemorate its 75th anniversary. Meet: Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis, the only person to receive the Victoria Cross for their actions that day Lt. Richard Winter, among the first to be parachuted into action (as depicted in Band of Brothers) American journalist Martha Gellhorn, the only woman known to have been present, after disguising herself as a stretcher bearer As well as a host of other inspiring individuals who each played an important part in the turning point of World War II From those involved in reconnaissance, planning and logistics, espionage, and development of new technology, through to the military units involved in the invasion and landings, and the subsequent phases of the invasion, this authentic retelling provides a view from every angle of the action.

D-Day Girls

D-Day Girls
Author: Sarah Rose
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0451495098

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)

The Silent Day

The Silent Day
Author: Max Arthur
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2014-05-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1444787519

On 6 June 1944 Britain woke up to a profound silence. Overnight, 160,000 Allied troops had vanished and an eerie emptiness settled over the country. The majority of those men would never return. This is the story of that extraordinary 24 hours. Using a wealth of first person testimonies, renowned historian Max Arthur recounts a remarkable new oral history of D-Day, beginning with the two years leading up to the silent day which saw the UK transformed by the arrival of thousands of American and Canadian troops. We also hear the views of the American troops, who quickly formed strong views of both the British military and civilian populations. Then, on that June morning, many Britain people woke up to discover that vast areas of the country, which had throbbed with life only the day before, were now empty and silent. Civilian workers found coffee pots still warm on the stove but not a soul to greet them. Many women - and children - felt bewildered and betrayed. Then, throughout that day and the days that followed, the whole population gathered around wireless sets, waiting for news. There are powerful testimonies from families of who lost loved ones on the beaches of Normandy, and dramatic personal accounts from young widows who had never had the chance to say goodbye. THE SILENT DAY is an original and evocative portrait of a key event in world history, and a poignant reminder of the human cost of D-Day.

The Devils of D-Day

The Devils of D-Day
Author: Graham Masterton
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504025571

Unsealing the hatch of a rusty old WWII tank will unleash a demonic nightmare in this novel by “the master of modern horror” (Library Journal). Thirty-five years have passed since the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day turned the tide of World War II against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Reich, and it’s been more than three decades since the residents of the tiny French village of Le Vey witnessed the horrific slaughter of hundreds of German soldiers by thirteen black tanks. One of the tanks remains on the outskirts of town—its hatch mysteriously sealed, trapping its controller inside—only to be discovered by American surveyor and cartographer Dan McCook. Driven by curiosity and an inexplicable compulsion, McCook is about to do the unthinkable and release what lives within the tank upon an unsuspecting world. And once the monstrous occupant reunites with others of its demonic kind, a new world war will begin, one that threatens to wash the earth in blood and drag every man, woman, and child through the fiery gates of hell. A chilling and ingeniously original tale of demonic possession and apocalyptic possibilities, The Devils of D-Day is classic horror at its best, from the award-winning author of The Manitou.

D-Day Illustrated Edition

D-Day Illustrated Edition
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 828
Release: 2014-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1471136671

On the basis of 1,400 oral histories from the men who were there, bestselling author and World War II historian Stephen E. Ambrose reveals for the first time anywhere that the intricate plan for the invasion of France in June 1944 had to be abandoned before the first shot was fired. The true story of D-Day, as Ambrose relates it, is about the citizen soldiers - junior officers and enlisted men - taking the initiative to act on their own to break through Hitler's Atlantic Wall when they realised that nothing was as they had been told it would be. D-DAY is the brilliant, no holds barred, telling of the battles of Omaha and Utah beaches. Ambrose relives the epic victory of democracy on the most important day of the twentieth century.

D-Day Plus One

D-Day Plus One
Author: Frank Holland
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-10-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1908117524

A World War II RAF veteran tells the dramatic story of D-Day, his survival after being shot down by the Germans, and his journey back to Allied lines. The day after D-Day, the most momentous day of the Second World War, Frank Holland was an RAF pilot whose Typhoon aircraft had just been hit by German antiaircraft fire during a low flying attack on a marshaling yard in Normandy. He managed to take the aircraft up to 1200 feet but then the engine went dead and his Typhoon soon began heading towards the earth at an accelerating and frightening speed. Struggling frantically, he just barely got free of the cockpit and baled out four or five seconds before the crash. His parachute didn’t open but he fell into a wood, crashing through the branches of an oak to dangle precariously fifteen feet up. Breathing hard, he experienced a few seconds of relief at survival. But then he realized German troops would be swarming around within minutes. He had to get away, and fast . . . So begins Frank’s tremendous adventure as he evaded capture for months, sometimes by barely a whisker, to make it back home to the city of his birth, Cambridge. A riveting true story told in a masterly fashion.