Darkness at dawn

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Anthony Beevor
The Forgotten Voices of D-Day, by Roderick Bailey, in association with the Imperial War Museum

Sixty-five years ago the largest seaborne assault force in history was put ashore on the beaches of Normandy. Memory of the day is now confined to a diminishing number of great-grandfathers, but the sheer scale of the landing, its drama, and its pivotal importance in the war guarantee its enduring grip on people’s imaginations. Two generations have grown up with their own versions of what happened.

The first learned about it, either directly from participants or through a cascade of memoirs from ageing commanders who portrayed it as the highpoint of a triumphal progression from El Alamein to the Rhine. The second, growing up in the cold war, had it presented as an American-led coalition’s assault on tyranny, a dress rehearsal for Nato against the Soviet Union. Once ideology threatens to swamp the past, it is useful to be brought back to reality.

The first corrective offered by these two new histories of the operation is their reminder of the colossal risk it entailed. ‘It may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war’ confessed Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke on the eve of the invasion. The supreme commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had even prepared a provisional press release, ‘The landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed, and I have withdrawn the troops.’

What is striking, almost shocking, today was the high casualty rate they were ready to accept in order to earn success. Even in a rehearsal, Exercise Tiger, that took place a month earlier at Slapton Sands in Devon, close to one thousand died. Planners anticipated that 20,000 would be killed or wounded in a single day, more than a quarter of all those going ashore.