Sand and Steel

A New History of D-Day

Plot

An authoritative and myth-busting new history of D-Day, as reimagined by one of our leading military historians. 6 June 1944, 4.a.m. Hundreds of boats set off from the south coast of England, destined for the beaches of Normandy. By nightfall, four thousand of the men they carry will be dead. Through their sacrifice, the Allies will gain a foothold in Europe that will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Third Reich. This was D-Day, the most ambitious military operation of the Second World War. Bringing together the might of American, British and Commonwealth forces, the preparations mobilised 150,000 troops and turned the United Kingdom into a giant army training camp. The objective: to break through Hitler's formidable Atlantikwall and open a Western front in the battle for Europe. Now, one of Britain's leading military historians draws on a decade of archival research and thousands of interviews to offer a panoramic new account of D-Day. He recreates what it was like to step out onto the carnage of Omaha Beach, facing the machine-gun fire that wiped out whole battalions of troops. He delves into how the Allied generals settled on Normandy in June 1944, and describes the extraordinary subterfuge that went into keeping it secret. And he recounts how the operation transformed the lives of Britons back home: transforming sleepy villages in the Home Counties into bustling military outposts, and igniting thousands of love affairs between American GIs and English women. His findings offer revelatory new insights into our understanding of D-Day. Sand and Steel is the only book to discuss the experiences of every major military force: not just the infantrymen on the beaches, but also paratroopers and RAF pilots, resistance fighters in France and women on the Home Front, and even the German Wehrmacht. It gives the first full account of the invasion preparations, coming to the astonishing conclusion that more men died in training exercises than during the landing itself. Above all, it pays the often-overlooked UK and Canadian soldiers their dues, demonstrating that the British Army was just as crucial to D-Day as the USA. The result is an authoritative and compulsively readable exploration of the most important battle in history. It will be the definitive work on D-Day for years to come.