Book Review: D-Day, Stephen Ambrose

This is an excellent book. It's a pity it overhypes itself on the cover; as good as it is I don't think it's definitive. I'm not sure any single volume account of D-Day could really achieve that, frankly. It's also both heavily weighted to the U.S. perspective, and within that, the events at Omaha beach. Both latter facts are understandable enough, but mitigitate very heftily against any claims of being definitive. Never mind that the Canadian and British aspects are given very brief coverage, mostly at the end of the book.

A couple of more basic or general points in its favour, leaving aside for the moment the core content, which is excellent, are the glossary - they should be absolutely mandatory in all military history books, in my view - and the excellent maps, which by the looks of them were commissioned specifically for this book.

A fuller view of the Robert Capa photo that appears on the cover.

Ambrose has a very nicely tuned and balanced writing style, it's dry and factual where it needs to be without being dull, and he uses primary sources - a lot of oral history (interviews either he or others have conducted with veterans) - as well as any of the best (or should I say most popular/slickest?) war writers, like Beevor or, going back a bit further, Cornelius Ryan.

Indeed, re the latter point, Ambrose is in a powerful position to be the erudite authority he so clearly is, in that he was (now decesased, I believe?) at the time of writing, deeply involved not only in teaching on this subject, but also as a custodian involved in the fairly recently founded (again, when this was first published) New Orleans D-Day Museum*. And one of the many great things the museum could boast, with Ambrose involved again, was a unique (in its size and scope) 'oral history' collection.

And it's from these sources that this very colourful account gets many of its richer hues.

I believe this may be another of Capa's blurred but highly evocative images.

Whilst he doesn't shy away from the tragedies of war, collateral damage, friendly fire, prisoner executions, and all that, Ambrose does give a decidedly heroic ring to it all, pitting the 'citizen soldiers' (a phrase that's also the title of another book he's written) of an 'aroused democracy', fighting inly to liberate, against the empire-building Nazis, whose troops are - by this stage if the war, and in this particular theatre - either indoctrinated Germans, either docile or fanatical, or unwilling thralls, as per the Ost-truppen.

Whilst it's a all a bit rich - apple-pie 'n' God Bless the U. S. of A, and all that jazz - for a very sceptical chap like me, Ambrose does make pretty solid case in contrasting the sclerotic command malfunctions of the German's, Hitler in bed till noon, his panzers immobile without his personal authority, with the hands-off approach of Ike and Churchill. Gone is the  flexible auftragstaktik that characterised the first blitzkrieg years of the war.

Capa again: Omaha, pinned down on the beach, sheltering behind German obstacles.

One of the things that winds up happening is that things are in exact reverse of how, on paper, they should've been: the Allies were landing against a supposedly extremely well-fortified coast, not using harbours, but beaches. The Germans, with the land and its transportation networks at their backs should've been the easier supplied and maneuovred. But, thanks to the Allies total air and naval superiority, it is the Allies who are free to manoeuvre and resupply more or less at will, with the Germans in Normandy effectively cut off, on a landlocked island.

Whilst D-Day wasn't on the scale, in terms of troop numbers and vehicles, as some of the largest clashes on the Eastern Front, it was the most massive combined operation by land, sea and air ever. Even Stalin freely admitting as much, and suitably relieved/impressed by it. The mind still boggles at the scale of it. And it continues to exercise a deep fascination. It's kind of shocking and surprising how little photographic documentation has come down to us so far.

It's a bit surprising there aren't more photos like this, conveying the enormity of the operations.

Another of Capa's few surviving images.

The fate of Robert Capa's photos [1], one of which is on the cover of this edition, may possibly sum that situation up. Related to all this, yesterday I caught the tail end of a recently produced American TV documentary entitled The Battle of Normandy: 85 Days in Hell, which appears to include lots of 'previously unseen' footage (much of it looking very nicely restored, and a good deal even in colour). So perhaps as time goes on more visual material will emerge? I do hope so!

Anyway, this book is excellent, a suitably rousing document that is also a tribute to the events and the men it brings to life again for us. Superb, and very highly recommended.

---

Ambrose as I first saw him, on ITV's superb The World At War.

NOTES:

[1] The story goes that Capa shot 106 photos, but that back in England the excited developer botched his job in his eagerness, only eleven of the photographs surviving. There are also stories going around that suggest Capa 'sexed up' his account. Read more here.

Film Review: Ike, Countdown to D-Day, 2004

I watched this again, for the second time now, and with a friend this time. We both really enjoyed it. Indeed, we both thought it was really very good.

This almost has the feel of a stage play, as it's mostly focussed on just a few characters in just a few locations. Filmed in New Zealand in an incredibly short time for almost no money (by Hollywood standards), this punches well above its weight. And it makes no real concessions at all to trends in modern mainstream cinema. Instead it's a quietly serious and studious depiction of a very interesting period of history, and how a huge amount of responsibility devolves on one man, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Ike himself.

Selleck re-enacts the famous visit to the 101st Airborne, Greenham Common.

Tom Selleck plays Ike very well indeed. Perhaps the overall portrayal is a tad overly reverential? Well, yes, perhaps it is. But it's quite clearly as much a celebration, as well as a dramatic depiction of Eisenhower, in his role as 'Supreme Commander' of the Allied Expeditionary Forces for Overlord. If you've only seen Selleck as Magnum, P.I. this might be something of a revelation.

The roles of the Englishmen in the film are played by New Zealanders, but you wouldn't know it. And they're played very well, from Churchill to Monty, Stagg (the weatherman!), and even the Royal family. Americans play Americans and, aside from Selleck, there are a few faces I recognise from other films, including a much aged Timothy Bottoms (who I first encountered alongside the mesmerising young Cybil Shepherd in The Last Picture Show), as Bedell Smith.

A lot of the 'action' is in conference, like this scene with weather man Stagg.

Ian Mune is great as Churchill.

There are some historical errors here - one I noticed was in reference to DD as if they were LCT - but there's also a lot they got right. The hagiographical aspect means they leave out any reference to Ike's possible relationship with his driver, Kay Summersby. Her character does appear briefly, but is not develop. She went on to be one his personal secretary, and he wangled rank in the US armed forces and US citizenship for her.

But the main drama revolves around Ike's deliberations over giving the go-ahead for D-day, particularly re his desire to have sole command, due not to egotism so much, at least as portrayed here, but a realisation of the need for clarity and simplicity in the chain of comman. And, perhaps most decisively and importantly, his ability to get competing egos to pull together. It's great to see a serious drama handled so well, and characters like Omar Bradley and Leigh Mallory portrayed in some depth, as opposed to the usual suspects, such as Churchill, Monty and Patton.

Gerald McRaney as Patton, reckons he's played Ike 'like a violin'!

Monty's legendary ego needs assuaging. Ike handles him well.

That said, those three are particularly charismatic, as no doubt they were in real life. And their relations with Ike as portrayed by Selleck are very believable. Monty comes off here better than he often does in books on WWII, perhaps especially books by Americans (mind you, Beevor gives him a panning). De Gaulle on the other hand is portrayed as something of a pompous egotist.

Although 'only' a made for TV film, I absolutely love this movie, and will certainly watch it again. It's good enough to bear repeated viewing. Quietly and seriously reverential about both its human and its historical subjects, whilst not a wham-bam action war-film - indeed, far from it - it is both deeply engaging and even moving. Definitely highly recommended.

Book Review: D-Day, Philip Warner

Philip Warner's superb book is in fact mostly a compendium of accounts by men who took part in the manifold aspects of D-Day. The quality of these correspondent's writings is variable. But the best stuff is absolute gold.

Warner opts to deploy his sources in a chronological-cum-thematic manner, which is good, as we can concentrate on one strand of action at a time, such as airborne drops, or the naval contribution, tanks, infantry, and so on, and thereby see how the bigger picture unfolds through multiple colourful facets, adding up to an exciting kaleidoscopic view of the whole.

Here's a list of the chapter headings:
I  Invasion from the Air: The RAF, the Gliders and the Parachutists
II  The Navies
III  On The Beach - The Sappers and others
IV  The Armoured Corps
V  The Infantry
VI  Marines and Commandos
VII  Intelligence and Signals
VIII  The Medical Services
IX  The Royal Army Service Corps
X  The Canadians
XI  The Royal Artillery
XII  The Chaplains
The French Viewpoint

The above list conveys both the arrangement of the books contents, and the scale and scope of Overlord itself. One thing that consistently emerges from the many vivid and moving testimonies that appear here is awe at the scale of it all. The book appears under a banner for The Telegraph newspaper, as it was in their pages that Warner published a letter asking for survivors of D-Day to contact him.

Philip Warner's own part in the content is quite minimal, consisting of brief introductory remarks for each chapter, and the selection and arrangement of the firsthand testimonies. These are, unsurprisingly having been collected in the U.K., very much weighted towards the British perspective. Americans and Canadians are mentioned in passing (the latter even having their own very brief chapter), but this is an avowedly and unashamedly Anglo-centric account.

What makes this particular book really enjoyable - thrilling, I would say - is the patchwork quilt of very personal stories. These range from the drily formal 'At 06:00 hours, we...' etc, to the very colourfully anecdotal ('we breakfasted on whisky and Mars bars'!). But, whilst none are Pulitzer Prize winning professional journos, the quality is, by and large, superb. Sometimes poignant, often funny, filled with both pride and humility, and replete with fascinating detail, they bring this gargantuan operation vividly to life in a way little else can.

I absolutely loved this book, and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in this most momentous day. In one word: brilliant!