D-DAY: MINUTE BY MINUTE

D-DAY: MINUTE BY MINUTE              JONATHAN MAYO
Posted:  Dec. 16, 2014

Told in a purely chronological style, this fascinating account vividly details the authentic stories of regular people caught up in the historical events of D-Day.

June 6, 1944 was a truly historic day, but it was also a day where ordinary people found themselves in extraordinary situations...

Lieutenant Norman Poole jumped from a bomber surrounded by two hundred decoy dummy parachutists. French baker Pierre Cardron led British paratroopers to his local church, where he knew two German soldiers were hiding in the confessional. Southampton telegram boy Tom Hiett delivered his first "death message"; by midday. At the sound of Allied aircraft, Werner Kortenhaus of the twenty-first Panzer Division ran to collect his still damp washing from a French laundrywoman. And injured soldiers wept in their beds in a New York hospital, knowing that their buddies lay dying on the Normandy beaches.

Drawing on memoirs, diaries, letters, and oral accounts, D-Day is a purely chronological narrative, concerned less with the military strategies and more with what people were thinking and doing as D-Day unfolded, minute-by-minute. Moving seamlessly from various perspectives and stories, D-Day sets the reader in the midst of it all, compelling us to relive this momentous day in world history.

HUBBY'S REVIEW:

This book about D-Day, is a fast paced and full of information that I have not read about in any of the other books about this invasion. I have been drawn to WWII books and other military books because my father fought in WWII with the 82nd airborne. Mr. Mayo takes you back and forth between the different sides. American, British, French, Canadian, and German. He does explain also how Polish, and Norwegians, troops also made the landing. Also a Norwegian ship was torpedo during the early morning losing 45 men. That was something that I had never heard about before. You will find out about the German Commander who sank that ship and did it with boats that were similar to our PT-boats of WWII. Mr. Mayo goes into great detail in how the day unfolded, for everyone from the people of France, to the soldiers and to the men behind the scenes. The elaborate ruse to make the Germans think that the invasion was going to take place somewhere else. How most of the high ranking Germans, Rommel being one of them not being there and taking him until night fall to arrive back at his headquarters. How before the invasion and during the invasion not once were there any reports by the German air corps, letting them know any details. Then of course Omaha Beach, which out of all of the landing sites had the highest casualties, the fighting 29, 2,440 and the 1st Division(the Big Red One), 1,744. Most would be killed in the first two hours. You will find out about the role the French Resistance played and how the Gestapo, would kill 69 of them. How the man who would play Scotty, on Star Trek, the T.V. series. This is a very fascinating book with a lot of information that is not found in other books, and is written in a way that is fascinating when put all together. The way the author goes from the beginning of the day to after the day ended in the early morning of the next makes this a fast read. A very good book. I got this book from net galley.