EVERY BOOK HAS a point of departure – the moment when initial enthusiasm is transformed into words on a page. In the case of this particular book, there were two points of departure and they were separated in time by more than four decades. I was just seven years old – it was 1973 – when my parents first took me to the Normandy beaches.
Amid the tufted sand dunes of the Allied landing beaches, I clambered through the ruins of gigantic concrete bunkers, their backs broken, their roofs staved in, their gloomy interiors half swamped by drifting sand. This was a land of giants – at least it was in the imagination of a child – and it was endlessly absorbing. I returned to England with a gnarled twist of barbed wire, a rusting vestige of Field Marshal Rommel’s Atlantic Wall.
Years later in 1994, while working as a journalist for one of Britain’s national newspapers, I interviewed French civilians for a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day: the most memorable of these interviews was a long afternoon spent with the cyclist-spy Guillaume Mercader. Further journalistic assignments followed in 2004 and 2014. But it was only as the seventy-fifth anniversary loomed that a hitherto half-formed project began to coalesce into this present book.
D-Day: The Soldiers’ Story could not have been written without the advice, support and expertise of archivists in a number of different countries. In England, I am most grateful to Andrew Whitmarsh of Portsmouth’s D-Day Museum for generously allowing me access to the archives at the very time when the museum was embarking on a wholesale redevelopment. These archives include (among many others) the research papers of Russell Miller’s excellent Nothing Less than Victory: The Oral History of D-Day (1993). I am grateful indeed to the author for taking the time to meet with me and for allowing me to quote from his research material.
The largest repository of British veterans’ interviews is housed in the Imperial War Museum, where I spent many long hours. Thank you to the excellent archivists who helped to locate documents, diaries and audio-tapes. Another excellent source of information was the Second World War Experience Centre in West Yorkshire. I am grateful to Anne Wickes for her help while I was working there.
A warm thank you to the staff at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives in London for their help and for granting permission to quote extracts from the handwritten diary of Cliff Morris of 6 Commando. I am also grateful to Pen and Sword Books for allowing me to quote from The Pegasus Diaries: The Private Papers of Major John Howard DSO and The Devil’s Own Luck: Pegasus Bridge to the Baltic 1944–45 by Denis Edwards. Thank you, too, to Sheil Land Associates for permitting me to quote from John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy. Mention must also be made of Bob Hunt, who runs the excellent Portsdown Tunnels website: http://www.portsdown-tunnels.org.uk.
In America I am deeply grateful to Toni Kiser, Assistant Director for Collections Management of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, where I spent many long days researching the book. The museum’s huge archive collection, much of it collected by the late Stephen Ambrose, is a unique resource, and I am gratified to have been welcomed into the offices for the duration of my visit. Also in New Orleans, I am grateful for the help I received from John Biguenet of Loyola University.
A big thank you, too, to Sara Harrington, Head of Arts and Archives at Ohio University Libraries, for giving me unrestricted access to the monumental Cornelius Ryan archive. Ryan interviewed hundreds of veterans for his 1959 book, The Longest Day, including many German soldiers and commanders: a large number of these personal testimonies were not used in his finished book. An equal thank you to the Cornelius Ryan estate for allowing me to quote extracts from this extensive collection.
Thank you to the ever helpful archivists and staff of the National Archives in Washington DC for helping to locate hard-to-find documents. Also in America, I must make a special mention of author Vince Milano for generously allowing me to quote extracts from his interviews with the young German soldier, Karl Wegner. ‘Karl,’ he said, ‘would be honoured to know that his story is going to be in your book.’ I am no less honoured at having been allowed to use it.
I am delighted to have corresponded with Julian ‘Bud’ Rice, whose extraordinary role in the US paratroop landings at Sainte-Mère-Église is featured in this book. A warm thank you, also, to Thomas S. Colones, for his assistance with the story of Malcolm Brannen, as well as for sharing the many video interviews he has made with American veterans.
I am deeply grateful to Kevin McKernon for his help with the accounts of survivors from USS Corry. Mr McKernon is an expert on the sinking of the ship and runs the excellent website http://www.uss-corry-dd463.com.
For help with the story of the Canadian landings, thank you to Marie Eve Vaillancourt who, at the time of my researches, was working as History Department Manager at Centre Juno Beach. Thank you, also, to Mark Zuehlke, authority on the Canadians on D-Day and author of many excellent books and articles.
Still in Canada, I would particularly like to thank George Vanderburgh, the publisher of We Were There, Jean Portugal’s magnificent seven-volume compendium of interviews with 750 Canadian veterans, published by the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. Mr Vanderburgh told me: ‘I am confident that the shade of Jean Portugal would be pleased that her writings be shared with as many readers as possible.’ I hope so – and I am grateful to him for making them available to me.
In France, sincere thanks are due to Marie-Claude Berthelot, historian and archivist at the excellent Memorial de Caen. Not only did she locate much valuable French archival material, but she also made scores of photographic copies of this documentation. Thank you also to Jean-François Couriol, secretary-general of the Centre d’Études René-Nodot pour la Mémoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation for allowing me to quote from interviews with André Héricy and Robert le Nevez.
A particular thank you to French journalist Annick Cojean, who originally interviewed Eva Eifler in 1994, and to Le Monde for allowing me to quote extracts in my book. Also, to Sonia Stolper for helping with contacts in the world of French journalism; and to the staff of Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale, who tracked down some rare and little-known volumes.
A serendipitous encounter in a Cherbourg restaurant led to an unexpected resource. Marie-Claude Philippart proved a fount of knowledge about D-Day from a French perspective: it transpired that she had worked in the Caen archives and was generous enough to present me with a veritable mini-library of locally published French books about the landings, as viewed by Normandy civilians. Thank you, too, for the help received from the webmaster of the excellent French-language Omaha beach website – http://omaha-vierville.com – who wishes to remain anonymous.
The Normandy branch of Atout, the French national tourist board, has been unfailingly helpful with travel and logistics: special thanks to Fran Lambert, press officer, for her constant support. Thank you also to Frank Barrett and Wendy Driver of the Mail on Sunday. I am also extremely grateful to Sue Ockwell and Noel Josephides for their generous hospitality in Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue and for introducing me to their venerable neighbour, Yvonne Marie.
I have visited all the Normandy beach museums during the course of the research and met many curators: thank you to one and all for sparing your time and sharing your knowledge. Thank you, also, to Ulm Activities for flying me over the Normandy beaches.
For German source material outside the Ryan collection, thank you to Michael Strong for allowing me to quote from his book Steiner’s War: The Merville Battery; to staff of the Bundesarchiv, Berlin, and to the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiberg. A special mention must go to my late German father-in-law, Wolfram Aïchele, who was serving as a Morse code operator in the 77th Infantry Division on D-Day. His candid accounts of life in the Wehrmacht while serving on the front line in Normandy provided a counterpoint to the Allied view of the landings.
I have received the support and advice of a number of people in London and elsewhere. Special mention goes to Roland Philipps; to Jan Henrik Jebsen; to the staff of the British Library; the ever helpful librarians of the London Library, where much of this book was written; and to John McNally for kindly reading the typescript.
I thank my literary agent, Georgia Garrett, for first seeing the book’s potential; my Swiss-French publisher, Vera Michalski-Hoffman, for her unfailing loyalty and for acquiring the French rights long before I had finished the book; and my American editor, Stephen Morrison, for his sharp eye and excellent editorial advice.
A sincere thank you is due to Nick Davies, my editor at John Murray, for his invaluable editorial input, along with the ever helpful advice of Joe Zigmond. Thank you indeed to the whole John Murray team: Caroline Westmore, Sara Marafini, Yassine Belkacemi, Emma Petfield, Diana Talyanina, Megan Schaffer, Morag Lyall, Howard Davies, Douglas Matthews and Juliet Brightmore.
Lastly, an unreserved thank you to my family: this D-Day project has been, in no small part, a family affair. To my mother-in-law, Barbara Aïchele, for assisting with German research; to my daughters Héloïse and Aurélia, who have borne my obsessiveness with patience; to my eldest daughter, Madeleine, who translated all the French texts into English; to my wife, Alexandra, who likewise translated all the German texts. She was the first to read the manuscript – my literary guinea-pig – and the first to give me advice. I am profoundly grateful.
There were many bright moments while writing this book: walking the empty Normandy beaches in the first light of dawn was one of the highlights. But even on the most sparkling of days, it was impossible not to be aware of the scenes of heroism and human tragedy that unfolded here all those years before. This was where lives were lost – and freedom won. My final thank you, heartfelt and unreserved, is to all who served.