Sand & Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France

Sand & Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France by Peter Caddick-Adams

"Tuesday 6 June 1944 was a day like no other." So begins this history of D-Day, published on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. It was a day like no other with good reason. The invasion of Normandy by Allied forces was perhaps the greatest and most consequential military operation of modern times, heralding the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe. Its hold on the imagination remains no less commanding than when news of it first broke.

Yet despite the extensive number of books and films on D-Day across the decades, doing justice even to the events of that one day poses huge challenges. Most have viewed it through either too mythic or too narrow a lens -- focusing on a particular operation, nationality, outfit, or individual. American, British, and Canadian troops were dropped from the air or landed from thousands of vessels on five beaches that were operation Neptune and Overlord's designated targets. Those who disembarked on Juno confronted a world apart from those scaling the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc or clawing their way up the sands of Omaha. The operation to gain a foothold in Europe depended on a complex and shifting array of contingencies: disposition of German troops and their degree of preparation behind uneven defenses; the movement of the weather.

Peter Caddick-Adams has walked nearly every inch of the Cotentin Peninsula and spent years interviewing veterans and eye-witnesses. Sand and Steel is an account in full of D-Day, one whose terrible velocity builds with each minute. Beginning in the months of preparation and its momentous impact on the island nation, he portrays a Britain steeling itself for an invasion it had put off as long as possible. He depicts a France bracing for impact. He gives a thorough and clear-eyed assessment of German readiness behind the Atlantikwall.

At the heart of this magisterial, immersive, and deeply humane book are the beaches and landing zones and those whose fate it was either to take or defend them. Capturing the full extent of D-Day is beyond the reach of any one account, but Sand and Steel (in its approximately 900 pages) comes closer than anything attempted to this point. Sand and Steel does what justice can be done for June 6, 1944, that day like no other.

Oxford University Press, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2019