The Americans at D-Day

by John C. McManus

2013 · Macmillan + ORM

This WWII history delivers "a definitive account" of D-Day as seen through the eyes of American soldiers on the frontlines (Thomas Fleming). June 6, 1944, marked the beginning of the most climactic and decisive phase of World War II in Europe. Those who survived the intense fighting on the Normandy beaches found their lives irreversibly changed. The day ushered in a great change for the United States as well, because on D-Day, America began its march to the forefront of the Western world. In the first of two volumes on the American contribution to the Allied victory at Normandy, John C. McManus vividly chronicles the American experience in the weeks leading up to D-Day and on the great day itself. From the build-up in England to the night drops of airborne forces behind German lines and the landings on the beaches at dawn, from the famed figures of Eisenhower, Bradley, and Lightnin' Joe Collins to the courageous, but little-known privates who fought so bravely, this is the story of the American experience at D-Day. With extensive archival research, and the use of hundreds of firsthand accounts, McManus delivers a gripping narrative history that examines what the battles at Utah and Omaha Beaches were really like, and what drove American soldiers to fight—and triumph—despite all adversity.