05-05-2025
Max Hastings tells the tale of the extraordinary, ordinary men of D-Day
'We were eager. We were fit. And we were totally innocent.' So wrote Sandy Smith, a Cambridge blue turned paratrooper. 'My idea was that everyone was going to be incredibly brave with drums beating and bands playing and I was going to be bravest among the brave.'
Expectations were high on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when Operation Overlord was launched, probably too high. Judged by those expectations, the day was a disappointment. Judged more realistically, it was a stunning success.
Max Hastings first wrote about the Allied invasion of Normandy in his massive tome Overlord, a conventional top-down war book published in 1984. This new book accords with recent historiographical trends; it's about individual soldiers, in particular the British who attacked Sword Beach, the
