Mark Bowden is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of the best-selling Black Hawk Down. A staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer for 20 years, he lives in Pennsylvania.
Stephen E. Ambrose is a distinguished historian and the author of many best-selling books about World War II, including Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers. He lives in New Orleans.
Ever since Stephen Ambrose's D-Day stormed the best-seller lists in
1994, a wave of books on the subject has followed.
One of the latest, Our Finest Day: D-Day, June 6, 1944, offers
something new: "removable artifacts," copies from the National
D-Day Museum in New Orleans, that aim to put the battle right in
readers' hands.
One page holds part of a pocket guide to France that was issued to
all the troops - with reminders such as "You are a guest of
France." A folder marked "top secret" holds the battle plan for an
infantry division. A small piece of paper contains Gen. Dwight
Eisenhower's famous "Orders of the Day" that told participants,
"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we
have striven these many months."
The 30 pages are filled with photos. Author Mark Bowden, who also
wrote Black Hawk Down, here gives a complete if cursory overview of
the day that turned the tide of World War II.
Even with an introduction by Mr. Ambrose, the book would run the
risk of adding up to a gimmick - were it not for its inclusion of
blood-saturated first-person accounts from combatants, such as this
one from Pvt. William Marshall:
"I could not avoid stepping over bodies as I ran down the
beach...Bodies, strewn from the water's edge to the dune line,
rested in every imaginable position and every condition of
integrity. Some were isolated, others in groups. They represented
every rank and grade from private to colonel, impressing the
youthful mind that in death all were brought to the same level of
earthly value."
More than any "removable artifact," such descriptions bring to
life, the horrors of the battle - and remind readers why the nation
honors those people who willingly endured it. -The Dallas Morning
News
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