A Times and Waterstones Book of the Year
On 6 June 1944, when the Allied armies landed on D-Day, the Second World War had already lasted almost five years. Yet many of the British and American troops who invaded Normandy were virgin soldiers, never before committed to battle. They quit England in summertime to face within hours a storm of machine-gun and mortar fire — scenes of sudden death that no exercise had prepared them for.
In Sword, veteran chronicler of war Max Hastings explores with extraordinary vividness the actions of the Commando brigade and Montgomery's 3rd Infantry and 6th Airborne divisions on and around a single beach. He describes their frustrations, hopes, loves and fears through the years of training in England, then their triumphs and tragedies on the beach and beyond — including the airborne assaults on the Caen Canal bridge and Merville Battery.
The book also offers a searching analysis of why British troops did not reach Caen on 6 June as Montgomery had promised Churchill, and features a host of personal portraits from Commando leader Lord Lovat to the humbler participants to whom extraordinary things happened.
'The messy, dirty, bloody reality of Operation Overlord comes alive in Sword. Hastings brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose' — The Times