D-DAY - THOSE WHO WERE THERE by Gardiner, Juliet

Collins & Brown, London, 1994. Hardcover w/dj,. 1st Edition. Hardback First Edition in Fine condition; 192 pp with b/w photographs in the text, 7 x 10,numerous illustrations, bibliog, index.-------------------------D-Day: 6 June 1944, the day the Allied troops landed on the Normandy beaches and began the final assault on Hitler's `Fortress Europe'.The logistics of landing almost 250,000 men on a 60-mile stretch of heavily fortified coastline are almost unimaginable. By Whitsun 1944, Britain had begun to resemble a vast military warehouse, with jeeps and trucks parked along what seemed like every road in the south and west of England, tanks ranked in carparks and forecourts, and rows upon rows of bombs stored under tarpaulin in fields — all labelled `Europe'. The roads were jammed with soldiers in transit, all trains were requisitioned for the troops, and women knew that their menfolk 'somewhere in southern England' might be one of that perilous first wave across the Channel.D-Day: Those who Were There is about the impact that the preparations for the invasion of Normandy, and the final assault, had on the lives of the people of Britain — the soldiers, sailors and airmen, and the civilians too, and those in charge of Operation OVERLORD, who knew that the price to be paid in lives for the invasion was going to be a high one.Using their own words wherever possible, D—Day: Those Who Were There, tells the story of the cross-Channel assault by the British, Canadian and American forces — and of the nation that waited.