Very few of us in the United States are fully aware — much less fully appreciative — the nature and extent of Canada’s active engagement in World War Two. 

With all due respect to Stephen Ambrose’s D-Day: June 6, 1944, Band of Brothers, and Citizen Soldiers as well as to Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day, what we have here is not a third-party’s analysis of research resources based on information provided by participants in the Normandy Invasion. Rather, and infinitely more valuable, George Blackburn offers an eyewitness account. He was there.

True, no individual could possibly know everything that was happening on June 6th and thereafter, be everywhere along the beaches and later during the advances inland, etc. Blackburn never makes that claim. His purpose, rather, is to allow his reader to accompany him as he and his associates made their way through an understandably messy, confusing, terrifying, and ultimately humbling ordeal.

As indicated in this volume, he possesses all of the skills of a military historian in combination with the talents of a world-class novelist except that what he has produced is eloquent and compelling non-fiction. His writing skills remind me of Yann Martel’s in his brilliant Life of Pi, technically a work of fiction but one in which human experience is elevated to levels of clarity and intensity I am unable to describe.
Blackburn celebrates the human spirit when confronted with seemingly insurmountable obstacles and impossible barriers.

He makes especially effective use of second-person narrative and present tense by which to invest his eyewitness account with both immediacy and authenticity. To the extent possible, he allows his reader to be right there with him as he prepares for and then becomes centrally involved in the largest, most extensive, and most complicated military operation ever undertaken, before or since. Chilling, heart-rending, inspiring, but always credible. Time and again I found myself saying “So THAT is what it was really like.” Otherwise, how would I know? I was eight years old when the Normandy Invasion began.

This volume is one of three in a trilogy which Blackburn wrote inorder to share his personal experiences throughout World War II. (I also highly recommend reading Where the Hell Are the Guns?: A Soldier’s view of the Anxious Years, 1939-44 and The Guns of Victory: A Soldier’s Eye View, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, 1944-45.)

One personal note. Several years ago, it was my great privilege to assist with efforts to raise funds for indigent recipients — NOT “winners” — of the Medal of Honor. I worked with and became close friends with several recipients who were determined to assist comrades who had fallen upon hard times. For various reasons, each was reluctant to discuss his wartime experiences and especially his individual heroism. Although sincerely interested, I never pressed the issue. Now having read The Guns of Normandy, I think I understand their reticence.