‘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 code name for a five-mile stretch of seaside land from Ouistreham to Lion-sur-Mer.
“My main purpose is to address relatively little people,” he explains, rather than the “command personalities”. That’s something he does particularly well. He understands the challenges that the ordinary soldier faces, but more importantly understands what he feels.
How time passes. When I started writing about Overlord it was recent history. Now it’s a bygone age. The soldiers have old-fashioned names: Wilf, Len, Reg, Stan, Alf. Short names that evoke stolid simplicity, innocence intertwined with aspiration. They carried into war a set of values that now seems antiquated, including an automatic obeisance to those of loftier birth.
• The 14 best Second World War novels — chosen by William Boyd and Max Hastings
Hastings, for instance, finds the reverence for the swashbuckling Scottish paratroop commander Lord Lovat rather ridiculous, given that he was, by today’s standards, an arse. “To modern eyes, the chieftain totters between meriting ridicule and repugnance.”
The force that landed was a cross-section of British society, consisting mainly of men disinclined towards soldiering. In one glider there sat a Kent toolmaker, an Edinburgh brickie, a Worcestershire kennelman, a Dumfries lorry driver, two regular soldiers, an Irishman and an Austrian Jewish refugee. In charge of the group was a young lieutenant who had previously tramped the boards in a West End musical comedy.
Twenty-nine thousand men landed that day. Big numbers convey the magnitude of the operation, but they smother individuality. Hastings gives these soldiers personalities by describing the things they carried. Almost all stuffed photos into pockets close to their hearts, but more idiosyncratic things distinguish them. Lieutenant Alan Jefferson took a tuning fork and a copy of Hamlet. Signaller Finlay Campbell carried a fountain pen — a gift for his 21st birthday. The commando David Haig-Thomas, previously an explorer, carried a cosh made from the bone of a walrus. Another commando, Keith Wakelam, carried the emotional burden of a failed marriage. Major John Howard brought a child’s tiny red shoe.
Hastings brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose. This makes ubiquitous death all the more painful. Soldiers in every war find myriad ways to die, often ignominiously. One poor bloke decided to sleep under a tank during the crossing. It broke loose and crushed him. A paratrooper struggled to open a jammed floor hatch; when it suddenly gave way, he fell into the Channel. Imagine spending four years training for this invasion only to drown immediately on arrival. “In some cases,” Hastings writes, “the first shots which these … soldiers heard in anger were also the last.”
It’s easy to imagine perfect heroes — a band of brothers. Life, however, seldom conforms to Hollywood tropes. In each unit, Hastings argues, “the good, the bad and the ugly” were present. Strengths and weaknesses were magnified in combat. “A handful of every unit’s officers and men would head the charge; many more would follow their lead; while a cluster of less bold spirits hung behind, flinching before the wrath of the enemy.” Some men simply broke — a rifleman shot off his trigger finger.
These soldiers are drawn with precision, but the combat itself is a roiling mass of confusion. So it should be; battles never conform to plan, clarification is reductive. Hastings adroitly recounts myriad tiny confrontations to create a composite picture of great complexity. Readers who want a crisp, clean deconstruction of the invasion should perhaps search elsewhere. For those who want something messy, dirty, bloody and true, this is the book.
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the Allied Land Force commander, rashly set a goal of capturing Caen, nine miles from Sword, that first day. That was essentially impossible given the strength of German defences. Montgomery’s goal nevertheless became a measure of achievement. For 80 years British soldiers have been criticised for failing to capitalise on the immense logistical achievement that brought them to that beach on June 6.
Hastings admits that deficiencies in training and character did become apparent. “Relatively few of [the] rank and file had conditioned themselves, or been conditioned by their commanders, to shed
their own blood prodigally.” The failure to exploit successes on that first day probably prolonged
the war.
Yet this is where the author’s knowledge yields to his humanity. Armchair generals find condemnation easy. Hastings, a wiser man, understands these men and their predicament. We should, he feels, celebrate their deficiencies. “[They] never matched the professional skills of the best of the German Army, but … had they done so, they would have forfeited the spirit of the democracies, the doctrine of moderation rather than fanaticism, for which the struggle was being fought.”
There’s a reason why medals are given for conspicuous bravery: real courage is exceptional. Those men on Sword Beach were not history’s best soldiers, but it’s unrealistic to expect that of them. “They were,” Hastings concludes, “citizen soldiers, not many of whom aspired to be heroes.” That they craved a life of home and love and family is commendable. Hastings deserves praise for bringing them to life and, more importantly, for understanding them. In the end they should be judged for one “towering reality”: they succeeded and the Germans did not.
Sword: D-Day — Trial by Battle by Max Hastings (William Collins £25 pp400) is published on May 8. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK standard P&P on online orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
