Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944

by Joseph Balkoski

Overview

Balkoski's depiction of 'Bloody Omaha' is the literary accompaniment to the white-knuckle Omaha Beach scene that opens Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. -- John Hillen, New York Post

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811741194
Publisher:	Stackpole Books
Publication date:	05/18/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	129,662
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Joseph Balkoski is Command Historian of the Maryland National Guard and author of Omaha Beach (978-0-8117-3376-2), Utah Beach (978-0-8117-3377-9), and the classic Beyond the Beachhead (978-0-8117-3237-6). He has appeared as a D-Day expert on MSNBC, and his work has been praised by Joe Scarborough, the New York Post, the Washington Times, World War II magazine, and others. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
Chapter 1.	The End of the Beginning	1
Chapter 2.	Realism, Not Pessimism	15
Chapter 3.	Festung Europa	33
Chapter 4.	Fortune Favors the Bold	52
Chapter 5.	The Greatest Show on Earth	71
Chapter 6.	Forlorn Hope	97
Chapter 7.	The Momentous Now	110
Chapter 8.	Clear the Way	140
Chapter 9.	Bullets like Rain	157
Chapter 10.	Move or Die	191
Chapter 11.	Everyone an Infantryman	237
Chapter 12.	Beyond the Beach	267
Chapter 13.	A Full Measure of Devotion	307
Chapter 14.	To Rest or to Die	329
Appendix I	Allied Casualties on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944	350
Appendix II	Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross Awards for Valor on Omaha Beach	353
Appendix III	U.S. Army and U.S. Navy First-Wave Units on Omaha Beach	362
Appendix IV	Composition of Typical Assault Boat Team, 16th and 116th Infantry	367
Appendix V	Uniform and Equipment of Boat Team Leader, 16th and 116th Infantry	370
	Notes	372
	Bibliography	393
	Acknowledgments	398
	Index	404

Editorial Reviews

Balkoski (Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Division in Normandy) makes officer and enlisted-men's first-person testimony the center of this account, with light contextualization in between, along with 34 b&w photos and 27 maps. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Each decennial anniversary of the Normandy landings has produced its own recounting of this momentous event in World War II. Although written soon after the war, Gordon Harrison's Cross-Channel Attack (1951) remains the starting point for all future accounts, and Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day (1959), which was followed by the Darryl F. Zanuck film, wonderfully popularized the story. In the early 1980s, John Keegan's magisterial Six Armies in Normandy (1982) set a new standard for scholarship, followed a decade later by an equally valuable telling by Stephen Ambrose with his D-Day: June 6, 1944 : The Climactic Battle of World War II (1994). Recently, Russell Hart provided an updated rendering with Clash of Arms: How the Allies Won in Normandy (2001). The Balkoski study is quite good and certainly compares favorably with Adrian Lewis's Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory (2001). Balkoski (Beyond the Beachhead) has skillfully blended first-person accounts with a well-researched narrative of what happened on that fateful morning and an artful sprinkling of detailed maps. Bastable's Voices from D-Day, however, is a patchwork of interviews and reminiscences interspersed with historical narrative, which reflects his journalistic background but does not break much new ground historiographically. Most libraries would benefit from the Balkoski volume, but only the largest need to consider Bastable's. Ed Goedeken, State Univ. Lib., Ames, IA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"This is probably the best book ever written about Omaha Beach."

Stone & Stone Second World War Books - Bill Stone