The horrors of modern warfare in Normandy

Unlike the majority of military historians, Antony Beevor wastes little time describing the military planning or the politics leading up to the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Rather, he gets right to the point, and in a fast-paced style akin to a Tom Clancy novel he manages to paint a highly vivid picture of the invasion at ground level.

The reader is right next to the paratrooper as he jumps from the C47 troop carrier, slips in vomit and breaks his ankle as he hits the ground. We share the plight of the American infantry troops heading for Omaha beach as they are lowered into the water in landing crafts, vomiting in their helmets, disoriented by the shockwaves from battleship guns bombarding the beachhead.

Turning military events into a great read is no mean feat, and Beevor deserves praise for striking a fine balance between readability and the necessary substance to render a credible account of military events. Place names, description of terrain and technical terms do not bog down the account.

The Allied invasion of Normandy still has a nostalgic, almost romantic place in the public consciousness, largely thanks to the Hollywood film industry. On a subconscious level we cannot help but compare and be influenced by the typically heroic imagery of the WWII film and the somewhat less heroic imagery often rendered in Vietnam War films. As a result, when we think of WWII we automatically conjure up nostalgic notions of a bygone era filled with unblemished heroes, whereas the American soldiers in Vietnam are seen more as war criminals. Of course, neither picture is true. While the Allied soldiers of WWII should indeed be remembered as real heroes, the nostalgia that surrounds WWII and the rosy picture that is often painted are far from justified.

Crucially, Beevor’s graphic account does not leave out the nasty sides of war. It follows the more truthful trend that has also been replicated in more recent Hollywood films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), which leaves nothing to the imagination in depicting the Omaha beach landings with soldiers drowning, having their limbs blow off, vomiting and walking aimlessly around on the beach in a state of shock. Likewise Band of Brothers (2001) is not afraid to show unlawful and revengeful killings or trophy hunting and excellently conveys the claustrophobic experience of bocage fighting (small fields enclosed by hedgerows). This is a great antidote to the sanitary imagery of old-school Hollywood productions such as The Longest Day (1962) where the violence of war is limited to John Wayne breaking his ankle as he is dropped above St-Marie du Mont (82nd Airborne Division).

Beevor’s account also deserves praise for placing events in their rightful perspective. Violent as the fighting undeniably was at Omaha, the imagery rendered in Hollywood films has turned this particular event into an American legend and blown it somewhat out of proportion. In fact 1,465 American soldiers were killed during the first 24 hours of fighting compared to 3,000 French civilians killed within the first 24 hours of the invasion (largely as a result of Allied bombardment). Allied casualties during the landings were in fact smaller than anticipated. Total Allied losses between June and August amounted to 225,000 casualties, while the Germans lost 240,000.

A topic that has been neglected in most Hollywood films is unlawful killings committed by Allied soldiers. Although hinted at in dream-like sequences in Band of Brothers, unlawful killings of prisoners of war began the very first day Allied soldiers set foot on French soil and continued throughout the campaign. And it was not just in the heat of the moment that Allied soldiers committed unlawful killings. In one recorded incidence injured American paratroopers killed a few Germans on the way to England as they were being evacuated on the same LST vessel as the German prisoners.

By shedding a more critical light on the Allied war effort during World War II, Beevor belongs to a new breed of British historians who – without being an out-and-out revisionist or questioning our indebtedness to the Allied soldiers – have nevertheless begun to challenge the public perception of the Allied war effort being one of irreproachable heroism. In emphasising the Allies’ indiscriminate area bombing of German cities and describing it as mass slaughter, Niall Ferguson in The War of the World (2006) argues that WW II was not a simple war of good against evil but a war of evil against lesser evil.