In the early hours of 6 June 1944, the allies launched the greatest amphibious assault of the second world war. Assisted by bombers and airborne troops, Operation Neptune, the first phase of Overlord, was the precursor to a campaign intended to drive the Germans out of France and the Low Countries. The attack took place during a brief break in unseasonally bad weather. Antony Beevor begins his account of this now almost mythic narrative five days earlier, by describing the head of the allied weather forecasting team, James Stagg, receiving a broadside from General Harold Bull, assistant chief of staff to the supreme commander, Dwight D Eisenhower. Stagg's meteorologists could not agree whether the weather for the invasion, originally planned for 5 June and various dates in May, would be suitable:
"For heaven's sake, Stagg," Bull exploded. "Get it sorted out by tomorrow morning before you come to the supreme commander's conference. General Eisenhower is a very worried man."
One of the many strengths of Beevor's book is his presentation of the nervous but philosophic personality of Eisenhower in the face of the "appalling responsibility" of deciding at what point he should trust the views of these meteorologists and give the order to go (in the event, a "very great risk" was taken with the weather, as Churchill said later in parliament). But although many other characters are equally well portrayed, from Churchill himself to US generals Bradley - with his specs and "hayseed expression" - and Patton, famous for his profanity, to Montgomery with his terseness and conceit, and De Gaulle with his arrogance and his long arms, it is the personal narratives of ordinary servicemen that drive this book.
This is the same approach Beevor took in his justly acclaimed Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall and other books. Once again a gripping narrative is the result. But with D-Day he was faced with a great problem, in that many more writers have tackled the subject previously. What has he found new that Chester Wilmot, John Keegan (under whom Beevor studied), Max Hastings and Carlo D'Este didn't?
Though it is hard to match Hastings's Overlord in particular, the fact is that Beevor has indeed added to the account. Accruing greater detail, he has made use of overlooked and new material from more than 30 archives in half a dozen countries. His skill with German archives (a former Hussars officer, he served in the British Army of the Rhine) is especially evident. He addresses controversies in military history - were the British in Normandy tired out from fighting elsewhere? How badly were the Canadians led? Was Montgomery a hero or a hindrance? - and other questions with balance and judgment. The main reasons for allied success are pinpointed as the speed of advance by US motorised divisions and Hitler's refusal to allow a flexible defence.
The pleasure of this book lies in the vividness of an episodic narrative, backed up by judicious use of quotation. Moving from the weather drama to surveillance of the assault beaches, to individual accounts of each beach, to the breakout for Paris, the action never lets up. Beevor follows personalities from one location to another. One moment we are with Captain Scott-Bowden swimming ashore from a midget submarine to Omaha Beach to take a soil sample, armed only with a commando knife, a Colt .45 and an auger, the next we are seeing him make his report to an intimidating room full of generals back in Whitehall: "Sir, I hope you don't mind me saying but this beach is a very formidable proposition indeed and there are bound to be tremendous casualties." So it would prove, with the ramps of landing craft dropping and German machine guns opening fire so that "men were tumbling just like corn cobs off a conveyor belt".
Many of the assault troops knew this was to be their fate, not least because their officers kept telling them so. Beevor is very good on how heavily the burden of premonition weighed on men. A large number took their minds off what lay ahead with frenetic betting, first with dubious-looking invasion money (une fausse monnaie as De Gaulle sneeringly called it), then with saved dollars and pound notes. Other eve of battle rituals included shaving heads, with some Americans deciding "to leave a strip of hair down the middle in Mohican style". This contributed to the German idea that US troops were recruited from Sing-Sing.
The Germans themselves are fairly treated throughout, with a proper view of the difference between those who retained a moral sense and those in whom it had long disappeared. There is a wonderful vignette of an old, one-legged, one-eyed Prussian general called Erich Marcks refusing whipped cream at dinner: "I do not wish to see this again as long as our country is starving." Equally, there are many depictions of the brutality of retreating SS troops.
A former novelist (it is now often forgotten that before concentrating on his historical work in the 1990s, this author published four works of fiction), Beevor is very good on what might in a novel or film be called the kitbag scene, in which equipment is assembled, in this case in preparation for jumping from the C-47 aircraft that would deliver paratroopers to the assault zone: "Dog tags were taped together to prevent them making a noise. Cigarettes and lighters, together with other essentials, such as a washing and shaving kit, water-purifying tablets, 24 sheets of toilet paper and a French phrase book, went into the musette bag slung around the neck, along with an escape kit consisting of a map printed on silk, hacksaw blade, compass and money."
This was only a tiny part of the burden that airborne troops carried. Once weapons and other equipment were taken into account, they often needed help to get up the steps of the planes, "almost like knights in armour trying to mount their horses".
Such a telling phrase is typical, whether it relates to grand strategy (on the eve of invasion "Churchill sent a signal to Stalin with the feeling that the blood debt which the western allies owed the Soviet people was being paid at last") or to domestic feeling on the home front once the assault was under way: "People in their nightclothes went out into their gardens to stare up at the seemingly endless air armada silhouetted against the scudding clouds. 'This is it' was their instinctive thought."
Landing in thickly hedged country known as bocage, often separated from their units, paratroopers resorted in vain to artificial duck calls or cheap children's "clickers" (familiar from the film The Longest Day). Many planes were flying too low, and those paratroopers who had landed successfully witnessed the sickening sound of bodies hitting the ground around them, which they compared to "watermelons falling off the back of a truck".
As well as the grotesque, there were moments of comedy, such as when an allied soldier asked a French farmer "Ou es Alamon?" "He shrugged and pointed north, then south, east and west." Against these humorous moments must be set strange ones, such as watching heavy shells fired from offshore battleships create a vacuum in their wake, causing the water to "rise up and follow the shells in and then drop back into the sea". And, of course, there are many pictures of horror, including a description of cleaning human remains from the inside of a tank with a mess tin and spoon.
The last third of the book is concerned mainly with the rush to Paris, which was not in the original plan for the campaign. It is almost impossible for a reader not to get caught up in the excitement. The historian must always make a choice between the work of depiction and the work of analysis. Even though Beevor is well capable of the latter, we should be glad he has chosen the former. By doing so he has overleaped the barrier of hindsight, getting us as near as possible to experiencing what it was like to be there, that fateful summer, 65 years ago.
Giles Foden's Turbulence is published next week by Faber. Antony Beevor is at the Hay festival today.
