The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day
by Cornelius Ryan

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Book Reviews of The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

Book Review: The Day for which the World Waited Four Years
Summary: 5 Stars

As Ryan ably demonstrates, the Allies' success on D-Day was, in fact, the result of thousands of acts of individual achievement and heroism. Like the glider-borne troops who landed behind enemy lines during the night and seized key roads and bridges to prevent German reinforcements from reaching the five invasion beaches; the paratroopers whose radios, bazookas, mortars, and ammunition landed in marshes and had to be retrieved by diving into the chilly water before they could proceed to their objectives; and the 120 underwater demolition experts who landed on the beaches first to clear paths through minefields and obstacles for the waves of assault troops who followed.

There are many moments of life-and-death struggle. At the end of the book, Ryan includes a short "Note on Casualties," in which he writes that American casualties during the 24-hour period of the assault totaled 6,603 killed, wounded, missing, and captured, which seems remarkably low considering the vast size of the invasion. Nevertheless, each death was a personal tragedy. According to Ryan, the Germans "had organized a bloody welcome for the Allied troops." The overnight airborne operation, which involved 13,000 American paratroopers, was successful but at considerable cost. Many paratroopers landed far from their drop zones. The lucky ones just had a long walk to get where they were supposed to be. But Ryan reports that the Germans had flooded large expanses of low-lying farmland and countryside surrounding the coast, and a number of unlucky paratroopers landed in the water and drowned. The landings on the beaches were equally perilous. Ryan writes: "Seasick men, already exhausted by the long hours spent on the transports and in the assault boats, found themselves fighting for their lives in water which was often over their heads." In one company landing on Omaha Beach, "[l]ess than a third of the men survived the bloody walk from the boats to the edge pf the beach." In one force of Rangers assigned to assault a 100-foot-high cliff, only 90 of the original 225 were still able to bear arms at the end of the day.

Ryan's approach is essentially journalistic, but the events he records occasionally inspire him to wax poetic. About the British Second Army, Ryan writes: "They were assaulting not just beaches but bitter memories - memories of Munich and Dunkirk, of one hateful and humiliating retreat after another, of countless devastating bombing raids, of dark days when they had stood alone. With them were the Canadians with a score of their own to settle for the bloody losses at Dieppe. And with them, too, were the French, fierce and eager on this homecoming morning." But, sometimes, all Ryan needs to do is report the facts. At the end of the day, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the commander of the German defenses, is asked: "Sir, do you think we can drive them back?" and he responds, "I hope we can. I've always succeeded up to now." In fact, Ryan writes: "From this day on the Third Reich had less than one year to live."

In some respects, this book is a curious account of a massive, unprecedented battle whose success depended largely upon organization and planning at the command level. Ryan devotes only a few pages to the Allies' remarkable logistical preparations for the invasion by 200,000 men with massive amounts of equipment and to the Germans' equally-clever, if ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to prevent a successful landing. Indeed, most of Ryan's narrative takes the form of a series of relatively short vignettes of the experiences of individuals, officers and enlisted men, Allied and German, on this momentous day. Other books about D-Day, such as John Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris and Stephen E. Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II are more comprehensive. But it is inconceivable that any student of World War II can have a full appreciation of what happened on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 without reading Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day.

Summary of The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

THE CLASSIC ACCOUNT OF THE ALLIED INVASION OF NORMANDY

The Longest Day is Cornelius Ryan's unsurpassed account of D-Day, a book that endures as a masterpiece of military history. In this compelling tale of courage and heroism, glory and tragedy, Ryan painstakingly recreates the fateful hours that preceded and followed the massive invasion of Normandy to retell the story of an epic battle that would turn the tide against world fascism and free Europe from the grip of Nazi Germany.

This book, first published in 1959, is a must for anyone who loves history, as well as for anyone who wants to better understand how free nations prevailed at a time when darkness enshrouded the earth.

France Books

• Subjects > History > Europe > France
• Military > World War II
• Military Science