Review by Choice Review
In all the accounts of WW II's Normandy invasion, one group of "participants" has been invariably ignored--the Normans themselves. They occasionally appear as "extras" in brief vignettes: the local who appears with champagne to welcome the invaders; the child killed by stray gunfire. Roberts (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison) has moved these civilians--compulsory participants in a war that literally dropped into their lives--to the center of the narrative. They too, paid a high price for liberation: three thousand died on D-Day; some twenty thousand perished in the brutal campaign that followed. Utilizing both regional archives and printed primary sources, Roberts provides fascinating details on the experience of civilians caught up in the defining moment of WW II in the West. The author shows great skill in allowing these eyewitnesses to "speak for themselves," vividly evoking their experiences of the tragedy, the brutality, the destruction, the joy, and the fear that the invasion brought. (After all, they were often in mortal danger themselves.) In its treatment of an often neglected aspect of military history, this will be an attractive acquisition for all collections. --Gary P. Cox, Gordon State College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
