My Account Wish List
Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.greenwood.com/catalog/C9094.aspx
All Greenwood Products
Destination Normandy Three American Regiments on D-Day
G. H. Bennett
Book Code: C9094
ISBN: 0-275-99094-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-99094-7
248 pages, photos
Praeger Security International General Interest-Cloth
Publication: 11/30/2006
List Price: $49.95 (UK Sterling Price: £27.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Bennett examines the American involvement in the Normandy campaign at the regimental level, focusing on the 22nd Infantry Regiment, which landed on Utah Beach in June 1942 and became involved in a war of siege against German fortifications; the 116th Infantry Regiment, which took heavy casualties in forcing its way off Omaha Beach and breaking through the Nazi's Atlantic Wall; and the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which suffered the worst misdrop of any American parachute regiment and wound up fighting in isolated groups for control of bridges, roads, and dry land in the midst of a vast swampland.
    —Reference & Research Book News     February 2007
Description: Bennett collects oral histories from men of three United States regiments that participated in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment was the most widely scattered of the American parachute infantry regiments to be dropped on D-Day. However, the efforts of 180 men to stop the advance of an SS Panzer Grenadier division largely have been ignored outside of France. The 116th Infantry Regiment received the highest number of casualties on Omaha Beach of any Allied unit on D-Day. Stationed in England through most of the war, it had been the butt of jokes while other regiments did the fighting and dying in North Africa and the Mediterranean; that changed on June 6, 1944. And the 22nd Infantry Regiment, a unit that had fought in almost every campaign waged by the U.S. Army since 1812, came ashore on Utah Beach quite easily before getting embroiled in a series of savage fights to cross the marshland behind the beach and to capture the German heavy batteries to the north. Each participant's story is woven into the larger picture of the assault, allowing Bennett to go beyond the largely personal viewpoints yielded by traditional oral history but avoiding the impersonal nature of studies of grand strategy. In addition to the interviews and memoirs Bennett collected, he also discovered fresh documentary evidence from American, British, and French archives that play an important part in facilitating this new approach, as well as archives in Britain and France. The author unearths new stories and questions from D-Day, such as the massacre of soldiers from the 507th at Graignes, Hemevez, and elsewhere. This new material includes a focus on the regimental level, which is all but ignored by historians, while still covering strategic, tactical, and human issues. His conclusions highlight common misperceptions about the Normandy landings. Questions have already been raised about the wisdom of the Anglo-American amphibious doctrine employed on D-Day. In this study, Bennett continues to challenge the assumption that the operation was an exemplary demonstration of strategic planning.
LC Card Number: 2006025916
LCC Class: D756
Dewey Class: 940
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2008 Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
88 Post Road West, Westport CT 06881, (203) 226-3571