A Traveller's Guide to D-Day and the Battle for Normandy

A Traveller’s Guide to D-Day and the Battle for Normandy covers the period from June to August 1944 when the Allies stormed ashore, fought their way through the bocage country of Normandy, and eventually broke out through the Avranches gap. This title gives comprehensive information about: • Major battles and battlefields • Memorials, sites, cemeteries, and statues • How to get there; what to see • Contemporary eyewitness accounts • Then-and-now photographs and maps The guide helps us understand what it was like to have endured the ordeal of combat. Through their own words, we learn the feelings of those young men and women of many nationalities who fought and died. What were their private thoughts and fears? Their personal memories? Contemporary eyewitness accounts are woven into the fabric of this book, which has immediacy and vividness that marks a new departure in guidebooks.

Carl Shilleto works as a specialist battlefield guide for one of the largest coach tour firms in the UK covering areas such as Normandy, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Oosterbeck, Anzio, Salerno, and Monte Cassino. As a writer, he is a specialist on the Normandy Campaign. His other works include The Fighting Fifty-Second and Pegasus Bridge and the Merville Battery. He also writes frequently for newspapers. Mike Tolhurst is a specialist on the history of the US Army in Europe. His interest in the subject dates back fifty-five years to when his Royal Navy father piloted the craft that landed the US Rangers on Omaha Beach for their attack on the guns of Pointe du Hoc. At their first reunion after the war, the grateful Rangers officially adopted Michael Tolhurst as their mascot—a close association he has enjoyed ever since. Tolhurst is presently the archivist for the Rothschild Bank in London. He has written numerous magazine articles and is also the author of The Battle of the Bulge—First Blood.