Description:

EDITORIAL REVIEW: From the author of "D-Day" and "Band of Brothers" comes the story of the ordinary soldiers in Northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bittersweet days of the war. It opens at 00:01 hours, June 7, 1944 on the Normandy Beaches and ends at 02:45 hours, May 7, 1945. In between comes the battles in the hedgerows of Normandy; the breakout of Saint-Lo, the Falaise gap; Patton tearing through France; the liberation of Paris; the attempt to leap the Rhine in operation Market-Garden; the near-miraculous German recovery; the battles around Metz and in the Huertgen Forest; the Battle of the Bulge; the capture of the bridge at Remagen; and ends with the overunning of Germany. From the enlisted men and junior officers, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from those on both sides of the war. The experience of these citizen soldiers reveals the ordinary sufferings and hardships of war. They overcame their fear and inexperience, the mistakes of their high command and their enemy, to win the war.