D-Day: Canadian Heroes of the Famous World War II Invasion

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

The Allied liberation armies that landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944,
have been the subject of countless books, and the recent 60th
anniversary of the D-Day landings has produced another round of new
titles. Tom Douglas writes his account of that momentous day’s events
from both a personal and a professional viewpoint. His late father was a
veteran of the landing on Juno Beach (and afterwards made a lifetime
study of it), and Tom has worked for the Veterans Affairs Canada and
written on military matters for several years.

He takes a brisk approach, cramming much information into the small
book that ranges from the mobilization of the Canadian war effort to
gritty combat scenes. Yet Douglas manages to include enough individual
anecdotes to lend colour to the brief narrative.

D-Day would be particularly valuable to young people who come to the
subject with little or no previous knowledge. But it is also
sufficiently detailed to be a useful reference to adults seeking a
clearer understanding of the significant combat role of Canadian army,
navy, and air force personnel in the Allied invasion. The book includes
photographs, useful glossaries of military terms, and a bibliography
that will help translate numerous wartime allusions for readers not
familiar with them.