D-Day: Juno Beach, Canada's 24 Hours of Destiny

Paul Dickson is a strategic analyst at the Directorate of Air Strategic
Plans, National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa.

This companion piece to the documentary of the same name marks the 60th
anniversary of D-Day. Both book and documentary are the result of an
oral history project that was prompted by the imminence of the
anniversary and designed to “let the men tell the story” of the
Canadian experience of D-Day. In keeping with the title, selected
interviews are used to present the experience on an hour-by-hour basis.
The main theme is that D-Day was a pivotal event for the men involved
and for Canada; the participants played a critical role in ensuring the
successful outcome of that day, and neither they nor those who gave
their lives should be forgotten. The book, a self-described “pictorial
archive,” is generously illustrated and includes a good section
devoted to the new Juno Beach Centre, a useful glossary describing the
equipment and weapons used in the landings, and a less-than-useful
bibliography.

As an illustrated oral history account, D-Day reflects the strengths
and weaknesses of that genre. The contextual pieces used to tie the
accounts together are generally solid, although not consistently; the
potted analysis of the reasons for the failure at Dieppe or the reasons
for a German defensive strategy in 1944 are good examples of the
problems with the analysis and the contextual narrative. The book is not
a useful stand-alone introduction to the D-Day invasions and needs to be
read in conjunction with other studies of D-Day.

That said, D-Day doesn’t purport to be an interpretive work. It is a
commemorative volume and, as such, does provide a useful compendium of
first-hand accounts, which are generally representative, sometimes
insightful, and always moving.