D-Day to Carpiquet: The North Shore Regiment and the Liberation of Europe.

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

The North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment is little known today; seldom mentioned even in official accounts of Canadians in the Second World War. Yet the NSR’s heroic front-line achievements during the early days of the liberation of Normandy deserve far more recognition. Now, at last, proper homage is paid to the regiment in this authoritatively written study by well-known military historian Marc Milner.

The NSR was an unassuming outfit, composed of sturdy farmers, fishermen, lumber cutters, and mill hands, who made ideal infantry soldiers. After three years of training in Britain, the North Shore Regiment landed on Juno Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and fought their way inland. Milner includes many personal accounts of combat experiences, which vividly convey the soldiers’ bravery in face of carnage.

Clear maps help the reader to follow descriptions of various actions during this short but costly campaign. Over 200 NSR men were killed or wounded during the bloody battle for the village of Carpiquet that lasted just six days, and became known thereafter as the “regiment’s graveyard.”

The book includes numerous photographs of regiment members, often identified by name. Another photographic feature is the inclusion of stills from film footage of the regiment’s D-Day landing, printed on successive pages that can be “played” in motion by fanning them from front to back.