This note in Peter Caddick-Adams’s massive study, “Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasions and the Liberation of France,” provides evidence that our research has begun to affect the field of military history as well. […]
This note in Peter Caddick-Adams’s massive study, “Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasions and the Liberation of France,” provides evidence that our research has begun to affect the field of military history as well. […] With Operation Fortitude South in mind, should we consider the possibility that SHAEF’s system-within-a-system for retrieval of civilian press coverage of the D-Day invasion did not in fact fail, but instead operated exactly as it was intended to do? […] Bob Landry’s landing film was not lost, nor is it missing. It’s right before our eyes. We don’t recognize it as such because we expect his first film to show scenes from D-Day. But there is no Landry film from D-Day, for the simple reason that, apparently, he did not land on D-Day. Certainly there is no evidence that he did. […] Film that did make it off the beach and back to London had to face two additional obstacles. First, would the censors pass it? The second obstacle was perhaps the most daunting: would anyone care about the images? […] In place of the established myth, with its enticing melodrama, I supplied an alternative tale with its own attractions, a complex skein of personal and interpersonal motivations: camaraderie, fear, failure, guilt, self-protection, white lies. No less rewarding, I’d like to think, just in a different way. […] |