Going once more onto the beach with private perspectives on D-Day.
The New Zealand poet Denis Glover took his gramophone to war. Indeed, on the wild, grey morning of June 6, 1944 – D-Day – as the then Royal Navy lieutenant commanded a landing craft through a choppy English Channel, the mad bugger used that gramophone to play “the robust music of an English hunting song” to the seasick British commandos he was about to drop on a beach in Normandy.
Music hath charms to provoke the savage breast, perhaps? In any case, this extraordinary scene – unexpected, funny, and arriving on page 276 – is just the sort of detail occupying nearly every paragraph of Giles Milton’s unexpectedly cracking, sometimes funny, often tragic and entirely redolent new book, D-Day: The Soldiers’ Story.
Of course, you’ll be wondering: why in the world do we need yet another history of what’s always billed as “the greatest invasion in history”? I’m entirely inclined to agree.
Esta historia es de la edición January 5 - 11 2019 de New Zealand Listener.
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Esta historia es de la edición January 5 - 11 2019 de New Zealand Listener.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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