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REVIEW BY NICK HEWITT
Sometimes books teach us something new, but sometimes they inspire us to reconsider something that we thought we understood. Historian and archaeologist Stephen Fisher’s excellent debut work Sword Beach falls in the latter category. The number of people still alive who actually experienced Operation Neptune, codename for the assault phase of Operation Overlord, which began with D-Day on 6 June 1944, is diminishing by the day. But if you want to get as close as you can while remaining in the safety and comfort of your living room, then this is the book for you. At times when reading it, this reviewer could almost smell the stench of high explosive or hear the sinister chatter of machine-gun fire.
The sheer scale and complexity of the D-Day landings and the subsequent weeks-long Battle of Normandy, coupled with an understandable desire by many writers to focus on the widely recognised drama of the US landings in Omaha Assault Area, mean that the British and Commonwealth experience on 6 June 1944 can sometimes be lost.
Omaha was exceptionally bloody, so the experience in other landing areas (including, as an aside, the other US assault area, Utah) must, by definition, have been easy. In his venerable Overlord, Max Hastings covered all the British Commonwealth beaches in fewer than nine pages, with Sword getting fewer than three: ‘a remarkable success’, he wrote somewhat dismissively, ‘where the losses were slight in relation to the scale of the assault.’ An easy landing, followed by a sluggish advance, culminating in the failure to take the key objective city of Caen, is the clichéd tale. Fisher’s new work is an emphatic ‘not so’ counterpoint to these assumptions. A success Sword undoubtedly was, but it was never easy. In the prophetic words of the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, writing about the entire operation on 30 July 1944, ‘it may seem to some people that it was all easy and plain sailing. Nothing could be more wrong. It was excellent planning and execution.’
In extracting the experience of Sword Beach and presenting it as a forgotten battle, Fisher has achieved something that appears deceptively simple, but is a significant challenge for any writer approaching this multifaceted subject. Throughout his outstanding narrative, Fisher has successfully avoided being pulled unwittingly into narratives which, although compelling, in the context of Sword can only ever be supporting. Paratroopers, Canadians, and other participants whose contributions took place elsewhere only appear when necessary, as briefly as possible, to provide context for the events at the heart of the narrative. Sailors and airmen only appear when they are operating over Sword. The result is a fully rounded picture of this one assault area, giving it the attention it so richly deserves.
Gripping storytelling
The book is admirably disciplined, extracting the story of Sword Beach on 6 June 1944 from the wider D-Day story and treating it – exactly as the title implies – as a distinct battle with its own unique identity. After a helpful preamble, which includes notes about sources, the narrative is divided into five very clearly structured sections, mostly subdivided into four chapters.
Part 1, ‘The Waiting’, describes the build-up of the invasion forces, the preparations by their German opposite numbers in and around Ouistreham on the ‘far shore’, and the departure of the invasion force. Part 2 relates the story of the assault, Part 3 the fighting that took place later in the morning, and Part 4 the actions that took place further inland during the afternoon, including the celebrated German counter- attack by 21 Panzer Division.
The final part rounds off the story by very briefly narrating the events of the following days, including the link-up with the Canadians landing at Juno Assault Area and the process of securing the beachhead. An admirable range of 20 unusually designed maps, mostly based on modern Google maps of the relevant areas, illustrate everything from the bombardment targets assigned to the supporting warships to Assault Group S3’s specific beaching areas. Useful appendices include Orders of Battle for both sides, and a reproduction of Force S’s intended Landing Timetable.
There is an exceptionally generous provision of photographs, some well-known but others entirely unfamiliar to this reviewer. In a spirited conclusion, which acts, whether intentionally or not, as a riposte to Hastings and other writers from a different generation, Fisher summarises statistical evidence to make a compelling case that, relative to the narrow width of the assault area and the number of troops actively engaged, the men who assaulted Sword faced opposition that was equal to anything encountered in other assault areas, and took casualties that were, proportionally, just as high. ‘3 Division achieved everything that was in their power to achieve,’ he concludes, ‘the division secured the left flank of the amphibious landings, made contact with and reinforced the airborne bridgehead, and established suitable positions with which to lay siege to Caen over the coming campaign. That itself was a tremendous victory.’
Fisher’s narrative style is engaging and unusual: he has successfully married rigorous research rooted in primary sources held at the National Archives, Imperial War Museums, and elsewhere to a gripping storytelling approach worthy of a good fiction writer. The result is a book that stands confidently astride three very different genres: those of academic history, eye-witness testimony, and battlefield guide. Firmly rooted in the evidence, Sword Beach places the experiences of the individual soldier, sailor, airman or French civilian at its heart.
This is, however, no formulaic anthology of direct quotes from interviews; instead, Fisher has woven the participants’ stories into a compelling narrative to create a genuine page-turner. Highly recommended as an introduction to the Normandy campaign for the general reader, or an essential addition to the library for anyone with an existing interest in the campaign.
Sword Beach: The untold story of D-Day’s forgotten victory
Stephen Fisher
Bantam Press, hbk, 428pp (£25)
ISBN 978-1787636712
