I’m pleased as can be to present my review of one of the finest WWII history books I’ve ever read.

Sand & Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France by Professor Peter Caddick-Adams is a triumph.

It’s a dense book, and perhaps will seem a daunting one to many people, at nearly 900 pages, plus notes. There’s good reason for that length, as the thorough coverage of both sides of the conflict and the level of detail are extraordinary. Plus, this is no mere “day of” recounting, but an exhaustive account of the entire affair, from the earliest plans through the buildup of forces, training, preparation, the day itself, and the aftermath, including key events involving the places and participants over the subsequent decades.

That Caddick-Adams has spent years walking those very locations he writes about, and speaking with those who were there for the real event, on both sides of the English Channel, is evident from early on. Whether in the personal accounts of bomber ground crews or a British schoolgirl describing her emotional attachment to the American airmen, or in the incredibly detailed descriptions of the many critical places during the battle, that legwork brings a wonderful (if all too often heartbreaking) vividness to the history.

The author points out quite correctly that D-Day in the popular mind now is largely seen as an American affair, while the reality is that it was actually an all-Allies effort. For me, an American, that brings some new learning, as Caddick-Adams takes pains to cover the efforts of our Allied partners. I was unaware, for example, of the extent to which Englishmen were ordered to leave their properties during the war. That was a brutal reality that cut across class levels; the wealthy had their country estates taken over to provide headquarters accommodations to the Allies’ top brass, and both townspeople and those with vacation properties along the coast were forced to give up their homes to clear areas for seamen and soldiers to practice the landings. Many of those houses were destroyed in the process, a level of sacrifice that adds greatly to respect for the British “stiff upper lip” I already felt from my knowledge of their losses during the Blitz.

Another element about which I received fresh education was on the subject of training mishaps. I’d previously heard of Operation Tiger, an April 1944 practice landing at Slapton Sands in which German E-boats attacked US LSTs (Landing Ships, Tank), resulting in 749 Americans killed or missing. That may have been one of the worst, but there were many others – drownings, accidental shootings and mishaps with live ammunition exercise, parachute training accidents, and so on. The scope of the training undertaken for D-Day was colossal, and an unfortunate side-effect was a tremendous toll in deaths and injuries before the battle ever began.

As total aside: who knew of all the famous (or else soon-to-be-famous) people who were there when the battle did begin? Bill Golding, Cornelius Ryan, Woody Guthrie, JD Salinger, and James Doohan, to name but a few, all played a part.

Caddick-Adams’s account of the battle goes in order of the beaches, beginning with Utah at the western end of the landing zones, and moving east one by one. The level of detail he presents of what happened at each one is astonishing. The author upends some long-standing errors of history, such as the notion that Gold Beach was a cakewalk, or that the Canadians digging in at the end of the day on Juno was a tactical error.

Caddick-Adams is a generous but unstinting historian. Here are just two examples: His admiration for American prowess is constantly evident, but he spares no criticism of the appalling racial segregation of our forces at the time. He – an Englishman himself, mind you – is brutally honest about the shortcomings of British Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery, but lavishes praise on his unparalleled planning and training acumen.

I could go on and on, but I’ve written enough. I recommend Sand & Steel to everybody. For aficionados of WWII history like me, it’s a must.