From Canada’s most accomplished military historian of the Second World War comes a book about the most important battle in the European theatre. Drawing on personal diaries as well as military records, Juno Beach: Canada’s D-Day Victory—June 6, 1944 dramatically depicts Canada’s pivotal contribution to the most critical Allied battle of World War II.
On June 6, 1944, the greatest armada in history stood off Normandy and the largest amphibious invasion ever began as 107,000 men aboard 6,000 ships pressed toward the coast. Among this number were 18,000 Canadians, who were to land on a five-mile-long stretch of rocky ledges fronted by a wide expanse of sand code named Juno Beach.
At battle’s end one out of every six Canadians in the invasion force was either dead or wounded. Yet their grip on Juno Beach was firm. The Canadians had the toughest assignment but remarkably was the only Allied troop to meet its objectives.
On the sixtieth anniversary of the battle, Juno Beach offers a compelling account of the war that changed the course of modern history.