9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent but not Great, March 14, 2002
This review is from: Utah Beach : Normandy (Battleground Europe Series) (Paperback)
This installment of the Battleground Europe series focuses on the US VII Corps landings on Utah Beach and the 82nd/101st Airborne Divisions landings around St Mere Eglise on D-Day. For those unfamiliar with this series, this book is part of a series that dissects the D-Day landings into one book on each of the main US and British beaches. While Utah Beach is fairly good and well written, it follows fairly closely in the footsteps of early works on D-Day, such as Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day and John Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy. Compared to other Battleground Europe titles or even Carl Shilleto's other volumes in the series, Utah Beach lacks depth.
Utah Beach consists of six chapters, beginning with a chapter on Allied forces and planning. The second chapter is quite interesting, concerning the disaster at Slapton Sands prior to D-Day. One interesting footnote to history that the author does provide is that Lieutenant General Bradley, the First Army commander, was unaware of the huge loss of American lives in the disaster and summarily relieved the engineer brigade commander when the exercise fell behind schedule. The third chapter covers Allied objectives and German defenses and herein begins one of the problems with the book: over-focus on the airborne landings and objectives. While the tactical objectives for each parachute infantry regiment is spelled out in detail, the objectives of the sea-landing forces for the first day are left rather vague. What were the D-Day objectives for each of the regiments in the 4th Infantry Division? The fourth and fifth chapters cover the airborne and sea borne landings in 70 pages. A final chapter covers a tour of the memorials and cemeteries in the area. There are also seven appendices, including ones covering Allied and German orders of battle and casualties.
Unfortunately, the book tends to focus too heavily on the airborne landings at the expense of the rest of the VII Corps landings - the main event. Furthermore, the author tends to follow all-too-familiar ruts, like the story of Private John Steele landing on the bell tower of the church in St Mere Eglise; this is interesting and dramatic, but not particularly important in the big scheme of things. A more important incident, like the fact that US paratroopers killed Major General Falley, commander of the German 91st Luftlande Division on 6 June 1944, is not even mentioned in this account. In fact, the information on the German forces near the US landings is rather sparse. Units such as the 100th Tank Battalion and the 6th Parachute Regiment are shown near the landings, but virtually ignored in the text. The 6th Parachute Regiment in particular was a major antagonist of the US airborne troops for many days after D-Day. When the author does cover the VII Corps landings, it does add some detail on the vital role of the engineer units but tends to focus too heavily on the role of Brigadier General Roosevelt. Equally important leaders, such as Colonel Van Fleet of the 8th Infantry or Major General Collins (the corps commander) are ignored. Finally, the bulk of the text focuses only on the first 18 hours or so of D-Day, with little or no discussion of events even the day after D-day. Compared to the other Battleground Europe titles on D-Day beaches, this is a bit narrow.
This book is still recommended for a number of reasons. The photographs and several of the maps are excellent. The details on the disaster at Slapton Sands, which often gets little mention in other sources, is discussed in detail here. Finally, the book covers all the major points - if not necessarily some of the finer points - of the US landings in the Cotentin Peninsula on D-day and provides and excellent summary for those interested in touring the Norman battlefields.
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