Battlefield Guide to the Normandy D-Day Landing Beaches - Softcover

Tonie And Valmai Holt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0850526620 ISBN 13: 9780850526622

Publisher: Pen and Sword, 1999

Synopsis

Potential visitors and those interested in the finer details of the Normandy campaign will never find a more exhaustive guide than this one to all five D-Day landing beaches, the airborne drop zones, and surviving fortifications, as well as all cemeteries, memorials, museums, local accomodations, and other points of interest.Interest in the D-Day landings has never been greater on both sides of the Atlantic. No one knows the Normandy Campaign and countryside as it stands today better than Major and Mrs Holt, the pioneers of battlefield touring.

About this title

From the Author:

We have been visiting Normandy for over 30 years. One of us went on a Battlefield Tour there when he was at the Army Staff College and met many of the dramatis personae who took part in the events of 1944/45.
The aim of this book and all of the others that we write is to commemorate the men who played such a vital role in the development of our nations as we know them today. We do not set out to be partisan though we do offer concise historical comments about the conduct of policies and battles.
Wherever possible we write about things from the viewpoint of the ordinary soldier who is so often ignored in conventional histories, and quote from the memories of many of the veteran friends that we have made over the years.
Being husband and wife, our books are not all bangs and bullets but woven into the narratives are poems and music, observations about life on the Home Front and much attention to the monuments and memorials that have been erected to acknowledge the debts of the living to those who lost their lives.
Please read this book before you go and then take it with you if you are travelling to Normandy in person rather than in the mind. There is nothing more irritating than to come across this book when you get back only to discover how much you missed.

About the Author:

The authors are generally accepted as having kick-started the modern interest in visiting the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars when they began their company 'Major and Mrs Holt's Battlefield Tours' in the 1970s. At that time they were the only company offering such tours.
Over the next 30 years their company conducted thousands of people around battlefields in places as far apart as South Africa, Viet Nam and the Falkland Islands.
In the 1990s they sold the company to concentrate upon writing guide books to the most visited battlefields of the First and Second World Wars - Normandy, Ypres and Passchendaele, the Somme, Arnhem and  Gallipoli.
In these books they distill the knowledge gained from detailed and continuing research, what they learned from those who travelled on their tours and the practicalities of travelling from A to B, to offer the reader unparalled guidance to the battlefields. They do not employ researchers - they go themselves to the places they write about and the books are updated regularly.
Indeed many of the tour guides who use these books themselves refer to them as 'the bibles'.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0850526620
• ISBN 13: 9780850526622
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256