Ten Days To D-Day:
Citizens and Soldiers on the Eve of the Invasion
David Stafford

review by: Mike Spinney
Date: 5/15/04

Just in time for the 60th anniversary of the Allied landings at Normandy, a book has hit the market offering a perspective on the ten days leading up to June 6, 1944 and the beginning of the liberation of Europe.

Ten Days to D-Day recounts the experiences of Allied leaders Eisenhower and Churchill, and Axis leaders Hitler and Rommel, but it does not focus on these individuals, whose exploits during this critical period have been closely examined in numerous books.

Instead, Ten Days is illustrated for the reader through the words and deeds of a Norwegian political prisoner held by the Nazis; a female cryptologist working in the English Wren corps; a Jewish merchant hiding in Paris; a Canadian officer with the Regina Rifles; an American paratrooper assigned to help capture Sainte-Mère-Eglise; a French resister daily listening for his coded orders on a clandestine crystal radio set; a German soldier behind the Atlantic Wall blissfully confident in the ability of his leaders, and a female special agent dropped into France to help build a network of saboteurs.

Their stories weave in and out of each other, reconstructing a taut pre-invasion tale that draws the reader along not because of heavy action and gripping accounts of bravery, but because of the deeply personal perspectives they offer. Indeed, the most fascinating elements of Ten Days may be found in the seemingly mundane activities of the book’s protagonists while they stand unknowingly at the precipice of one of history’s greatest moments.

With the benefit of hindsight and enough suspense and intrigue to highlight the stakes – the ongoing backstories of Allied double agent Garbo, Churchill’s insatiable appetite for his daily reading of ULTRA dispatches, Eisenhower’s meteorological tightrope walk, and the bizarre goings-on at Hitler’s mountain hideaway, for example – the pace of Ten Days is just right.

Stafford’s book stands out as well because it is not merely another flag-waving Anglo-American saga, but a finely balanced diary that acknowledges the sacrifices made by a vast coalition of peoples. Norwegians and Canadians are as important in Stafford’s telling as are the British and Americans, and without the usual patronizing that accompanies such mentions. Instead, Ten Days offers a superb, highly readable narrative that adroitly pays homage to the totality of effort made at that fateful time in history.