NORMANDY: A GRAPHIC HISTORY OF D-DAY, THE ALLIED INVASION OF HITLER’S FORTRESS EUROPE by Wayne Vansant in bookstores on August 24 from Zenith Press. NORMANDY will be the first graphic novel ever from the popular military history publisher. Wayne Vansant is represented by Grand Design Communications. NORMANDY tells the story of the planning and execution of Operation: Overlord, in 104 full-color pages. Incidents of the pre-dawn paratrooper assault are shown, as well as the storming of the 5 D-Day beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. But the story does not end there. Once the Allies got ashore, they had to stay ashore. The Germans made every effort to push them back into the sea. This book depicts such key events in the Allied liberation of Europe as:
- Construction of the Mulberry Harbors, two giant artificial harbors built in England and floated across the English Channel so that troops, vehicles, and supplies could be offloaded across the invasion beaches.
- The Capture of Cherbourg, the nearest French port, against a labyrinth of Gennan pillboxes.
- The American fight through the heavy bocage (hedgerow country) to take the vital town of Saint-Lô
- The British-Canadian struggle for the city of Caen against the “Hitler Youth Division”, made up of 23,000 seventeen and eighteen-year-old Nazi fanatics.
- The breakout of General Patton’s 3rd Army, and the desperate US 30th Division’s defense of Mortaine.
- The Falaise Pocket, known as the “Killing Ground”, where the remnants of two German armies were trapped and bombed and shelled into submission. The slaughter was so great that 5,000 dead Germans were buried in one mass grave.
- The Liberation of Paris, led by the 2nd Free French Armored Division, which had been fighting for four long years with this goal in mind.