Flash! Thunder! My new D-Day oral history!
A pre-order special for WHEN THE SEA CAME ALIVE....
June 6th, 2024, will mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, what historians have called the most famous and momentous single day of the entire 20th Century. Andy Rooney, the CBS correspondent and D-Day participant himself said, “There have only been a handful of days since the beginning of time on which the direction the world was taking has been changed for the better in one 24-hour period by an act of man. June 6th, 1944, was one of them.”
This anniversary will mark an especially poignant one, as the last of the generation who stormed the beaches of Normandy passes, a moment when D-Day slips entirely from memory into history.
I’ve spent the last two years trying to assemble the most comprehensive collection of their memories for my new oral history of D-Day, a telling of that day unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, read, or heard before.
My new book WHEN THE SEA CAME ALIVE—which launches in the UK this Thursday, with a slightly different, simple title, and in the US on June 4th—brings together nearly 700 voices, from Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill to Allied soldiers, paratroopers, airmen, and sailors, as well as British and French civilians and German defenders, tracing the planning and build-up of the Allied soldiers overs the years, months, days, and hours before D-Day and then the entire full sweep of that momentous day as a million Allied combatants launched OPERATION OVERLORD across five beaches—Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword—and a a sixty-mile front.
This, if I do say so myself, is an incredible story—and it’s certainly the most incredible “book” I’ve ever published, with a haunting, unforgettable cover and packed inside with nearly 100 pictures and maps. I spent a lot of time when the first finished copies arrived this month just holding the book and studying the cover, imagining the men on their way to Normandy and the wide range of emotions their faces show.
This is a book you’re going to want to hold in your hands, but you also don’t have to take my word for it. Kirkus Reviews calls it, “A sprawling history … [and] timely reminder of the cost of war, as well as the bravery of those who stormed the beaches all those decades ago.”
Historian Evan Thomas says, “From the wonderfully evocative title to the last mournful memory, this is one of the greatest war stories ever told. Through the words of the people who made D-Day happen or bore the brunt, Garrett Graff has crafted a masterpiece of oral history. WHEN THE SEA CAME ALIVE is stirring, surprising, grim, joyous, moving and always riveting.”
The UK and US editions of my new D-Day oral history.
One of the things I love about oral history is how, well, it makes history come alive—it turns the flat facts and history into a three-dimensional experience, filled with the sounds, smells, and tastes of that day and moment. For the American paratroopers, French civilians, and German troops in the hours after the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped into Normandy, one of the defining sounds was the chirp-chirp of the “crickets” the paratroopers used to recognize and find each other in the dark. One click was answered with two clicks; the verbal challenge “Flash” answered with the challenge “Thunder.”
As you may recall from WATERGATE and UFO, I always like to do something fun for readers who pre-order the book and support independent bookstores, so for the first 150 pre-orders at Phoenix Books here in Burlington, you’ll get a signed copy and also a reproduction brass D-Day “cricket” like what the paratroopers used that night:
I’ll be talking more about the D-Day book next Thursday night, May 30th, in a virtual event with Phoenix Books, if you’re interested in joining.
Thanks for reading—and more to come!
GMG
PS: Even as I’m starting to launch WHEN THE SEA CAME ALIVE, I’m still enjoying talking about UFO. This weekend, I was out in McMinnville, Oregon, for the 24th annual UFO Fest, where I was one of the featured speakers and then, much to my surprise, us six speakers led off the UFO parade before a crowd of 20,000 people. The whole town gets into the fun, with decorations, store window displays, and food specials. Here are some snapshots from UFO Fest:
