LET THERE BE EVEN MORE STORIES TO TELL.

I started the 2022 book review season with high hopes.  "It has not been a good couple of years for posting entries in the 50 Book Challenge.  We'll see if my resolution to file more book reports and fret less about national affairs that I can't influence stands up this year."  It didn't, nor did 2023 or 2024 turn out much differently.

We conclude the 2024 season with Book Review N^o. 13.  (Is it that hard to knock out one a week rather than one, on average, a month?)  Peter Caddick-Adams's Sand and Steel: The D-Day Liberation and the Liberation of France has in common with Soldier, Sailor, Frogman, Spy the reality that there ought be no end to the retelling of stories.  His sources, as one might expect of a former faculty member with the UK Defence Academy, include more Britons.  That, alone, sheds much more light on the landings than Stateside readers might be accustomed to.  Pick it up and read it through.

In keeping with my relatively brief recommendation of Soldier, Sailor I'll tease only a few anecdotes.  Long before planning for the landings began, the allied Air Forces were in action over occupied Europe, and to keep the planes flying, there were technicians defusing unexploded Flak shells.  One revealed a note, in Czech, reading "This is all we can do for you now."  It's probably not wise to outsource the manufacture of material to forced laborers in occupied countries.  Nor might it be to befriend school-kids: perhaps some youngsters who hung out near the training sites heard a few code words, and those might have been offered as possible solutions to crossword puzzles!  And no battle preparation, no matter how much secrecy is attached thereto, prevents the chaps who are training from figuring out what is going on.  If we're practicing on this beach under these tide conditions, we're probably going on June 5 or 6.

That's all for now.  Just get the book and read it.  There will doubtless be more stories to tell.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)