Of the many books and series' published to mark the 60th Anniversary of D-Day, Sutton's Battle Zone Normandy was by far the most ambitious of those for a general audience. Dividing the events of D-Day and the Allied breakout of Normandy into fourteen slim volumes which could be read individually or as a whole and whose content was written by eleven authors to the same template was a brave move, especially when other publishers simply pushed out a pretty volume of poorly written dross.
All fourteen are compact, tightly bound hardbacks of 192 pages with illustrations on almost every page. The majority of pictures are black and white, but colour shots feature, as do many excellent maps. The content is split into four colour-coded sections: a small introduction at the front, an equally small bibliography at the back and two central sections concerning ‘History’ and ‘Battlefield Tours’. While the division varies per volume, around half of each book is ‘History’, the red tinted section which gives a background to the events covered, outlines the military plans and explains the reality of events. Conclusions are given but kept brief; for instance, there is no discussion of why things went wrong on Omaha, just an explanation of how the landing impacted on the Normandy invasion overall.
There is a danger that readers of traditional monographs, textbooks or essays will skip past a section headed ‘Battlefield Tours’, or simply not buy any volume that devotes roughly half its space to them. This would be unfortunate, because every Battle Zone Normandy text has been structured to spread the historical information out across their whole length. Whilst the four to five tours in each volume cover everything the walker needs to know – where to stand, where to walk, what exactly they are looking at – most are based on historical events which are narrated during the relevant section. Sometimes the volume highlights this: for instance Stephen Hart’s text Road to Falaise tells you to refer to ‘Stand C1’ (The first location on Tour C) for the story of Wittmann’s death, other authors often leave you to piece this together for yourself.
Being an agoraphobic, I’ve no way to review the touring information and comment on how reliable or interesting it is, and potential buyers should always remember that the Battle Zone Normandy series is partly devoted to, indeed inspired by, walking the relevant battlefields. The most I can say is that the compact volumes pack easily and the hard covering should deflect plenty of travel damage! However, the presence of touring information in no way spoiled my enjoyment of what are relatively expensive books and the frequent juxtaposition of wartime photographs with modern ones of the same place, often of exactly the same frame, was impressive, whether they are solely a walker’s aid or not.
Given the small size of each volume, the content is inevitably dwarfed by some of the specialist works on each battle - Balkoski’s Omaha book has 410 pages, Battle Zone Normandy’s 192 - and none break any new academic ground. But specialist works are generally for the specialist and Battle Zone Normandy serves the general reader very well indeed, providing plenty of information in a clear, understandable fashion. The use of fourteen differently focused volumes might obscure the overall picture of the Normandy landings but the compensation, in the form of a much deeper explanation of the aims and importance of each operation, is rich. In addition, the standard of writing may vary, but it is consistently higher than other ‘named’ historical series.
