John Keegan - Six Armies In Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris June 6th-August 25th,1944

John Keegan is the Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph and Britains foremost military historian. The Reith Lecturer in 1998, he is the author of many bestselling books including The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, Battle at Sea, The Second World War, A History of Warfare (awarded the Duff Cooper Prize), Warpaths, The Battle for History, The First World War, and most recently, Intelligence in War.

For many years John Keegan was the Senior Lecturer in Military History at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and he has been a Fellow of Princeton University and Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He received the OBE in the Gulf War honours list, and was knighted in the Millennium honours list in 1999.

Eisenhower addressing 502nd Parachute Infantry

Eisenhower and Montgomery

Patton and Bradley

Rommel inspecting the Normandy defences

SS anti-aircraft sentries in Normandy

American gliders in Normandy after D-Day

505th Parachute Infantry dead awaiting identification

A child casualty being treated

502nd Parachute Infantry patrol at St Marcouf

Parachutists of the 501st and villagers of Ste Marie-du-Mont

Damaged landing-craft and Canadian dead at Dieppe

German engineers scattering for cover before D-Day

German infantry practise manning beach defences

Canadian wounded awaiting evacuation on Juno Beach

Follow-up Canadian troops prepare to advance inland

The great storm of mid-June 1944

British infantry holding the front line

The 9th Cameronians hold an open-air service

Highlanders of the 7th Seaforths waiting on the start line

2nd Argylls being piped forward to the Epsom battle

6th Royal Scots Fusiliers advancing during the Epsom battle

An SS tank officer and crewman under escort to the rear

Scottish soldiers bringing in a prisoner

A British mortar team firing in a cider orchard

Dead cattle in the fields

German infantry counter-attacking

Caen after the battle

Tank and infantry officers confer before Operation Goodwood

4th Dorsets waiting to advance during Operation Goodwood

Infantry following tanks during Operation Goodwood

A Cromwell tank crosses the Caen canal before Operation Goodwood

Infantry crossing the skyline

American infantry sheltering during the Mortain counter-attack

German prisoners taken in the break-out of July 25th, 1944

Polish tank commanders prepare to close the Falaise gap

Canadian tanks forming up for the Battle of the Falaise Pocket

The interior of the Falaise Pocket after its closure

General Maczek with Montgomery

A French tank leads the 2nd French Armoured Division down the Champs Elyses

A German prisoner in the hands of the Resistance

Liberators at the Lion of Belfort

French armoured cars in the Place de lHtel de Ville

German officers in the Htel Majestic

The German order of battle in the west, June 6th, 1944

The American airborne landing zones, 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, June 6th, 1944

The Canadian beach assault, June 6th, 1944

Operation Epsom, the Battle of the Scottish Corridor, June 24thJuly 1st, 1944

Operation Goodwood, July 18th19th, 1944

The Mortain counter-attack, August 6th7th, 1944

The Battle of the Falaise Pocket, August 16th20th, 1944

The liberation of Paris, August 25th, 1944

Five years ago, in a book I called The Face of Battle, I set out to explore the predicament of the individual on the battlefield. Though a practising military historian, and the colleague in my academic life of professional soldiers, I had no understanding of the risks which the warrior faced in his encounter with his enemy, or of the means he found to quell his terrors and master himself at the point of maximum danger. What I discovered, however near to the truth it was, surprised me. I learnt of the universality of fear, of the operation of inducements and coercion in its conquest but, above all, of the importance of male honour, as judged by a mans immediate comrades, in sustaining the soldiers resolution.

But, despite my concentration on the individual and the small group, I was also drawn to a recognition of the peculiar nature of the larger body to which both belong, the army itself. Armies are universal institutions which, in the dimension of purpose and authority, closely resemble each other. Yet each is also a mirror of its own society and its values: in some places and at some times an agent of national pride or a bulwark against national fears, or perhaps even the last symbol of the nation itself; elsewhere and otherwise an instrument of national power deprecated, disregarded and of very last resort. It seemed to me worth finding some episode through which the varying status of national armies might be exemplified. And in the Normandy campaign of 1944 I believed that I had stumbled upon it. I knew the battlefield well. I had long been struck by the very different motives inspiring the armies which action conjoined there. And, over the years, I had become familiar with the wealth of corporate history and personal reminiscence which the campaign has thrown up. What follows is therefore another attempt to understand, from a different angle of vision, the role which warfare and its institutions play in social life.