ISBN 2-84048-159-6
168 pages

Acknowledgements; Preface (1); Preface (2); Prologue; Bibliography; tables; photos; maps; documents; diagrams; sidebars

   As readers have come to expect from Heimdal and Georges Bernage, this is a large and largely visual study of the topic, in some ways aimed more at reenactors and modelers than traditional readers, historians, and researchers. That means a big segment of the WWII audience is going to eat up Red Devils with a spoon and beg for more.
   The book, by the way, isn't always consistent about its own title. The cover proclaims Red Devils in Normandy: 6th Airborne Division, 5-6 June 1944 while the title page goes with The Red Berets in Normandy, 5-6 June 1944, and not all booksellers have settled on the same version. No big deal, but worth noting by anyone searching for a copy. Of similar note, although even less important, what the Table of Contents labels "Introduction" really amounts to four separate sections on three different pages at the beginning of the book: a Preface (in English) by Brigadier James Hill, a second Preface (in French) by Amiral Christian Brac de la Perriere, a Prologue by Bernage, and a brief Bibliography with eleven books, including Pegasus Bridge by Bernage, "...in part reused in this work."
   Following the introductory material come two pages listing "all those killed in the [6th Airborne] Division, and their last resting place." The list is continued at the back of the book with another eight pages showing name, date of death, serial number, and rank as well as gravesite. Most of those listed died on D-Day or soon thereafter, but others were killed later in the year or in 1945.
   The heart of the book is divided into two parts, each with five chapters:

First Part: The Night of the Paras
   Chapter 1: An Elite Division
   Chapter 2: The German Forces
   Chapter 3: Specialised Airborne Equipment
   Chapter 4: Towards D-Day
   Chapter 5: The Wings of Pegasus

Second Part: The Paras on D-Day
   Chapter 6: Operation Tonga
   Chapter 7: Dawn on D-Day
   Chapter 8: Midday: The Commandos Arrive
   Chapter 9: Operation Mallard
   Chapter 10: The Airborne Bridgehead

   Bernage presents a great deal of information in each chapter. The average page contains about four or five paragraphs of text comprising the ongoing narrative for the chapter, along with a mix of black-and-white wartime photos of men and equipment, insignia in color, sidebars with biographical information, brief units histories, and other sorts of details, photos of the protagonists as they appeared later in life, medals and ribbons, uniforms, displays from the Pegasus Bridge museum, maps, models, "then and now" comparisons of terrain features, gravesites, TOEs, mascots, and assorted relics.
   The text itself—translated and punctuated with plentiful idiosyncracies—focuses in large part on the deeds of individual men and small groups of paratroopers (which is not surprising, given that Bernage's sources are mostly memoirs and eyewitness accounts). That's an exciting, dramatic approach to the action, but one that also tends to be disjointed, ambiguous, and sometimes a little confusing—conditions not unlike the battle itself. Here's an example of the better part of a typical page:

   The Germans were identified as being from 21st Panzer Division. For his part, Major Roseveare began to set up his raid on the Troarn bridge. He only had a medical jeep and a trailer carrying 900 kilos of plastic and 45 detonators. Radio communications were established with the battalion through transmitters No 68 and No 18, 30 paras and 40 sappers crept silently along the road with Major Roseveare. The jeeps were unloaded, the explosives put into the trailer, and Major Roseveare, a Lieutenant and 7 men perched on the high explosive and hitched to even more, set off slowly through the woods and at a level-crossing near the town they drove over a barbed-wire knife-rest. A sentry spotted them, but was shot dead. It took them twenty minutes to cut themselves and their vehicle free. At last the jeep squeezed through and they sent off two men to scout ahead at the next crossroads. Shooting a German on a bike rather than knifing him proved a mistake since this time the garrison sounded the general alert in Troarn, and flares were set off in the village. So, with the windscreen down and bristling with weaponry (they had Bren guns and 5 Sten guns) the 2-ton load of 8 men and high explosive tore down the High Street at top speed - 50 kph - Sapper Peachey, sat on the explosive charges in the trailer, acted as a rear-gunner and sprayed the town with his Sten, emptying clip after clip into his pursuers. The German dived into the doorways, shop fronts shattered, and they returned fire from every window - or so it seemed. As the jeep sped down the hill towards the bridge, the trailer lurching from side to side, it took a hail of machine gun bullets, none of them fortunately hitting the explosives! The bridge was reached, the charges laid, and five minutes later a gap twenty feet wide had been blown in it. Where was Peachey? Unfortunately in the crazed zig-zagging of the trailer, he'd been thrown out, wounded, and taken prisoner.

   The narrative occasionally becomes overshadowed by all the other material artfully presented on each page, so much so that it would be a fair guess to say that the images and captions will elicit more attention from most readers than the main text. The majority of the surrounding material is quite good—the maps, for example, are very well done—and there is a huge amount of human-interest detail. Generally this adds to the overall level of quality and information in the book, but in some cases the author almost seems to be adding images just because they happened to be available. For example, does anyone really care about seeing photographs of "hip flask belonging to Lieutenant Brotheridge"? Well, perhaps some reenactors will be concerned with getting that bit just right, but for this reviewer's taste some of the material seems a little questionable. That's especially true of the many photos of exhibits from the Pegasus Bridge museum. I've been to that museum and enjoyed it a great deal. A photographic survey of the museum might make a fine book, but it's less certain that so many shots of dummies and models and toy soldiers and relics from the museum add to the value of this particular volume.
   On the other hand, that's probably just the carping of an aging traditionalist. Red Devils has plenty to offer, especially for readers who enjoy a very visual, high-action, pop-oriented approach to history.
   Speaking of traditionalism, this might be an appropriate place to add some general remark about books of this nature, but remarks not intended as criticism of Red Devils. That is, this genre of "magazine" style books, or perhaps "coffee table" books, with relatively little text interrupted by a constant barrage of multiple images, captions, and sidebars on every page, appears in some ways related to the inability or unwillingness of authors and readers in the first years of the 21st Century to concentrate on the written word. There's nothing wrong with illustrations—and in some cases the old adage about a picture and a thousand words might still be accurate—but more and more books seem to focus on style over substance, and appear to be produced as though the reader's attention span is insufficient to accommodate long chapters of solid exposition. Instead of concentrating on meaty, carefully composed text, too many books scatter information all over the page in widely separated compartments, forcing the reader to jump from nugget to nugget as though scratching for pellets of information in the dirt.
   This impressionistic style of presentation is often compounded by jumbling together images without much regard to origin, especially in the era of Photoshop. That is, sometimes there's no way of knowing with certainty if a particular photo is an unretouched original, an "enhanced" original, a recent snapshot of the historical setting, or even a computer-generated representation. Failure to clearly label all the images in a book does a disservice to readers and future researchers. In some ways worse, and almost always startlingly incongruous, are photos of models, dioramas, toy soldiers, and grinning reenactors presented as though they represent the pinnacle of authenticity.
   In sum, authors and editors and publishers need to be careful about "dumbing down" their books, turning them into kaleidoscopic print equivalents of MTV clips, and blurring the line between history and imagination. In turn, readers need to be careful to ensure they're getting some steak with the sizzle when they lay down their money.
   That's not to say Red Devils proves guilty of all these sins, but some elements of the book tend to be indicative of larger problems with the genre as a whole. This book will definitely appeal to legions of visually-stimulated fans, while a few old die-hards might prefer to have a look at the original memoirs and eyewitness accounts on which the action in this book is mostly based.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Heimdal, or from the American distributor, Casemate.
   Thanks to Casemate for providing this review copy.