Barris, Ted. Juno: Canadians at D-Day, June 6, 1944. Toronto: Thomas Allen & Son Ltd, 2004 ISBN 0-88762-133-3 xxii + 311 pages Foreword; Acknowledgments; Prelude; photos; maps; Notes; Glossary; Bibliography; Index of Formations, Units, and Corps; General Index
Ford, Ken. Battle Zone Normandy: Juno Beach. Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2004 ISBN 0-7509-3007-1 191 pages Introduction; photos; maps; OBs; Bibliography; Index
Zuehlke, Mark. Juno Beach: Canada's D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944. Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004 ISBN 1-55365-050-6 415 pages Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; photos; maps; Notes; Bibliography; General Index; Index of Formations, Units, and Corps Appendices: Canadians at Juno Beach; Royal Canadian Navy Ships in the Invasion; Abbreviations Guide to the Landing Fleet; Canadian Infantry Battalion; Canadian Army Order of Rank; German Army Order of Rank; The Decorations

   If prior to the 60th anniversary of D-Day a shortage of books about the Canadian landings on Juno Beach existed, that situation has now been thoroughly rectified. Within the span of a few weeks fresh books about Juno from Ted Barris, Ken Ford, and Mark Zuehlke hit the market this year, and all three prove to be worth a look.
   Ken Ford's Juno book is part of Sutton's Battle Zone Normandy series, and as such it looks very much like the other members of that family. As usual, about half of the book covers battlefield tours, leaving fewer than a hundred pages to set the scene and track the action. Ford includes a chapter on "Opposing Commanders and Their Forces" before devoting two chapters to the landings, another chapter to D+1, and a final chapter on "Counter-Attacks and Stalemate." The chapters include a wealth of photos, maps, OBs, sidebars, and text. As with others in the series, this Juno book is visually inviting. It's no slur on Ford to report that his book is also data-intensive, but not especially strong on narrative. Of the three, this is the one that offers the most meat, for instance, for anyone doing the research to design a wargame. Other than that, however, Ford's Juno Beach is not really in the same league as the other two. Like the other Battle Zone Normandy volumes, this one proves perfectly acceptable but not terribly scintillating. It's not a bad book at all, but it simply can't compare to the work of Ted Barris and Mark Zuehlke.
   Barris and Zuehlke devote far more attention to sustained narrative, and they both choose to build their narratives around a wide range of individual Canadians who participated in the invasion. Both have considerable experience and expertise as writers, and Zuehlke in particular recently completed a highly-regarded trilogy about Canadians in the Italian campaign. His new book very much resembles his work in that trilogy, and the new book from Barris takes a somewhat similar approach. Even with both authors relying largely on the recollections of veterans to piece together the story of the Juno landings, there's remarkably little overlap between the two.
   The overall structure is also fairly similar for both books. Barris organizes his book into a Prelude and ten chapters starting with 4 June 1944 and concluding with the opening of the Juno Beach Center in France in 2003. He divides each chapter into sections with headings such as "6:50 a.m. June 6, 1944—off Juno Beach" and "Evening, June 6, 1944—Bernieres-sur-Mer, France." Each section contains the memories of one or more Canadian vets. Direct quotes from the veterans represent a significant proportion of the text in each chapter. Zuehlke's book expends considerably more text setting the stage with information about planning and preparation and the battlefield situation. He divides his book into three main sections—"The Road to Overlord" with seven chapters, "Battle for the Beach," with seven more chapters, and "Breakout" with nine chapters, ending on the evening of D-Day—as well as an Introduction, Epilogue, and seven appendices. Zuehlke's book is also considerably denser, so that his word count is probably double that of Barris. While Zuehlke also focuses on what happened to individual soldiers, sailors, and airmen, he's less likely than Barris to use their direct quotes.
   For example, here's how Zuehlke describes the launching of the Canadian DD tanks and their run to shore:

   With the infantry heading shoreward, the moment of decision arrived for the flotilla officers commanding the launching of the Duplex-Drive squadrons of the Fort Garry Horse and 1st Hussars. Deciding that the sea was too rough, the officer controlling the Fort Garry Horse tankers ordered the LCTs to take these Shermans to within a few hundred feet of shore and let them swim from there. When the LCTs carrying the 1st Hussars were about three thousand yards from the beach, however, their flotilla commander told 'A' and 'B' squadrons to launch.
   Aboard the four LCTs bearing 'A' Squadron's nineteen tanks, the Down Ramp Order bells rang and Major Dudley Brooks radioed for the crew commanders to launch their Shermans. German artillery and mortar rounds were splashing into the water all around the closing LCTs as the Hussars' tankers fired up their engines and deployed the canvas screens. In the LCT farthest to port, Lieutenant H.K. "Kit" Pattison rolled off the ramp and bobbed down into the water—the Sherman settling nicely so that it looked like nothing more than a large rectangular canvas dinghy with three-foot-high sides making its way shoreward. Just as his tank took to the sea, however, the chains holding the door level to the waterline were shot away, preventing the other tanks from launching safely in deep-water conditions. The LCT on the starboard flank was also unable to disembark its tanks due to a mechanical failure with the ramp. Both of these LCTs made for the beach in order to disembark their tank complements onto dry land.
   Meanwhile, Lieutenant William Little, commander of 'A' Squadron's No. 5 Troop, launched off another LCT. Waves immediately broached the canvas screen and two of the Sherman's five engines sputtered and died. Corporal Jim Paisley, the driver, assumed water had shorted out some electronics. Bursts of machine-gun fire tore through the screen just above the water line, but the tank remained buoyant.
   Back on the LCT from which Little's tank had just launched, the remaining two tanks in his troop were still waddling towards the ramp when a nearby rocket ship fired a salvo. Trooper Stan "Fish" Seneco, the driver of Corporal Harv Stanfield's tank, watched with growing horror as the salvo pushed the rocket ship back with such force that a small tidal wave was created. Seconds later, that wave smashed into Little's tank and demolished the canvas screen, causing it to immediately sink. To Seneco's relief, all five tankers soon bobbed to the surface, but then a spray of blood spurted out of Trooper G.H.S. Hawken's body and the man, who had only recently joined No. 5 Troop as a reinforcement, sank below the surface and did not reappear.
   Deciding to delay launching the tanks still aboard the LCT until it was closer to shore, the naval commander ordered the craft to steam past the survivors of Little's tank. Although there were numerous small rescue power launches nearby, none attempted to pick up the four men because priority was given to saving fully intact tank crews for delivery ashore. Finally, when one launch passed close by at about 1000 hours, Little threatened its crew with his pistol, with the result that the men were picked up.
   While 'A' Squadron managed to launch only ten of its nineteen DD tanks, all of 'B' Squadron got away. Lieutenant Bruce Deans immediately reported complete engine failure and ordered his tank abandoned as it foundered. Major J.S. Duncan tried to form the remaining tanks in a line for a kind of six-knot cavalry charge to shore, but the heaving seas left each tank crew fending just to keep afloat and heading roughly towards assigned touchdown points. Sergeant Leo Gariepy was about thirty yards off Duncan's port side when the strut holding up one of his rear sections of canvas broke. Gariepy's crew prevented the screen's total collapse by hastily wedging a fire extinguisher between it and the tank hull. Small-arms fire from the beach showered the tank. Then two great pillars of water shot up around Duncan's tank and it just disappeared. Gariepy noted that "there were only four heads in the water." Duncan and his crew, save Trooper R.E. Tomemire, who drowned, were later rescued by an LCT and returned to England. Looking over his shoulder and seeing the other tanks still churning towards the beach, Gariepy led the way in.

   Barris takes a more personal approach to the same events:

   "I don't think there was another part of Canada that produced more people who served in the Second World War," [Lieutenant Bill] Little said. No fewer than thirty of his neighbours from a single block of Dufferin Street in Selkirk, Manitoba, were in the services. "We all felt a strong sense of duty, I guess."
   Bill Little's radio operator and loader, Blair Gunter, came from Selkirk. So did half a dozen other members of the squadron. His gunner, Earl Kitching, was from Stony Mountain, Manitoba. His two drivers, Barney Stamm and Tom Mitchell, hailed from around Winnipeg. And Bill Little's own brother, Harold, served in one of three DD tanks in the 2nd Troop of C Squadron.
   The consequence, of course, was that the loss of any and all squadron men felt like losing members of the family. The Channel crossing had taken a physical toll. Little remembered that seas were so rough that when the "matchbox" landing craft climbed each wave, all the men inside could see toward the bow was sky. Of the twenty-five tank crewmen on board, twenty-three were seasick coast to coast. In some cases, when the launching of the DD tanks began, Little was actually lifting some of his crewmen into their vehicles.
   With the DD tank's canvas skirt fully inflated, Little directed his Sherman down the open ramp and out into choppy seas about 1,000 yards from shore. Right away, he spotted holes in the canvas from incoming small-arms fire, but to that point no bullets had penetrated either the inflated uprights supporting the skirt or the metal containers supplying the air. By the time the tracks on Little's tank finally touched down on the beach and he had dropped the skirt, ready to attack, his troop of four tanks had already lost men and equipment.
   "A tank commander always had to have his head up [above the protective armour]," Little said, "and that's how Sergeant P. Parkes, my troop sergeant, and his operator, Lance Corporal [Bob] Stevenson, were killed. Both shot by sniper fire.... And Sergeant Spud Murphy, a shell hit his tank and down it went...."
   ...on their way to the LCAs, two men of the Queens Own at a time went into the Dieppe hold, primed their grenades, emerged, and boarded their landing craft. Then came the thunderous pounding of beach fortifications by the 16-inch Allied naval guns, whose shells sounded "like freight trains passing overhead," followed by the delays. The LCAs of all three Queen's Own companies began to circle in anticipation of their assault led by DD tanks. But the seas in this sector were so rough that the DD-tank commanders feared any attempt to swim them ashore risked their being swamped; some tried it and sank like stones. Now, twenty minutes later than the expected H-Hour, the first two assault groups, A and B companies, were ordered to land anyway. In the last few thousand yards, assault troops were both shaken and bolstered by the rounds of rocket fire swooshing over them and straight into the enemy's beach defences. Some of the Queen's Own reported seeing an RAF Spitfire that had descended perilously close to the shoreline blown out of the sky by the rockets. [Reviewer's note: As an aside, John Foreman seems to have no information about a Spitfire on D-Day "blown out of the sky by rockets," but he does report a spotter Mustang "...was shot down, believed to have been by naval gunfire."]

   Readers will probably be struck not only by the distinct voices adopted by the authors in their books, but also by the different—and sometimes incompatible—versions of the same events. In this case, Zuehlke reports that Lt Bill Little's DD Sherman sank before it reached shore. On the other hand, Barris indicates that Little's tank made it safely to the beach. Thankfully, both authors have footnoted their sources for this story: Zuehlke references an interview with Stan Seneco in November 2003 while Barris lists an interview with Little in April 2003. Both authors agree that while on foot Lt Little was wounded by a German grenade later in the day.
   Here's how Barris describes the wounding of Bill Little:

   By the end of the afternoon, a combination of the North Shore Regiment's attacks and the Fort Garry Horse tanks' shelling had destroyed several enemy guns and forced the surrender of the German strongpoint at the Tailleville chateau.
   Reverend Hickey caught up to the soldiers of his regiment digging slit trenches for protection against a potential counterattack in the night. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Little got out of his tank for an impromptu meeting with a fellow tank commander and a company commander of the North Shores. A German grenade suddenly came flying over a wall and into their midst. When Little tried to jump clear, the explosion propelled shrapnel into his legs, arms, and chest and burned his forehead. Within twenty-four hours he was on board a first-aid vessel on his way back to England. When his wife finally joined him in a British hospital, he learned that while he had been behind security wire and off to fight on D-Day, she had given birth to their first child.

   And here's Zuehlke's slightly longer version of the same events:

   While 'C' Company rooted out the last German defenders in the fields and orchards north of Tailleville, Fort Garry Horse 'C' Squadron commander Major Roy Bray instructed his second-in-command, Captain Alexander Christian, to reinforce Little's tank troop with three more tanks. Having served a brief stint as an officer on loan to the British 17/21st Lancers during the African campaign in 1943, Christian was one of the few officers in 3 CID with any previous battle experience. He was also in some pain, having had the tip of a finger shot away by a sniper's bullet shortly after landing on the beach. Christian raced to Tailleville and found the North Shores laying siege to the village.
   Daughney and Little were pressed up against the massive wall surrounding the village for cover while they discussed how to break into Tailleville. The infantry major was completely perplexed by the bizarre situation, which resembled something from the days when knights and archers might have attempted to pillage the medieval chateau, only to be confounded by an insurmountable wall. Daughney could find no way for his infantry to get through or over it. With his company all hunkered against the wall, the Germans were unable to fire directly at the Canadians. Since neither side could see the other, both had resorted to chucking occasional grenades over the wall whenever they heard voices or other sounds that might betray the position of an enemy. The fight had reached a standoff.
   Rumbling up in his tank at about 1400 hours, Christian jumped down from the turret and joined the other two officers. Christian and Little quickly conferred and agreed that all the tankers could do to help the situation was to hook around the town with their tanks and shoot over the wall with the hope of somehow dampening the German enthusiasm for the fight. Daughney told them to go to it. As the meeting was breaking up, a German grenade arced over the wall and landed directly between the two tankers. The blast knocked both men flat and left them dazed. Although Christian was unharmed, Little suffered multiple lacerations and had to be hastily spirited to St. Aubin by stretcher-bearers for treatment at the Regimental Aid Post.

   Despite the fact that Barris, given his interview with Little, likely presents the more accurate version of what happened to the lieutenant's tank, these excerpts also show that Zuehlke tends to surround the accounts of individual veterans with more information about the battle situation while Barris usually adds more personal information, such as the birth of Little's child.
   Addendum, 27 September 2004: Here's a clarification sent to us by Mark Zuehlke. "The problem is that there are two Bill Little's here and I added to the problem by indexing them both as a single person. Sorry about that. The Bill Little who had his DD tank sunk served with the 1st Hussars. The William Little wounded in Tailleville was with Fort Garry Horse. He got ashore and was wounded as in my account. The information therein confirmed by various regimental historical sources. Bill Little of the Hussars interestingly enough was afloat for sometime as the rescue boats were under instructions to only pick up tankers that were part of whole crews and leave the others for later rescue—assuming they survived. He finally managed to get himself and his crew rescued by threatening a passing rescue boat's crew with his pistol. He gets back into action fairly soon thereafter, but not on D-Day."
   In general, Barris also writes more from the perspective of simply passing along what the veterans have to say, making for an easy-to-read, pop-flavored book but one that seldom looks beyond memories and recollections. For example, when he wants to explain the concept of DD tanks, Barris continues to write from the viewpoint of Bill Little with paragraphs beginning "The Duplex Drive tank, as Bill Little learned in those months leading up to D-Day...." and "Little later found out that the inventor of the DD, or swimming tank, was a tank commander...." By comparison, Zuehlke sounds much more like a traditional historian. That distinction shows up repeatedly throughout the books.
   Here's how Barris presents the recollections of John Gorsline aboard HMCS Prince David.

   [Dr. Paul] Schwager worked rapidly to clean wounds, slow bleeding, and ease pain among the wounded men; he also noted the enthusiasm of Prince David's crew. Each sailor seemed to voluntarily adopt a patient and monitor his pulse, keep track of his morphine doses, and report his progress back to the overworked doctors. By early afternoon, the troopship received orders to steam at top speed back through the Channel's mine-swept approach lanes, straight for Southampton. Gorsline recalled that as the David began to move away, all on board were shaken by a sudden jolt.
   "There was a hell of an explosion," according to Gorsline. At the time, he was at his locker, seconds away from a passageway that led to the main deck outside. "If there's any explosion and you feel the concussion, you wonder, 'Is it us or somebody else?' You're never quite sure. But in the time it took me to go from my locker to the after-gun deck, I looked out and saw a minesweeper going down about four hundred yards astern of us.... It was disappearing, going down headfirst and its propeller was still going around."
   As had been the order of the day, [Prince] David carried on without stopping. Gorsline later found out the culprit was probably a floating mine that had bumped into the minesweeper; the ship's onboard magazine of shells, in the bow or bottom of the vessel, had torn the ship apart in one massive explosion. From a crew of about eighty, only three men in the bridge area were thrown clear by the explosion and survived the sinking. It was the only vessel that Gorsline saw sink on D-Day.

   Given that opening, some authors might have interrupted Gorsline's story long enough to interject further information about the sinking, such as the name (or number) and nationality of the minesweeper. Barris chooses not to do so, and that's the last readers hear about the vessel's loss. We decided to look a bit farther. Interestingly, this minesweeper turns out to be something of a mystery ship. Further research in a variety of other sources, including the very thorough Invasion Europe by the Royal Navy's History Office, fails to uncover any information about the sinking of a minesweeper in the Gold-Juno-Sword sectors on D-Day. That's not to suggest Gorsline's memory is wrong, it just highlights the lack of additional information provided by Barris beyond what the vets have to say. Given very light losses among Allied warships and merchantmen (excluding landing vessels) on D-Day, loss of a minesweeper with 73 of 80 crewmen might be worth a few more sentences with further details.
   Zuehlke doesn't include anything about Gorsline or stories concerning the Prince David, so he has nothing to say about the mysterious minesweeper. On the other hand, Zuehlke—in addition to relating veterans' stories—tends to bring in considerable complementary information from other sources. In this case, he provides a summary of naval losses that Barris lacks.

   Hinton's LCI was not alone in being damaged during the landing. Indeed, the RCN and Royal Navy vessels involved in landing troops on Juno Beach suffered the heaviest losses incurred in the British-Canadian sector of the invasion. In an after-action report, Force J Commander Oliver determined that ninety landing craft of various types were either sunk, badly damaged, damaged, or disabled on June 6. The LCAs were hit hardest, with thirty-six lost or damaged (2.5 per cent of the total complement). But Oliver's statistics were conservatively drawn. Although he reports just seven LCIs either badly damaged, damaged, or disabled, 262nd Flotilla alone had eleven of twelve craft holed by mines—five seriously enough that emergency repairs had to be conducted before they could depart the beach.
   Of the eleven LCIs in RCN 260th LCI Flotilla, three were so badly holed by mines that they took twenty-two hours to limp back across the Channel, with LCI 298 towing LCI 249. Near the end of the voyage, the tow was taken over by a fortuitously passing tug that sped the badly listing craft into Portsmouth "in a sinking condition."
   Oliver also reports no LCAs lost. However, LCA 1021 from Prince Henry's 528th Flotilla was holed by a mine departing the beach and sank. The five LCAs of 529th Flotilla from Prince David involved in landing troops in the first assault wave were all lost. Mines holed LCA 1059 and 1150 on the port side, LCA 1137 was holed aft by an explosion and suffered starboard bow damage in a collision with an obstacle, and LCA 1138 had its bottom completely ripped out by a mine. Royal Canadian Naval Reserve Lieutenant J. Beveridge aboard LCA 1138 suffered multiple shrapnel and blast injuries that included a fractured right leg and slight head injuries.
   Only LCA 1151 was able to embark its load of troops and pull off the beach successfully. But it was then caught in the midst of a maze of beach obstacles draped in mines, with insufficient engine power to escape to sea in the face of the rising tide and pounding surf. The coxswain of this craft ended up locked in a hazardous dance that lasted for about ninety minutes as he added or cut power while working the rudder frantically to keep from being tossed on the mines. At 0950 hours, Lieutenant D. Graham, an RCN reserve officer, decided to risk the return trip, but when forced to swerve out of the way of an LCT bearing down on LCA 1151, the smaller craft struck an obstacle that ripped its hull open, sending 1151 to the bottom. Despite the loss of all five LCAS, Beveridge was the flotilla's only casualty.

   In the same sense that there's nothing wrong with Ken Ford's Juno Beach, but it can't compete with the books from Barris and Zuehlke, Barris' Juno is a well-written, well-received book that stands head and shoulders above many titles that appeared during the deluge of D-Day releases earlier this year, but it takes a backseat to Zuehlke's stronger Juno Beach. Ted Barris clearly knows how to write, but by comparison his book is a little thinner, a little shallower, and sometimes sounds a little like a television documentary. Mark Zuehlke is also a very talented writer, and he has a flair for assembling recollections and seamlessly integrating them with archival material to produce fully-rounded military history with an "at the front" flavor. Fans of his Italian campaign trilogy will be thoroughly pleased that he's taken the same approach to the Canadians on D-Day.
   If you're seriously interested in Juno beach, you'll want all three of these books. If you only have time for two, devote your hours to Barris and Zuehlke and you'll find much to enjoy in both. If time or funds or lack of shelf space limit you to one book on Juno, then Zuehlke is the way to go.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from the publishers.
   Thanks to the publishers for providing these review copies.