Landing on the Edge of Eternity

Book excerpt: Early in 1944, German commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took a look at the sloping sands and announced "They will come here!” He was referring to "Omaha Beach”. The beach was then transformed into three miles of lethal, bunker-protected arcs of fire, with seaside chalets converted into concrete strongpoints, with layers of barbed wire and mines. When Company A of the US 116th Regiment landed on Omaha Beach in D-Day’s first wave on 6th June 1944, it lost 96% of its effective strength. This was the beginning of the historic day that Landing on the Edge of Eternity narrates hour by hour—midnight to midnight—tracking German and American soldiers fighting across the beachhead. The Wehrmacht thought they had bludgeoned the Americans into submission yet by mid-afternoon, the American troops were ashore. Why were the casualties so grim, and how could the Germans have failed? Juxtaposing the American experience—pinned down, swamped by a rising tide, facing young Wehrmacht soldiers fighting desperately for their lives, Kershaw draws on eyewitness accounts, memories, letters, and post-combat reports to expose the true horrors of Omaha Beach. Landing on the Edge of Eternity is a dramatic historical ride through an amphibious landing that looked as though it might never succeed.