What do you think?
Rate this book
Vanguard: The True Stories of the Reconnaissance and Intelligence Missions behind D-Day
Operation OVERLORD, the opening up of an Allied second front by the invasion of the Normandy beaches in June 1944 was the largest military invasion of all time, but it was preceded by years of industrial scale intelligence collection and dangerous clandestine reconnaissance missions off the French coast.
VANGUARD is the untold story of this work, the intelligence machine and covert reconnaissance missions that went into the D-Day planning, such as the signals intelligence intercepts, the agent running operations orchestrated by the 15th Flotilla, to the clandestine work of the X-Craft and COPP (Combined Operations Pilotage Parties) diver teams that scoured the Normandy coast months before the June 1944 deadline.
The book pulls together previously unpublished but declassified Top Secret documents, diaries, letters and personal accounts from some of the few remaining veterans who were there.
VANGUARD is the untold story of this work, the intelligence machine and covert reconnaissance missions that went into the D-Day planning, such as the signals intelligence intercepts, the agent running operations orchestrated by the 15th Flotilla, to the clandestine work of the X-Craft and COPP (Combined Operations Pilotage Parties) diver teams that scoured the Normandy coast months before the June 1944 deadline.
The book pulls together previously unpublished but declassified Top Secret documents, diaries, letters and personal accounts from some of the few remaining veterans who were there.
400 pages, Hardcover
Published May 17, 2019
1 person is currently reading
21 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 14, 2020
There is an excellent book here, screaming to get out. It just needs a good editor to release it.
Let's get the grumbles out of the way first. As it stands the book is repetitive, disjointed and sometimes inaccurate - even contradictory. The chapters seem to have been written separately over time and then combined without a detailed read-through, resulting in a certain amount of material duplicated between chapters. Then there are the odd sillies - for example '... its contribution to the war intelligence machinery cannot be underestimated, ...' Errr, no, I don't think that's what he meant. And a trivial personal gripe, he capitalises 'radar' throughout. It's not an acronym. Fixing these problems would make it shorter, more readable and allow the author's genuine scholarship to shine through.
That's it for the gripes. Books have been written about each topic covered by this one individually; the unique strength of Abrutat's work is that he brings all the threads together and shows how they build the overall picture. For that reason, despite my whinges, it is a valuable addition to the bookshelf. It would best suit a reader who already has some knowledge of the topic and can extract the juice without being deterred by the sometimes bitty structure.
I read the first UK hardback edition and a should say a word about the production quality, which is superb. Heavy, semi-gloss paper does justice to the illustrations without the need for a plate section and you feel that if you dropped it you might crack the tiles. I hope the author has taken the opportunity of the later paperback edition to render my moans above obsolete.
Let's get the grumbles out of the way first. As it stands the book is repetitive, disjointed and sometimes inaccurate - even contradictory. The chapters seem to have been written separately over time and then combined without a detailed read-through, resulting in a certain amount of material duplicated between chapters. Then there are the odd sillies - for example '... its contribution to the war intelligence machinery cannot be underestimated, ...' Errr, no, I don't think that's what he meant. And a trivial personal gripe, he capitalises 'radar' throughout. It's not an acronym. Fixing these problems would make it shorter, more readable and allow the author's genuine scholarship to shine through.
That's it for the gripes. Books have been written about each topic covered by this one individually; the unique strength of Abrutat's work is that he brings all the threads together and shows how they build the overall picture. For that reason, despite my whinges, it is a valuable addition to the bookshelf. It would best suit a reader who already has some knowledge of the topic and can extract the juice without being deterred by the sometimes bitty structure.
I read the first UK hardback edition and a should say a word about the production quality, which is superb. Heavy, semi-gloss paper does justice to the illustrations without the need for a plate section and you feel that if you dropped it you might crack the tiles. I hope the author has taken the opportunity of the later paperback edition to render my moans above obsolete.
Displaying 1 of 1 review