Private Dee Carpenter is only sixteen years old. His parents were political refugees from Germany. When Dee was only five-years-old his Uncle Otto vanished in what has become known in Germany as "Night and Fog". His uncle was a labour leader involved in organizing factory workers in Nazi Germany. Dee's parents did not support the Nazi government's policies. As the Nazis gained more and more support, Dee's parents fled to the United States. Dee's real name is Dietrich Zimmerman. When the United States was drawn into the Second World War, Dee decided to enlist, something foreign nationals were allowed to do. Determined to return to his homeland of Germany to "beat Hitler", Dietrich decided to change his name at the suggestion of the recruiter.
Now in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, as part of Operation Overlord, Dee finds himself aboard a Higgins landing craft on the English Channel, headed towards Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. With him is seventeen-year-old Private Sid Jacobstein, a hulking six-foot four-inches tall Jewish New Yorker bent on revenge. But their landing on Omaha Beach is a disaster as they face a brutal hailstorm of bullets that cuts down many of the soldiers.
Eleven-year-old Samira Zidane and her mother Kenza are racing along the road outside their village in German-occupied northern France. Being outside after curfew is dangerous. If caught it means automatic arrest and jail and even being shot as a spy. Samira's mother is a spy for the French Resistance.
Samira's parents had been students from Algeria at the University of Paris when the Nazis overran France. Samira's father was killed in student protests against the German occupation. Only seven-years-old at the time, Samira and her mother fled to the countryside, working as messengers for the Resistance.
Now Samira's mother must let the Resistance, hiding in the forest south of Villers-Bocage, know that the Allied forces are set to invade France and begin the liberation of Europe. The message has been broadcast in a code over BBC radio.
In the countryside, Samira and her mother witness Nazi soldiers rounding up French farmers to be executed. This is in retaliation for the murder of a German officer, Major Vogel. When her mother sees a woman lifting her children out the back window of a farmhouse, she rushes forward to help the woman but is captured along with the French family. Samira narrowly escapes capture by hiding in the family's doghouse. Terrified but determined to help her mother, Samira decides to try to find the "Maquis" as the French Resistance is known. She hopes they will help her free her mother.
After managing to outwit a Nazi patrol at a bridge, Samira is found by the Resistance. She delivers the coded message that informs them of the impending Allied invasion. But when Samira begs them to help her free her mother from the Bayeux garrison, they refuse. The Maquis tell her that the message is also an instruction to carry out Operation Tortoise and Operation Green which involve the sabotaging of roads and rail lines to hinder the German response to the invasion. At this Samira decides she will join the Resistance, although they are not keen to have her.
Nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal James McKay of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion is from Winnipeg, Manitoba. With him is Lance Corporal Samuel Tremblay, a Cree Indian from Quebec. Both are in the twin engine Albemarle troop transport aircraft, enroute to France where they will parachute in to support the Allied invasion. Their Alpha Company's mission is "to protect the 9th Battalion's left flank on the Merville Battery, then cover their advance to Le Plein." The Merville Battery is an important bunker with four 100-mm howitzer cannons that are aimed at the Normandy beaches where Allied troops will be landing.
However, after a dangerous parachute into France, dodging tracer fire in sky and "Rommel's asparagus" on the ground, James and Sam land mostly unharmed, but seven miles from their objective. Eventually they meet up with survivors from B and C Companies and then Major MacLeod from C Company. Their mission now is to destroy the radio station at Varaville as well as the enemy headquarters there.
Private Bill Richards is a nineteen-year-old Sherman tank driver in the Royal Dragoons. Bill who is from Liverpool, England has a crew that includes his tank commander, Lieutenant Walter Lewis, his co-driver Private Thomas Owens-Cook, and tank gunner Private George Davies, Private Bryan Murphy the tank's gun loader. Their tank, named Achilles, is on a boat with two other Sherman tanks, the Valiant and Coventry's Revenge. Part of Operation Neptune, they are supposed to be landing at the British sector's Gold beach but have drifted west to the American's Omaha Beach. After watching two other tanks, the Indefatigable and Mama's Boy! sink in the rough seas, Lewis orders the boat to take them in closer to shore.
As they land on the beach, Coventry's Revenge is hit by a shell and destroyed. The Achilles hits a mine which disables it, destroying the tank's left tread. Because their tank is too high to fire on the German 88 mm gun that is taking out the tanks, Bill and the others get out of the tank to dig a pit underneath it. He is helped by American soldiers including Dee Carpenter who has managed to make his way up the beach. They are successful but while the Achilles does take out the one German gun, its crew is killed minutes later by a shell from a second German gun.
Corporal Henry Allen belongs to the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, an all black unit, in the segregated US Army. Twenty-year-old Henry is from the South Side of Chicago, Ill. and was a premed student at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania when the US entered the war. He decided to train as a medic when the Army wouldn't place him as an officer because white soldiers didn't trust black officers. Now, on Omaha beach among wounded and dying white soldiers, Henry finds the white soldiers have no such qualms.
Henry sets up his medical station on the beach. The invasion at Omaha Beach has been a disaster with hundreds of wounded and dead American soldiers. His own unit, scheduled to come ashore when the beach was secure is now fighting for their lives. As he works through exhaustion to save soldiers, Henry encounters Lieutenant Richard Hoyte, a white soldier from Georgia. Hoyte who had made Henry's life in boot camp miserable, lies badly wounded on the beach, his right foot destroyed by a mine. Henry helps Hoyte, who now treats him with respect and thanks him for saving his life.
Among the soldiers Henry helps, are Sid who has shrapnel in his leg and Dee who has a bullet in his left arm. Dee and Sid along with other surviving American soldiers decide to get off the beach and try to attack the Germans manning the bunkers. As the invasion continues, each soldier struggles to complete his mission, one step at a time.
Discussion
Allies is an excellent, well-written novel that portrays the reality of the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. In particular the novel focuses in on the battle on Omaha Beach, located in the American sector, weaving together five story lines over a time period of twenty-four hours.
The main characters are sixteen-year-old American-German immigrant Dee Carpenter and his Jewish buddy Sid Jacobstein, eleven-year-old French-Algerian Samira Zidane and her mother, Private Bill Richards a British Sherman tank driver and his crew, Canadian paratrooper James McKay, and American medic Henry Allen, a black man working to save lives on Omaha beach. Each of these story lines portray the various aspects of Operation Overlord; the invasion by sea with troops and tanks, by air with paratroopers as well as aerial bombardment by the Allies, and help from within France by the French Resistance.
The novel's focus at Normandy is on the battle at Omaha Beach, one of five landings sites for the invasion. Omaha Beach has the distinction of being the sector which suffered the worst casualties during Operation Overlord. The landing on the early morning of June 6 initially was a disaster. The Allies were misinformed as to the strength of the German defenses in this sector. American bombing of the German bunkers the night before was inaccurate and ineffectual. The heavy smoke from the night's Allied bombardment masked the true situation at the beach - the German bunkers remained intact and operational. Rough seas and troops landed in wrong areas also contributed to the disaster.
The first wave of soldiers were decimated by mortars, artillery and machine gun fire. Their landing was supposed to be supported by Sherman tanks, but many sank in the rough seas, were disabled on the beach or destroyed by German shells. Sappers sent to destroy the beach defenses were unsuccessful, as most were killed or wounded. The second wave of troops fared just as badly, this time jammed on the beach with no where to go, making them easy targets for the Germans. Eventually, some soldiers made their way off the beach and were able to secure some of their objectives. Over two thousand American soldiers were either wounded, missing or dead at the end of the day.
Gratz successfully portrays some of the chaos, terror and death of the assault on Omaha Beach. This is no glamorous portrayal of war, although there are moments of valour and sacrifice. There is blood, grit, agony, terror and death. When Dee lands on Omaha Beach, his experience is brutal, shocking and unforgettable:
"Lungs burning, eyes stinging, Dee kicked again, breaking the surface. This time he floated, and what he saw as the waves took him up and down was a scene from hell. Dead bodies bumped into Dee, and the sea was dark with blood. Men screamed and cried out for medics who weren't there. German pillboxes on the high cliffs laid down a deadly cross-fire. "Czech hedgehogs" - huge three-legged, three-armed anti-tank obstacles made from steel bars welded together into an X shape -- littered the beach, undamaged by the Allied battleship barrage. Soldiers lay crumpled on the wet sand around the obstacles like stones."
Dee's experience of watching the death of a tank crew he had been helping only minutes before is also heart-rending.
"Dee scanned the raging bonfire that had been the Achilles, trying to find anyone who had survived. But there was nothing. Whoever had been inside the tank, and the two soldiers who had dug out the crater with him -- they were all dead.
What were their names? Where were they from? Who had they left behind in England who would mourn them when they didn't come home?"
All Dee knows is that the friendly soldier was Bill whom he will remember for the rest of his life.
But the soldiers on the beach are not the only ones who encounter danger and stomach churning fear. As paratrooper James McKay fights his way into France to take out German positions, he witnesses death. As they engage the Germans, James's commander and three other men are killed instantly from a shell. The finality of it, shocks James.
"But the way Major MacLeod and the others had been there one moment and then just --- just obliterated the next, chilled James to the bone. The thought that his life might end instantly explosively, in the fraction of a second, scared a stillness into hi he knew would be with him the rest of his life."
However, as the fight continues on the beaches and inland, Gratz shows the tide turning and the Allied soldiers beginning to score victories. With this comes hope as the Allies gain a foothold in France. Gratz neatly ties up his story by having some of his characters meet at the end. Dee and Sid reunite after becoming separated when Sid learns Dee is a German. They both meet Samira and her mother, who was saved by the liberation of Bayeux by the Allies.
Gratz also includes a storyline that portrays the courageous contributions made by the French Resistance in helping the Allies. Their work, as Gratz shows, was not without risk. They were a vital component in helping slow the German response to the Allied invasion.
Allies is populated by a unique cast of characters that represent the major players in the invasion; England, Canada, and the United States. The characters are well crafted with Gratz focusing on their humanity, making them very believable. Some are noble like Henry Allen, a black medic who has encountered discrimination both in society and in the army and who chooses to aid the very man who made his life so miserable in boot camp. Some like Richard Hoyte, Allen's tormentor, start out mean, but come to realize Henry's humanity in a moment of intense suffering. Many like James, Dee, Bill and Sid show unwavering courage - acting while filled with fear for their lives, not even certain why they signed up.
Gratz's extensive Author's Note at the back provides good background information on D-Day. On one note however, Gratz is terribly incorrect. He writes, "Canada was slow to send its soldiers into a war so far from home, so many Canadians who wanted to fight joined the US military to see action right away." This is mostly inaccurate. The Battle of Dunkirk, which occurred from May 26 to June 4, 1940, was an operation to withdraw English, Canadian and Polish troops (among others) from France as they were losing the battle for Western Europe to the Germans. Canada already had troops in Europe fighting by mid-1940. On August 19, 1942, the infamous Dieppe raid was launched. Over six thousand soldiers, the vast majority of which were Canadians, were involved. It was a disaster that led to the deaths of over three thousand Canadians. Only about fifty American soldiers were involved in the Dieppe raid. It is worth mentioning that it was the United States that was reluctant to send its soldiers into war. In fact, the United States did not enter World War II until after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, although they did supply material to the Allied war effort.
My own father enlisted in September of 1939, along with his three brothers. He was sent over to England immediately to train and was placed into the signal corps. After the Dieppe disaster, the Allies were reluctant to launch another invasion until they were certain there was a good possibility of success. My father was not part of the attacking forces on D-Day but arrived shortly afterwards and was involved in the liberation of Holland. He stayed on as part of the occupying army in Germany after the war.
Gratz provides his readers with an excellent two page map that shows where the events for each character occur. Allies is well written, engaging and tense. This novel will appeal to those who enjoy historical fiction and in particular, those who want to learn more about the Normandy invasion.
Book Details:
Allies by Alan Gratz
New York: Scholastic Press 2019
322 pp.
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