Juno: Canadians at D-Day June 6, 1944, and: Juno Beach: Canada's D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944 (review)

Reviewed by: Juno: Canadians at D-Day June 6, 1944, and: Juno Beach: Canada's D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944 James Wood Juno: Canadians at D-Day June 6, 1944. Ted Barris. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2004. Pp. 311, illus. $34.95 Juno Beach: Canada's D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944. Mark Zuehlke. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004. Pp. 415, illus. $35.00 In 1994, the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day was accompanied in the United States by a resurgence of public interest in the Allied invasion of Normandy and a flood of publications on the subject. Ten years later - as is so often the case in this country - the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary has occasioned the release of two new books on Canada's 'Longest Day.' Juno, by Ted Barris, and Mark Zuehlke's Juno Beach have gathered the stories of Canadian soldiers, sailors, and airmen who took part in the landings to provide readers with two popular accounts of Canada's contribution to the Allied invasion. Despite the similarity of their titles, however, Barris and Zuehlke have written two very different [End Page 128] books. While both have merit and will find their respective audiences, Zuehlke's work of history is a more detailed and comprehensive look at the Canadians who took part in D-Day. To the task of recounting Canada's role in the invasion, Barris brings his credentials as media broadcaster and instructor of journalism at Centennial College, and his experience as the author of nearly a dozen books. Intended for general audiences and with a brief foreword by well-known historian John Keegan, Juno tells the story of D-Day through the eyes of the Canadians who lived through it. Based largely upon published secondary sources and supported by the author's extensive collection of interviews, the events of that momentous day are conveyed in Juno through the personal recollections of individual participants, a cast of characters that includes not only soldiers but also their families, French civilians, and the Canadian press. Journalists, in particular, figure prominently throughout Juno, and the author has clearly conceived a great admiration for the war correspondents who followed the troops ashore. Vivid accounts of the invasion by reporters Ross Munro, William Stewart, and others provide much of the human interest and variety of perspectives that are among the strengths of this book. At times, however, the experience of the press seems to overshadow the events they sought to portray. The story of a Canadian Army cameraman who filmed the Queen's Own Rifles (qor) going ashore at Bernières-sur-Mer, for example, receives as much space in the text as the story of the soldiers who are depicted in his thirty-five seconds of motion-picture footage. On D-Day, 'B' Company of the qor touched down directly in front of a German strong point that had scarcely received a scratch from preliminary air and naval bombardment. Within just moments, half of the company lay dead or wounded, yet the remainder still managed to overcome the German defences and fight their way off the beach. We are all entitled to our heroes, and there is no good reason to exclude journalists from our admiration, but too often in this book it seemed that the 'poor-bloody-infantry' was once again coming away with the short end of the stick. Differences of opinion are easily dismissed; errors of fact occurring throughout the text are not. Barris incorrectly attributes Eisenhower's decision on a twenty-four-hour postponement of D-Day to 6 June to the findings of a Canadian weather reconnaissance flight that took place on the afternoon of 4 June - but the decision had already been made by 04:30. He writes that to compensate for the inexperience of its soldiers, the Wehrmacht brought in 'younger leaders, some of the notorious Hitler Youth who knew how to motivate green troops' (26-7), demonstrating a misreading of the 12th SS Panzer Division's role in Normandy. [End Page 129] The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion is credited with the capture of the Merville Battery (75), guns that were in fact destroyed by the British 9th Battalion, with...

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