D-Day: 24 Hours: A Novel of June 6, 1944 - Paperback

by Christian Ledeblis (Author)

Five lives. Twenty-four hours. One impossible day.

June 6, 1944. From midnight to midnight, D-Day unfolds through the eyes of five unforgettable characters: An American lieutenant who leads thirty-two men into hell and brings back seven. A German machine gunner who kills with mechanical precision while his conscience keeps count. An American general who discovers command means choosing who dies next. A pathfinder whose beacon guides thirteen thousand paratroopers through darkness. A French woman who watches liberation destroy her village more thoroughly than occupation ever did.

Hour by hour, this novel captures the longest day through intimate, interwoven perspectives-American, German, and French-revealing the human cost of history's most crucial battle. Based on extensive historical records and first-hand accounts, D-Day: 24 Hours strips away the mythology to show what really happened: exhausted teenagers walking into machine-gun fire because the man beside them was walking too.

This isn't the D-Day of documentaries and distant history. This is copper pennies in your mouth when fear becomes taste. This is a bent rifle sight that saves one life while geometry kills another. This is boys from Iowa farms and German villages discovering they're more alike than different, even while trying to kill each other.

Raw, unflinching, and deeply human, D-Day: 24 Hours puts you on Omaha Beach, in German bunkers, in French cellars as the world pivots on individual courage and mechanical horror. Through meticulous research and powerful storytelling, it answers the fundamental question: How did ordinary boys find the courage to do the extraordinary?

They were magnificent in their terror. They saved the world before lunch. Both things are true. Both things matter.