Nothing but Courage: The 82nd Airborne’s Daring D-Day Mission—and Their Heroic Charge Across La Fière Bridge

Historian Donovan (Shoot for the Moon) provides a straight-shooting account of how parachutists and gliders from the 82nd Airborne slipped behind Axis lines in Normandy just before the start of the D-Day invasion in June 1944. Citing interviews with survivors and their kin, he chronicles how the mission—which had been labeled suicidal by the British—secured key roadways and the La Fière Bridge, preventing German reinforcements from arriving to rebuff the Allies’ amphibious attack. Donovan spotlights dozens involved, including mission leader Gen. Matthew Ridgway, whom he describes as “smart, charismatic,” and possessing “a hawklike visage often likened to a Roman emperor’s.” With one of the few working radios and a jeep that had been sent in on a glider, Ridgway set up headquarters in a farmhouse surrounded by the enemy. His men were scattered, many having missed their landing points: one group of parachutists descended to their deaths in a French town that was entirely aflame; others were shot by German guns while still in the air or were taken prisoner as soon as they landed. Donovan’s terse style recreates the sheer chaos as German tanks advanced, “mortar shells continued to fall,” and “57 percent of the 82nd’s combat personnel” were wounded or killed over 33 days of fighting. This plunges readers into the thick of battle. (May)