By Tank into Normandy

Name: By Tank into Normandy
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Author: Stuart Hills
ISBN: 9781666104905

Author: Stuart Hills, Lord Deedes

Narrator: Roger Clark

Unabridged: 9 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/18/2021

Categories: Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Military Nonfiction, Memoirs

Synopsis

"One of the best half-dozen personal accounts of the Normandy campaign"—Richard Holmes

Stuart Hills embarked his Sherman DD tank on to an LCT at 6:45 a.m., Sunday, June 4th, 1944. He was twenty years old, unblooded, fresh from a public-school background, and Officer Cadet training. He was going to war. Two days later, his tank sunk, he and his crew landed from a rubber dinghy with just the clothes they stood in. After that, the struggles through the Normandy bocage in a replacement tank (of the non-swimming variety), engaging the enemy in a constant round of close encounters, led to a swift mastering of the art of tank warfare and remarkable survival in the midst of carnage and destruction. His story of that journey through hell to victory makes for compulsive listening.

About Stuart Hills

Stuart Hills was twenty years old when he joined a tank regiment preparing to spearhead the D-Day landings. His parents and sister were in Hong Kong, prisoners of the Japanese, their fate unknown. One of the few surviving officers in the regiment at the end of the war, he went on to a successful business career.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on October 20, 2017

First published in 2002, By Tank Into Normandy tells Second Lieutenant Stuart Hills story as he commanded a Sherman tank of the Nottinghamshire Sherwood Rangers from 1944 onwards. His tale takes him through training, D-Day, the Normandy battles, Arnhem and the final battles of the war in Europe. The......more

Goodreads review by Peter on December 18, 2023

This book was a gripping personal account of the extraordinary experiences of a tank commander who went from D-Day to the fall of Germany. He starts with his early life as the son of what were presumably near aristocratic parents living in Hong Kong. At the age of 7, he was sent to England to go to......more

Goodreads review by Brian on January 31, 2016

Really good account by a British tank commander of leading tanks in World War II. Pretty full with observations on actions he was in, the structure of a British tank brigade, and armor-infantry coordination. Hills is also open about the emotions he felt, even walking us through what he was thinking......more

Goodreads review by Fredrick on April 03, 2014

While supposedly a memoir of an English tank officer's events in World War II in France, it spends most of the time coming across as a social status work. The author used many terms from his social class and really gave very historically perspective to the invasion of Normandy. Therefore, I'm shelvi......more

Goodreads review by Larry on January 13, 2021

Warm bonhomie History certainly need its moments of grandeur, its Antietams, bulges,and its larger than life leaders, but none of this happens without those people, from yeoman to Royalty who get up and put skin in the game. The higher the pyramid, the larger the base of people who do their job every......more