This book was written on the back of an offer from the publisher Ian Allan to write a book to coincide with the fortieth D-Day Commemoration. My response was that there was a plethora of good books on the market with Ryan, Keegan and Hastings and what could I possibly add? They assured me ‘I would think of something’ and offered to republish It Never Snows in September in the United States if I signed up, and this was the hook.

As I was then a serving battalion commander with 10 PARA I cracked the problem by running a succession of battlefield tours in Normandy with my officers. Although sponsored by the Army, much was individually paid. By employing my officers to solve World War II problems on the landing zones and beaches utilising modern equipments - such as helicopters, unavailable then - they got the professional benefit, while I could expose ideas to scrutiny across terrain I needed to view in depth in order to write the book.

The Bundesarchive in Germany provided wonderful support gathering obscure, yet important documents such as the telephone log of the German Omaha defenders and the E-Boat commander’s log of the Slapton Sands pre-D-Day exercise debacle, when American landing ships were sunk on exercise. Other reports covered German units vainly seeking Allied paratroopers in the darkened Normandy hinterland during the first night.

The project came to a fitting end as I parachuted into Normandy as part of one of the commemorative jumps. Everyone, including myself was amazed at how I could pack in the books despite a very busy military career.

D-Day was published in time for the fortieth anniversary and I gained a lot of publicity from writing feature length articles for the Times and Sunday Times for their special commemorative editions.