title: Normandy: The Real Story
author: Shelagh Whitaker
description: The late Canadian Brig. Gen. Denis Whitaker, of Canada's Royal Military College, and his wife, Shelagh, of Ontario, coauthored <i>Victory at Falaise</i>, as well as this and three other books, with professor and <i>Canadian Military History</i> editor Kopp. Drawing on interviews and myriad other sources, they piece together the in-the-moment thinking of Allied soldiers and commanders as they struggled against two German armies in France in the aftermath of D-Day. Beyond the conventional hard slogging and pounding, the authors show a flexible military instrument using every means at its disposal. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  [Contents](0671319817_toc.htm)
  
  ![](0671319817.jpg)  
  
  # Chapter One
  
  ### Normandy, the Beginning
  
  
  
  He awoke in a meaningless half light that could have been dawn or dusk, and in
  all truth it did not matter. His eyes pierced the gloom easily; to him the
  inside of her tent was as bright as day. He lay on fur and beneath fur, and
  the small of his back was wet with sweat. He shifted sleepily and became aware
  of her next to him. He turned his head and saw she had her back toward him,
  only partly covered by the stifling fur. Her dark hair, long and lustrous,
  tumbled away from her shoulders and across the pillows. The side of her neck
  was bare, and his gaze followed the line of her body from that point, over the
  rise of her shoulder along the slope of her side and up the sudden sharp rise
  of her hip. By the slow steady beat of her heart she was still sleeping.
  
  He smiled at the memory of the long hours of love and passion and pure
  pl