By Tank into Normandy

By: Stuart Hills, Lord Deedes - foreword

Narrated by: Roger Clark

"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 20 years old, un-blooded, 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.

©2002 Stuart Hills (P)2021 Tantor

Great Book, Awesome Narrator

The book was much better than I’d anticipated. I never really get tired of D-Day stories and I always enjoy tank books. I especially liked Roger Clark as narrator. He really made the book better, IMHO. He’s a talented voice actor (great as Red Dead Redemption) and I’d really like to hear more stuff by him.

P.S. Just read the other review by the reader calling him a “fake Brit”. Seriously? Roger is effing awesome! And I just read that he’s a dual US-Irish citizen. Didn’t sound fake to me. Unless you are pretentious enough to obsess over how someone pronounces “threepence” (assuming you even know what that is, because I for one do not), I think you’ll enjoy it.

First “The Big Show” now this?!

Audible is knocking it out of the park. First The Big Show by Closterman and By Tank Into Normandy? These books are some of the best war memoirs available. I actually have an autographed copy of By Tank into Normandy in my collection. If you like tank action this one is first class. Now if we could get some of the Ken Tout books on here.

Faux British reader distracts from an interesting story

It really would have been worthwhile for the reader to check on the pronunciation of British place names and common terms such as “three pence” (pron. “threppence”). Or maybe an editor? It is jarring to hear a British army officer’s memoirs disturbed by some very un-British pronunciations.