the strongest opposition, thus receiving the most causalities. Keep in mind, 5000 ships and150,000 troops were launched across the English Channel that faithful morning a little after2:00am. Almost immediately the radio and newspaper people got wind of it, although mostsurely crafted the narrative of the “big moment” months and weeks before. In most instances,the news that was officially released communicated their same crafted themes, all positivealbeit costly. Thus, Stephen, in Chapter One, sets the media landscape and other factors thatdirectly affected the on-going creation and fundamental direction of OVERLORDS’ storyline.Chapter Two focuses on its significance to the global war effort as reporters developed itthrough the first sparse radio broadcasts before the 6 June 9:00am hours. Chapter Threebroadens Chapter Two by describing how the newspapers intervened by mid-morning tocontinue the same theme using “visual devices such as evocative headlines, detailed mapsprepared earlier”, and the very first landing activities photos taken, many under actual Germanfire. Chapters Four and Five continue with the newspapers’ efforts to clearly visualize theemerging D-day narrative “with wire-service summaries” dominating entire front pages.However, Chapter Five devotes its accounts to the “sacralization” of the first troops to reachthe beaches, then heroically secure them knowing fully well half of Hitler’s western Europeantanks were alerted to put those landed forces back into the Channel. Chapter Six glorifies, andrightly so, “the best leaders leading the very best soldiers” via newspaper features andeyewitness broadcasts. Chapter Seven, priceless, is devoted to the final D-day narrative draftedaround “ . . . four themes which have endured in America’s consciousness for more than three-quarters of a century, principally through the speeches of American presidents at national D-day commemorations. Author Rusiecki insists that the D-day narratives and its four themeshave remained pretty much unaltered.In many ways, writers David Eisenhower and Stephen Rusiecki display the same qualities thatwon Ike praise for winning the Normandy coastline, its interiors, and later World War II, thenthe Presidency of the United States. They included some of the highest qualities a human canattain – – prudence and wariness, attention to all circumstances, control and controlled,reserved and reticent, and, most of all, patient perseverance and a resoluteness resulting in
winning every effort, whether writing an excellent book on a difficult subject or winning a war.
