Munro reported for Canadian Press during WW II. He was at Dieppe, Sicily and D-Day. This volume starts with the Canadian Army's activities on D-Day and their battles on the road to the defeat of Germany. While Munro wasn't in the first wave on D-Day, he was so close behind that he had to duck snipers and at one point had eight Germans step out of a bunker with their hands up right in front of him.

This is not a detailed account of the action of individual soldiers but rather a journalist's brief overview of what he witnessed. Because he was close to many Canadian and British officers, he often has an insiders view of what was planned and what actually happened.

One must be conscious that this book was written shortly after the actions described and was published in 1945 almost immediately after the war ended so it has a fresh point of view of immediacy without the historical perspective we have now. A case in point is the Dunkirk Raid which he quotes officers giving credit to that disaster for the many improvements that were incorporated into the D-Day plans. We know now that Dieppe was designed to hide a pinch of top security information from the Germans and not a test of how to mount a amphibious raid although no doubt many things were learned from that unfortunate event.

He took part in four amphibian operations including Dieppe. He was one of four men who returned out of eighty in his landing craft and had a front row view of the disaster. After Dieppe, he went to Africa for the final battles in Tunisia followed by the landing in Sicily. Following victory there, he took part in the invasion of the the Italian mainland and followed Canadian troops all the way up the boot to Potenza.

My copy was signed by Field-Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery. ( )