And the chaos and tension are conveyed through the soldiers’ inner thoughts. Gratz doesn’t hide the brutality of the fighting - thousands were killed on D-Day, code-named Operation Overlord - yet the violence is never gratuitous. The sense of dread is immediate: “After months of training, months of planning, months of waiting, Dee and Sid and everyone else - more than 150,000 soldiers - were about to be delivered right into the jaws of death.” Gratz wastes no time in throwing the young men into a Higgins boat - “basically a big metal bathtub,” familiar from images of the beach landings. These differences in backgrounds matter little for the soldiers as soon as the fighting begins. And there’s this: Sid is the only Jewish soldier in their platoon - “I’m gonna kill the first German I see, and then every single Kraut I meet from Normandy to Berlin,” he says - while Dee is hiding the fact that he was born not in Philadelphia but in the Fatherland. They also root for different baseball teams from different leagues (the Philadelphia Athletics and the Brooklyn Dodgers). Dee is a thin, boyish 16-year-old (he lied about his age when enlisting), and Sid is tall, muscular and older-looking. They’re real people whom young readers will believe in and relate to.Īt the core of the book are Dee Carpenter and Sid Jacobstein, best friends who don’t seem to have much in common.

The figures whom Gratz paints surprise themselves with their acts of heroism, but they’re also full of doubt and fear. The book gives us far more than an assemblage of characters out of central casting. The author of several military-themed books for young readers, Gratz has written a rousing and humane tribute to D-Day troops in his latest novel, ALLIES (Scholastic, 336 pp., $17.99 ages 8 to 12). How will we keep their memory alive?Īlan Gratz is doing his small part. Before long, none of these men, all over age 90, will be with us. Dozens of World War II veterans who had taken part in the five beach landings were there, too. Leaders from around the world gathered in Normandy on June 6 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the largest military invasion in history.

D day alan gratz