D-DAY AS THEY SAW IT

It was going to be the greatest amphibious operation of all time claimed Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the naval commander of the Allied invasion of Normandy. He did not exaggerate, for the Allied fleet consisted of over 5,000 craft and had by the end of ''the longest day'' landed 156,000 men and breached Hitler''s much vaunted defensive wall. Yet dramatic and historic though the events of D-Day were, they were just the opening round of a much bigger and equally remarkable battle for the whole of Normandy that followed for the next ten weeks. Sixty years on, this collection of rare, first-hand accounts tells the story of D-Day and the subsequent battle, in the words of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the war. There are classic soldiers'' accounts from the likes of Rommel and Bradley, together with front line reports by the best war correspondents such as Hemingway and Alan Melville.