Shortly after midnight, the BBC interrupts its program and broadcasts the lines from a poem by Paul Verlaine: The long sighs of autumn's violins wound my heart with a monotonous lethargy. The "GREATEST DAY OF THE WAR" has begun.

It has been almost 75 years since the landing in Normandy, or D-Day as it remained in history, the largest amphibious military invasion. The outcome of World War II was at stake that cold morning of June 6, 1944. If the Allied forces managed to establish a foothold in northern France, the path to victory would be open and Nazi Germany would suffer a serious blow.

An epic battle followed... In his new historical work, Giles Milton describes what happened that day from all sides through the stories of survivors: the teenage American draftee, the elite German defender, the French resistance fighter. For the first time in a book, the authentic accounts of those who found themselves trapped on the front line.