D-Day, and Someday

Posted on June 1, 2019 | 13 comments

D-Day 75^th Anniversary Blog Tour

June 3-11, 2019

Our novels illuminate different aspects of the war—from the landing beaches of Normandy to Nazi-occupied Europe to the US Home Front. Each day, visit with a new author as we share about our stories, our research, and our unique settings. With each blog post, you’ll have the opportunity to win that author’s novel–plus a chance to win a packet of ALL NINE featured novels and a gorgeous signed hardback copy of Everything We Have: D-Day 6.6.44, the new commemorative book from the National World War II Museum!

Giveaway Details

For a chance to win ALL TEN books, please visit each blog, collect the answers to ALL SEVEN questions, and enter the Rafflecopter giveaway below or on the BLOG TOUR PAGE. The contest opens June 3, 2019 at 1 am PST and closes June 16, 2019 at 11 pm PST. The winner will be announced on Monday, June 17, 2019. *Note* Several of the titles will not be released until later—these will be mailed after the release dates.

To win the prize of ALL TEN books, you must have collected ALL SEVEN answers. The winner must be prepared to send ALL SEVEN answers within 48 hours of notification by email, or a new winner will be selected.

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Whose Waves These Are
by Amanda Dykes

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D-Day . . . and Someday.

D-Day. This week, we commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the day so much of World War II hinged upon, as the allied forces of America, Canada, and Great Britain set out after years of planning, to try and regain ground in German-occupied France.

It was a vast operation, part of “Operation Overlord”, an intricate waltz of land, sea, and air invasion across the English Channel, hanging on the delicate pivots of weather, visibility, enemy, and tides. It is easy to see the event as moving masses of machinery, to hear it as distant roars of plane engines and gunfire. But if we will look closely, we’ll see the thousands upon thousands of faces, and the hearts that belonged to them—both there in the channel, and in the years leading up to it and following it.
If we look at these faces…

Women and children at Auschwitz… the faces of souls that had been imprisoned, starved, forced to live in unthinkable conditions, to witness death in unthinkable ways. . .

And then we look at these faces, in a small window-less room countries away, strategies and timetables and contingencies weaving between them into an intricate fabric that would become D-Day. . .

MEETING OF THE SUPREME COMMAND, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, LONDON, 1 FEBRUARY 1944 (TR 1541) Left to right: Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, Commander in Chief, 1st US Army; Admiral Sir Bertram H Ramsay, Allied Naval Commander in Chief, Expeditionary Force; Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur W Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander, Expeditionary Force; General Dwight D Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Expeditionary Force; General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Commander in Chief 21st Army Group; Air Chief Ma… Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205123947

The roar of those engines begin to die away as we see, in these faces, the reason why behind D-Day.

I think of this man, Edward Ellsburg, who was brought in for a singularly unique skillset: sinking things in the ocean, and resurrecting them when their time of need came: He was brought in to orchestrate the sinking off “Phoenixes”—concrete caissons that would form a foundational part of the floating Mulberry Harbors essential for D-Day’s success and . He oversaw their manufacturing, the scuttling of them safely on the English coast to tuck them away deep beneath the waves for safekeeping, and the resurrection of the sunken things as they were re-floated and towed across the channel to be assembled above the ships that had been scuttled as breakwaters, to make way for landings, transportation of men and goods. Just one of many gargantuan cogs in the grand schematic of Operation Overlord and D-Day.

In his D-Day memoir, The Far Shore, Ellsberg said, “There, at least, watching Phoenixes rising from the bottom of the sea, I could take my imagination off what might be happening to turn into disaster in the melee on the Omaha Beach—that exquisitely devised assault on it set forth in the Overlord Plan—that, in the calm o Grosvenor Square where I had studied it, had seemed so absolutely fool-proof…” Ellsberg, the Supreme Command of Operation Overloard– and every person above and below in the ranks—they did not know whether they would succeed. But I wonder what they would think, if they could have been given a window less than a year into the future, to see what gaining France would mean for Europe in the long run. To see the troops arriving to liberate concentration camps. To hear words like Viktor Frankl’s, who said as a concentration camp survivor:

“Timidly, we looked around and glanced at each other questioningly. Then we ventured a few steps out of the camp. This time no orders were shouted at us, nor was there any need to duck quickly to avoid a blow or a kick. ‘Freedom,’ we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it.”

D-Day changed everything. Every person, doing what they could, not knowing whether it would succeed—their faith and commitment and courage and action are what helped deliver Frankl, and so many others, to unbelievable freedom. Months afterward, miles and miles away.

I’ll close with this excerpt from Whose Waves These Are—a portion of the story that follows Luka, Liesl, and their young family in the confines of Auschwitz:

Some days, Liesl came bearing bruises and marks given her at the munitions factory—and to explain them would only add to the pain inflicted by her overseers. So Luka would just run his fingers as gently as he could over her wounds, a silent lament, his gray eyes filling. And he would whisper to her, voice roughened by the injustice—“Eines tages, Liesl.” Someday, Liesl.

She’d known he’d meant that someday . . . they would be gone from that life. To a better life. A place to breathe. Where the sun did not hide for years upon end, and where there hands could work the soil to grow things, not destroy things. Eines tages. The man said more in those two words, and in the fierce hope living behind the torment in his dark eyes, than all the storytellers in all the world could have said together.

Because of D-Day, and the victories that followed in its wake, Eines tages came. This week, may we pause to remember the significance of this day—and of the brave souls who, 75 years ago, helped turn the tide of the Second World War.  

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Question:

(Write it down, or enter it in the main Rafflecopter giveaway right away)

What does “Eines tages” mean?

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Rafflecopter Giveaway

To enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway below, enter your name and email address (we need these to notify the winner). Then select an author’s name and enter the answer to that author’s question. You only need to enter the Rafflecopter once to be entered in the giveaway, but you can earn up to seven entries by answering all seven questions in the Rafflecopter. But don’t forget…to win, you must have collected ALL SEVEN answers. You can enter the Rafflecopter each day, or you can enter all your answers at once any time before June 16, 2019 at 11 pm PST. US mailing addresses only, please.

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Author Bio
Amanda Dykes is a drinker of tea, dweller of redemption, and spinner of hope-filled tales who spends most days chasing wonder and words with her family. Give her a rainy day, a candle to read by, an obscure corner of history to dig in, and she’ll be happy for hours. She’s a former English teacher, and her novella, Bespoke: A Tiny Christmas Tale, was met with critical acclaim from Publishers Weekly, Readers’ Favorite, and more. She is also the author of a novella in The Message in a Bottle Romance Collection. Whose Waves These Are is her debut novel.

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Bonus Giveaway: 

For a chance to win a copy of Whose Waves These Are, please share this blog post on your favorite social media outlet (or the cover image of Whose Waves These Are, along with a caption of your choosing), and fill out this short form:

A winner will be chosen at random after June 11th, 2018. This giveaway is open to residents of the U.S., 18 or older. Thanks! 🙂

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Schedule for the D-Day 75^th Anniversary Blog Tour

Be sure to visit each site for a chance to win ALL NINE featured novels, plus the commemorative D-day book!

Note: Links to specific blog posts will go live on the post date.

June 3: AMANDA DYKES, author of Whose Waves These Are

June 4: CATHY GOHLKE, author of The Medallion

June 5: LIZ TOLSMA, author of When the Heart Sings

June 6: SARAH SUNDIN, author of the Sunrise at Normandy series: The Sea Before Us, The Sky Above Us, and The Land Beneath Us

June 7: AMANDA BARRATT [URL], author of My Dearest Dietrich

June 10: VALERIE LUESSE, author of Almost Home

June 11: MELANIE DOBSON, author of Memories of Glass