The First Wave: The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of Against All Odds, returns with an utterly immersive, adrenaline-driven account of D-Day combat."Meet the assaulters: pathfinders plunging from the black, coxswains plowing the whitecaps, bare-knuckle Rangers scaling sheer rock .

Fast-paced and up close, this is history's greatest story reinvigorated as only Alex Kershaw can."—Adam Makos, New York Times bestselling author of Spearhead and A Higher CallBeginning in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, The First Wave follows the remarkable men who carried out D-Day's most perilous missions.

The charismatic, unforgettable cast includes the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the glider pilot who braved antiaircraft fire to crash-land mere yards from the vital Pegasus Bridge; the brothers who led their troops onto Juno Beach under withering fire; as well as a French commando, returning to his native land, who fought to destroy German strongholds on Sword Beach and beyond.

Listeners will experience the sheer grit of the Rangers who scaled Pointe du Hoc and the astonishing courage of the airborne soldiers who captured the Merville Gun Battery in the face of devastating enemy counterattacks.

The first to fight when the stakes were highest and the odds longest, these men would determine the fate of the invasion of Hitler's fortress Europe—and the very history of the twentieth century.