Ebook: Blood in the snow, blood on the grass: treachery, torture, murder and massacre - France 1944

"D-Day, 6 June 1944; a day that has gone down in history as one of the most crucial steps towards Allied victory of the Second World War. What is known of the thousands of young Frenchmen and women who were formed into small, untrained armies and used as bait by the Allied powers to distract the German forces from the invasion beaches? These civilians were scattered through the French forests and hill country, and they believed that Allied forces would arrive to help them drive the hated Nazi occupiers out of France; but this support never arrived. Instead they were abandoned, to be hunted down by collaborationist French paramilitaries, Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops. Those who were lucky died quickly; the unlucky ones survived - they were brutally raped and tortured before being shot, or were deported to death camps in Germany. With ... photographs of the people, places and events of this period, Boyd reveals the ... truth of the prologue to the D-Day landings, highlighting atrocities that should never be forgotten."--Book jacket.