Cornelius Ryan Readings

The Longest Day © 1959

A Bridge Too Far © 1974


Read The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan during the hot and humid month of July. Though written by the same author in the same genre covering events barely three months apart, the first book was a breeze. The second was, well, definitely a labor of love for me to get through.

What happened?

Short answer: Dunno. Longer answer: See below as I try to figure it out.

Both works are stylistically similar; the relationship I kept thinking of was that of younger brother to older brother. Same family, you see, but one is simpler and more direct while the other is wiser, more knowledgeable, more nuanced. One throws fists; one argues a mental chess game. One knows what it wants to say; one is verbose to the point of utter obfuscation.

For those who may not be aware, The Longest Day covers roughly the twenty-four hour period of D-Day, June 6, 1944. D-Day is the invasion of “Fortress Europe,” Europe under the boot and bayonet of Hitler, by American, British, and Canadian forces. Three beaches in Normandy in the north of France, on the southern edge of the English Channel, were invaded by several thousand infantry in several successive waves. Hitler’s greatest tactician, Erwin Rommel, was – if not fooled – at least absent, luck persuading him to take a holiday in Germany. Luck in the form of weather played a strong role in the success of the invasion, but that was not the only factor. Deception, courage, ingenuity, and meticulous planning also worked to the Allies’ advantage. The book details all this and more, in just enough detail, from points of view ranging from the General to the GI, impossibly page-turningly quick. It was a fast, curiosity-satisfying read, and if it didn’t put you on the beaches like Spielberg did in Saving Private Ryan, well, at least it did the next best thing, experientially speaking.

(OMG – did this book play a role in the naming of the titular character in Spielberg’s monumental masterpiece? That’s something to research …)

A Bridge Too Far takes place three-and-a-half months and a few hundred miles later. British Field Marshall Montgomery develops a plan to drop 35,000 paratroopers across German lines in occupied Holland to secure six bridges over a ninety-mile span. The plan is to open up a road that would lead Monty’s armored army right into the heart of industrial Germany, side-stepping the heavily-fortified north-south Siegfried Line. Hopes were to end the war by Christmas, 1944. However, events didn’t go down as over-optimistically pitched to all involved. In fact, it was a series of little disasters building upon little disasters, until a big, terrible, rotten debacle emerged, a torrential waste of life, of materiel, of initiative, that set back the end of the war in Europe for nearly eight months. The book is fat, dense, surprisingly hard to follow despite being top-heavy with detail. A cast of several dozen main characters clutters things up. I gave up trying to keep track of who was who and instead tried to follow the action. But six bridges with the surrounding towns of each are a lot harder to discern than three beachheads. That major critique levied, A Bridge Too Far did have its powerful scenes, its drama, pathos, and even humor sprinkled liberally throughout. Ultimately I felt a good hundred pages (twenty percent of its length) could have been snipped, resulting in a tighter, faster-paced work.

’Twas a labor of love for me, as aforementioned. Were you a lad in the 70s, when cable teevee spread its tentacles throughout the suburbs? If you were, you might remember a dozen or so flicks that were seemingly played non-stop. To me, I recall seeing, over and over and over and over, The Food of the Gods, The Empire of the Ants, Telefon, Omens 1 and 2, The White Buffalo, The Killer Elite, Midway, and – A Bridge Too Far. I must’ve watched that film at least a dozen or more times as a pre-teen all those years ago. Never in its entirety, and never really understanding what was going on, nor recognizing really the All-Star Cast for who they were back then (save for James Bond – with a thick moustache). The paratroopers, the gliders, the vulnerable Holland family spying on the German tanks … Anthony Hopkins taking that seemingly-deserted bridge, Sean Connery being chased through backyards, James Caan speeding in a jeep through woods infested with Nazis, the bridge blowing up in front of Elliot Gould’s cigar-chomping mug … I kinda liked that movie, and, as you see, its images never quite left me.

I should rent that again.

Anyway, as I neared the end of the book, I jotted down somewhere, “A Bridge Too Far is a book that needs to be read twice. Unfortunately, once is as much as I can bear.”

I’m hesitant to assign them grades. As usual when I read something outside my perceived oeuvre of expertise (i.e., science fiction novels), I feel somewhat unqualified to judge them. And true, I can’t judge them on their individual body of facts or how they fit into the genre of works of World War II. I can merely relate my subjective experience of traveling through their pages.

For what it’s worth –

The Longest Day – A-plus.

A Bridge Too Far – C-plus.



Note 1: One of the “humorous” tidbits for me from A Bridge Too Far was the secret password the British paratroops used – “Whoa Mohammed,” a war cry the Brits first heard from the indigenous population fighting in North Africa. Apparently, “Whoa Mohammed” is absolutely impossible for the typical German to pronounce clearly, crisply, and without accent. Try it.

Note 2: Both books needed better maps ... meaning larger ones, close-up ones, ones with clearly marked troop positions / encampments, and on the whole much more numerous in quantity, perhaps as much as one at the outset of every chapter.  I found myself constantly thumbing through the books for the three or four maps they held, though those never quite answered whatever question was in my mind at the time.  (Better amps would have bumped A Bridge Too Far's grade up a half-step.)