One morning almost exactly 40 years ago, I was sitting in my rural English home, writing a book about the 1944 D-Day campaign in Normandy. I gazed out of the window, seeking to conjure up a vision of what it was like to be crouched in a bucketing landing craft heading for a hostile shore, amid the overhead crack-boom of a naval bombardment.
By an extraordinary chance of fate, seven weeks later I found myself crouched in a landing craft crammed with Royal Marines hastening toward a hostile shore, amid the concussions of a naval bombardment. How did that weird time-warp microcosm of D-Day come about?
