Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers

by David O'Keefe

Overview

A riveting tour de force by Canada’s leading military historian about the heroic Black Watch’s fight for survival at Verrières Ridge

Centred around one of Canada’s most storied regiments, Seven Days in Hell tells the epic tale of the bloody battle for Verrières Ridge, a dramatic saga that unfolded just weeks after one of Canada’s greatest military triumphs of the Second World War. O’Keefe takes us on a heart-pounding journey at the sharp end of combat during the infamous Normandy campaign, when more than 300 Black Watch Highlanders from across Canada, the United States, Great Britain and the Allied world found themselves embroiled in mortal combat against elite Waffen-SS units and grizzled Eastern Front veterans. Only a handful walked away. Pinned down as the result of strategic blunders and the fog of war, the men were thrust into a nightmare where station, rank, race and religion mattered little and only character won the day. Drawing on formerly classified documents and rare first-person testimony from the men who fought on the front lines, O’Keefe follows the footsteps of the ghosts of Normandy, giving a voice yet again to the men who sacrificed everything in the summer of 1944.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781443454780
Publisher:	HarperCollins Canada
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

DAVID O’KEEFE is an award-winning historian, documentarian and professor at Marianopolis College in Westmount, Quebec. He served with the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada in the Canadian Forces in Montreal and worked as a signals intelligence research historian for the Directorate of History and Heritage. He created and collaborated on more than fifteen documentaries for the History channel and National Geographic and has appeared on CBC, CTV, Global Television and the UKTV Network in Great Britain. He wrote and co-produced the groundbreaking documentary Dieppe Uncovered, which made headlines around the world, as well as the documentary Black Watch Snipers. He is also the writer, co-creator and host of the History channel’s program War Junk. In addition, he is the bestselling author of One Day in August: The Untold Story behind Canada’s Tragedy at Dieppe, a finalist for the John W. Dafoe Book Prize, the CAA Lela Common Award for Canadian History and the RBC Taylor Prize. David O’Keefe lives in Rigaud, Quebec, with his wife and children.

 

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Introduction 3

1 La Voie Sacrée 11

2 Albatross 51

3 Inoculation 77

4 Bounce the Orne 98

5 Ifs 139

6 Hill 61 164

7 Maestro 185

8 The Four Horsemen, Act I: St. Martin 216

9 The Four Horsemen, Act II: The Ridge 244

10 The Four Horsemen, Act III: Der Hexenkessel (The Witch's Cauldron) 283

11 Odds and Sods 304

12 The Abacus War 328

Epilogue: The Bitter Harvest 358

Acknowledgements 375

Endnotes 381

Bibliography 417

Index 431

Editorial Reviews

If Canadians should know how their ancestors proved victorious in France on D-Day in the Second World War, so they must understand how they endured setbacks in the larger Normandy campaign. Such is the object of Seven Days in Hell. And nobody illustrates this truth better than military historian David O’Keefe.” — Ted Barris, author of Rush to Danger and Dam Busters

“Seven Days in Hell reads like a novel. David O’Keefe has taken the Black Watch’s decimation at Verrières Ridge in July 1944 and created an imaginative work about it which also informs and teaches us about this Canadian tragedy. Drawing upon decades of detailed primary and secondary research, he describes the over-all context of the Normandy campaign and sets the stage for a page-turning and gruesome story of those seven days in hell.” — Isabel Campbell, Senior Historian, Directorate of History and Heritage of the Department of National Defence

“An impressive book that tells an extraordinary tale. David O’Keefe, a talented storyteller, has crafted an immensely detailed account. From the heroics of the regimental snipers and the tragedy of the acting battalion commander to the questionable decisions made by senior commanders, O’Keefe sheds new light on the Battle of Verrières Ridge.” — Mike Bechthold, Head of the Juno Beach Centre, author of Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940–1941

“A fascinating and candid portrait of the brutal realities for a battalion operating within the ruthless logic required to achieve Allied victory in Normandy.” — Stephen Prince, Head, Naval Historical Branch, Royal Navy and Deputy Head of the Naval Staff, Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom

From the Publisher

A fascinating and candid portrait of the brutal realities for a battalion operating within the ruthless logic required to achieve Allied victory in Normandy.

Stephen Prince

“Seven Days in Hell reads like a novel. David O’Keefe has taken the Black Watch’s decimation at Verrières Ridge in July 1944 and created an imaginative work about it which also informs and teaches us about this Canadian tragedy. Drawing upon decades of detailed primary and secondary research, he describes the over-all context of the Normandy campaign and sets the stage for a page-turning and gruesome story of those seven days in hell.

Isabel Campbell

An impressive book that tells an extraordinary tale. David O’Keefe, a talented storyteller, has crafted an immensely detailed account. From the heroics of the regimental snipers and the tragedy of the acting battalion commander to the questionable decisions made by senior commanders, O’Keefe sheds new light on the Battle of Verrières Ridge.

Mike Bechthold

If Canadians should know how their ancestors proved victorious in France on D-Day in the Second World War, so they must understand how they endured setbacks in the larger Normandy campaign. Such is the object of Seven Days in Hell. And nobody illustrates this truth better than military historian David O’Keefe.

Ted Barris