Though paratrooper James McKay continually wonders “What the hell am I doing here?” and medic Henry Allen suffers the same racial slights in Normandy as he did at home, by the end of “The Longest Day” it’s clear that this was a war that had to be fought and an enemy that had to be stopped. The riveting action moves as fast on the page as it probably did in real time, with Yanks and Brits too busy protecting themselves and each other to dwell on gruesome battle wounds.
Readers will get that message without wallowing in blood and gore or foul language (see Considerations, below). As any WWII buff knows, the Omaha Beach landing was a disaster of almost unbelievable carnage. If there’s any way to tell this story in a way that’s appropriate for middle-graders, Allies is it. Their story is the main plot thread weaving through the narrative, but D-Day itself is the plot, once the boys’ Higgins boat discharges them a few fatal feet short of Omaha Beach. That’s something he dares not tell his best buddy Sid Jacobstein, who has sworn to kill every German he finds. He fudged his birth certificate to get in the fight, but he fudged something else, too: his real name is Dietrich Zimmerman, and he was born in Germany. This vast company is represented by the personal stories of a Canadian paratrooper, a British tank driver, a Moroccan French partisan, and a number of American boys, beginning with sixteen-year-old “Dee” Carpenter. He hopes that serving alongside white soldiers will help ease racial intolerance.Operation Overlord, otherwise known as D-Day, was the largest seaborne invasion in history, involving almost 25,000 paratroopers and 160,000 soldiers from eight countries. Henry, too, experiences discrimination from his fellow Allies because of his race at numerous points throughout the book. It was the Jew who got in trouble, not the other guy” (10). They’d seen it happen again and again in basic training. For example, Sid is called a Jewish slur in Chapter 1, and Dee remembers grimly that “ knew what happened when a Jewish guy punched somebody for insulting him. However, Gratz portrays American troops taunting and mistreating minorities as well. For example, Dee’s friend Sid is an American Jew whose heritage makes him especially enraged by what is happening to Jews in Europe. This discrimination is one that the characters are aware of and that helps motivate them to fight against the Nazis. The largest and most profound discrimination is that of the Nazis against Jews and other peoples throughout their occupied territories. Gratz examines the discrimination experienced by various perspectives in Allies.
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