Bates Books, 2000, ISBN: 0-945992-03-3, 201 pages

Some books are labors of love. Normandy: The Search for Sidney is one of them. Initially, Bates went looking into the history of Sidney Bates, a corporal who died on August 6, 1944 in a desperate last stand, as a way of trying to find his ever missing father. Although he didn't fulfill that goal, he did uncover the final location of Sidney's lopsided engagement--one that Sidney did not survive, but that the British Army thought important enough to award him a Victorian Cross. And you know what? Thomas Bates is not related to Sidney Bates and served a half a world away in Burma.

So begins the Odyssey of trying to track down official regimental histories, maps, and former comrades to draw out memories long buried. He found the retired Lt. Col. Eric Cooper-Lee, who, as company commander in 1944, recommended Sidney's VC. They took a trip back to Normandy and tried to find the exact spot, but time and progress seemed to baffle them.

He found Ernie Seaman and Bill Holden who had served with Sidney and led them, or rather the other way around, through Normandy to find the exact battlefield. He enlisted the aid of local French civilians to lead them through the maze of hedgerows and country lanes.

The book is a delightful mix of travelogue, history lesson, and comraderie, written with passion and clarity. You almost feel like an intruder in the back seat of their rent-a-car as they bounce across the French countryside. Leads turn into dead ends. They become lost. They backtrack. They share quiet moments of contemplation and boisterous practical jokes.

Step by step, mile by mile, and field by field, Thomas Bates traces the background of Sidney Bates' fateful day. In many ways, the discovery of the actual site is almost anticlimactic, but it nonetheless provides a satisfying ending to the journey.

Of course, in the midst of the research, Thomas Bates dug up a number of interesting sideboard discoveries. For example, in the book and film The Longest Day, the French mayor of Colleville-sur-Orne, Alphonse Lenauld, supposedly bicycles down to the invasion beach wearing a polished brass firemans' helmet. There, he finds Brig. Lord Lovat, head of 1 Special Services Brigade (Commandos), and drunkenly welcomes him to Colleville, gives him a bear hug and kiss, and offers him drink from the champagne bottle he's carried to the beach. Good comic relief in a film, but Bates uncovers the real story about the brass-helmet-wearing "mayor' and it wasn't Mr. Lenauld.

Another section recounts the 1st Suffolk on D-Day and its attack on Hillman, a large German bunker/fortification complex.

Photos and maps are inside aplenty. Everytime you meet someone, a photo appears. It's such an exemplary change from seeing the same photos of the Generals. You are actually meeting these people in the pages, and meeting them face-to-face so to speak just adds to the delight of the book.

The one quirk of the layout is that each two-column page contains English and French text. The left hand column is English, the right hand column is French. Each caption also contains English and French text. Aside from constantly reading the bottom of the English text and automatically banging into the French, it also means that you're really reading only "half" a book.

And what a compelling half it is. Although I feared this would become another non-descript reminiscence, Normandy: The Search for Sidney makes the leap between today's les trois anciens soldats and the 1944 battle. It is a delightful find filled with passion, compassion, and eye for detail.

Bates Books
P.O. Box 5023
Berkeley, CA 94705
510-655-6685

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