Reflecting on an appropriate topic for Memorial Day, journalist, historian, and best selling author Rick Atkinson was interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition last Saturday to discuss the forthcoming re-publication of the U.S. Army’s Instructions for American Servicemen in France during World War II—a guidebook originally issued by the War Department in 1944 to give Allied soldiers invading France “a general idea of the country concerned, to serve as a guide to behavior in relation to the civil population, and to contain a suitable, concise vocabulary.” In the interview Atkinson—who wrote the new foreword to the UCP edition—joins host Scott Simon to discuss some of the fascinating insights into the U.S. campaign in France the book has to offer.
Listen to archived audio of the interview on the NPR website.
Also read Atkinson’s introduction to the book.