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Product Description
Book Description
'Thomas just keeps on giving fiction a good name'Daily Mail
Product Description
The war, they said, would be over by Christmas. That was in 1939, and it is now January 1944. An exhausted Britain faces another year of conflict.
Meanwhile, small coastal villages in Devon are facing an invasion from an army just as foreign as that of the Germans. The Americans are smart, well-fed and well-equipped, and they have swept the bewildered citizens of South Devon from their homes in deadly earnest rehearsal for D-Day.
As the beaches echo to the sound of bullets and the local church to the strains of Glenn Miller, Americans and English are thrown together with sometimes hilarious, sometimes painful and puzzling results.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book deserves to be better known. Set in a small village on the SW coast of England during WW2, it's based on a true story. Raw American marines really did evacuate villagers from their homes in order to use the area for training with live ammunition for the D Day landings. The story is comic and tragic and romantic. It's well researched, and written with such sympathy that you'll come to care deeply about the characters, and begin to understand the mutual astonishment and the complications that Devon villagers, and British and American forces experienced as their cultures first collided, then converged in the war effort.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is brilliant, just brilliant. It is a novel against the background of a true event and provides the reader with a believable glimpse of what life would have been like during WWII. It is not a book about the war, but a story about people getting lost in the mahlstream of war - Americans and British, civilians and soldiers alike. The cuelty of WWII only emerges occasionally, but the war's bitter taste can be felt throughout the book. It is both a funny and sad story.
If you are interested in Leslie Thomas books: skip the "Virgin Soldiers", and join "The magic army" first.
If you are interested in Leslie Thomas books: skip the "Virgin Soldiers", and join "The magic army" first.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I bought this book as a paperback edition in 1984. This is the first Leslie Thomas book I read, and I have read it so often the paperback has fallen apart and this review is based on the hardback edition I recntly bought to replace it. The fictional story is based in the facts surrounding the preparations for the D-Day landings. The landings themselves have been well represented both in fact and fiction down the years, but what Leslie Thomas does is to focus on English and Allies thrown together almost without warning. The result is both poignent and funny - and ultimately sobering. Extremely well written, and easy to read. My favourite book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Havent laughed so much for ages!
I bought this book after reading the fantastic reviews on here and i was really glad that i did. Its my first Leslie Thomas book and i am now on my second! Read more
Published 2 months ago by Lancaster Lucy
Just WHERE did he get that character's name from?
This could well be my favourite Leslie Thomas book.
The story builds and grows, the characters form and develop by the turn of each and every page. Read more
The story builds and grows, the characters form and develop by the turn of each and every page. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr. D. Pendry
Marvellous
I've just read this book. I could hardly put it down and I didn't want it to finish. As others have said, it's the story of US troops taking over part of Devon, displacing the... Read more
Published 14 months ago by JS
All time favourite.
I first read this book back in the early eighties when my mother lent me her copy.I fell in love with it straight away. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Steve
A fine read
Leslie Thomas a great storyteller who never fails to make me shed a tear and with this great story he has done it again this is a story which made me travel to the location in... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mr. W. R. West
Stepping back in time
Leslie Thomas transports the reader back in time to a bit of modern history as he tells the little known story of the American invasion of Devon. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Hairnicks
One of the best WW2 books I know
This is a brilliant read, witty (downright funny in places, especially when US troops are on the move around the lanes of Devon) sad and mostly technically accurate, obviously well... Read more
Published on 27 Sep 2009 by Mr. Peter Lewin
The Magic Army
I first read this book in the early nineties, it was written by a local author (Newport Mon) named Leslie Thomas who in his childhood was a Barnardoes boy and I greeted it again as... Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2009 by A. J. Alexander
Hilarious and moving account of the lighter side of WWII
Mr. Thomas illustrates the famous British complaint that the American soldiers were "Overpaid, oversexed, and over here," with a novel about the chaos which erupts in a... Read more
Published on 28 Jun 1999
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