How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly – but if you're the US Army...

"Like big black umbrellas, they rain down on the fields across the way, and then disappear behind the black line of the hedges". Silent parachutes dotting the night sky – that's how one woman in Normandy in June of 1944 learned that the D-Day invasio...