The Sixth of June

by Lionel Shapiro
Category: "Fiction - Historical"
Pages:351
Year of Publication:1955
Date Added:01/04/2025
Date Read:01/04/2025
Notes:During WWII, American Dan Parker is married to June and works for her father's newspaper. He trains as a paratrooper but is pulled from his unit and sent to England to work in the planning office. He meets Valerie, a British girl whose fiance is a commando fighting in Africa. Dan and Val fall in love and see each other as often as possible. For a time, Dan is sent to Algiers, but manages to get stationed back in England. Val gets word that John is MIA. Dan and Val are convinced that they have to be together, and when Dan's father-in-law visits, he tells him. June's father is disappointed but determines not to tell June because war can't be predicted. Then John shows up, wounded but alive, and Val feels like she has to care for him. Hurt, Dan seeks active duty and is assigned to a special forces unit making an early attack on D-Day. At the last minute, the CO is removed and replaced with John. Dan is wounded in the attack and can do nothing but watch as John's force attacks. Dan realizes that John wants to die and finds himself praying that he will live. John is also wounded, but lives. In the hospital in England, Val visits Dan, and they realize that, although they will always love each other, Val belongs with John and Dan needs to go home to his wife.
My Rating: 6

Reviews for The Sixth of June

Review - Sixth of June, The

Hard to rate. I liked the characters, and their emotions seemed real. Obviously, the affair at the center of the book was wrong and that kept me from fully rooting for the two main characters. And it bogged down in the middle, with endless descriptions of day-t0-day life and of how much Dan and Val loved each other. Things picked up at the end, and the ending, while the right one, rather made the entire story unnecessary.

Reviewed by Roger on 2025-01-04 16:44:37

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