While writing the script for OVERLORD, director Stuart Cooper and cowriter Christopher Hudson read the journals of two D-day soldiers, Sergeant Edward Robert McCosh and Sergeant Finlay Campbell. Moved by these soldiers’ experiences, they incorporated some of their recollections into the protagonist’s story. Here, Brian Stirner, who plays Tom in Overlord, reads excerpts from their journals. Edward Robert McCosh was called up in Motherwell, Scotland, in September 1943, four months before his nineteenth birthday, and early in 1944, he was transferred to the 74th Field Company RE. By the time his unit crossed to France, the Normandy beachhead had been secured, and their landing was unopposed, though McCosh noted with distaste, “They had even brought special manufactured crosses with them on the invasion.”