Dee and Sid board a small landing boat heading toward Omaha Beach, and Dee defends Sid against a soldier's antisemitic slur.

Dee reflects that he was born in Germany and forged military documents to enlist under a false American name.

Dee's landing boat reaches Omaha Beach and soldiers are immediately cut down as they try to disembark.

Dee takes cover behind a metal anti-tank structure on the beach while the Allied invasion falls into chaos around him.

Dee spots Henry struggling with a wounded soldier and rushes to help, discovering the wounded man is his friend Sid.

A commanding officer orders all soldiers sheltering at the seawall to push through a gap and leave the beach.

Dee and his unit storm a German bunker, and Dee kills a young German soldier for the first time.

Dee and Sid's unit is ambushed by German soldiers and a tank inside an apparently deserted French village.

Dee volunteers to carry an improvised bomb to the German tank and is knocked down by the blast and a bullet.

Dee hides under the disabled tank and overhears Nazi soldiers ordering the village church to be set on fire.

Dee and Sid work together to shoot open the church wall and free French villagers trapped inside the burning building.

Dee pleads with Sid not to execute the captured Nazi prisoners, but Sid threatens him, and Dee is shot while walking away.

Monique and Dorothy discover the unconscious Dee lying in a field and carry him to safety to treat his wounds.

Dee regains consciousness in a truck heading toward Bayeux as the day's surviving characters converge on the city.

A doctor tells Dee his wounds are too severe to continue fighting and that he will be sent home to recover.

Dee Carpenter, a German-born soldier fighting under an American alias, crosses the English Channel with his friend Sid to storm Omaha Beach. The invasion immediately goes wrong, and Dee must fight his way across the beach under devastating German fire. After pushing inland, Dee and Sid's unit is ambushed in a French village where Dee makes a desperate sacrifice to destroy an enemy tank. A series of life-or-death decisions force Dee to confront both his loyalty to America and his hidden German identity. Dee is shot and left behind in the chaos, only to be rescued by two unlikely medics who carry him to the liberated city of Bayeux. There, the surviving characters converge, old wounds are healed, and Dee finds resolution in the unity and sacrifice he witnessed throughout the day.

Dee Carpenter's journey from the landing boats to Bayeux.

Samira and her mother sneak out of their village past Nazi curfew to deliver a secret message to French resistance fighters.

Samira's mother is captured by Nazi soldiers while helping a French family flee, and Samira hides inside a doghouse to avoid discovery.

Samira frees the abandoned dog and sets off alone toward the resistance fighters to continue her mother's mission.

Samira tricks German guards at a bridge by pretending to search for her lost dog, then slips away into the woods.

Samira finds the French resistance fighters in the forest and delivers news of the Allied beach invasion.

A resistance fighter named Perseus challenges Samira's loyalty because she is Algerian, but another fighter named Jason defends her.

Resistance fighters blow up a railway tunnel, but a German train carrying tanks passes through before the explosion seals it.

Samira, Jason, and a French station guard sabotage the tracks and derail the German tank train into a riverbed.

Samira stages a fake resistance raid on the station guard's hut to protect him from Nazi punishment for helping derail the train.

Bill Richards watches Allied tanks flip over and sink in the rough water before riding his tank Achilles to the French shore.

Bill and his crew discover they have accidentally landed on the American beach instead of the British one.

The Achilles tank hits an underground mine and becomes stuck in a crater, and American soldiers help dig it free.

Bill is killed when a German gun destroys the Achilles after the tank successfully takes out a large German weapon.

Henry keeps wounded soldiers conscious during treatment by engaging them in conversation about their favorite movies.

Samira and her mother, now reunited, walk through the square in Bayeux giving flowers to wounded Allied soldiers.

While Dee storms Omaha Beach, three other characters are waging their own crucial struggles across Normandy. Samira Zidane, an eleven-year-old Algerian girl, loses her mother to a Nazi raid but presses on alone to help the French resistance sabotage a German tank train. Bill Richards, a British tank driver full of family history and quiet warmth, reaches the French shore only to be killed when his beloved tank is destroyed by enemy fire. Henry Allen, a Black American medic, sets up an aid station on the beach and treats soldier after soldier despite facing racism from his own side throughout the day. These three storylines show the full breadth of sacrifice behind the D-Day invasion. All roads eventually lead to Bayeux, where Samira and her mother, miraculously reunited, walk through the square offering flowers to the wounded liberators.

Samira, Bill, and Henry each fight their own battles on D-Day.

Dee remembers his uncle being disappeared by the Nazis in Germany, hardening his resolve to fight Hitler from the Allied side.

Samira picks up her captured mother's headscarf from the ground where soldiers dropped it and ties it around her own head.

Samira refuses to follow her mother's instructions to find safety and resolves to track down the resistance fighters herself.

James and his classmates use the message of the "If Day" simulation to band together and stand up to a school bully.

James parachutes into Normandy and discovers he has landed seven miles off target with German forces on all sides.

Allied planes accidentally bomb James's own unit on the ground, shaking the soldiers' faith in the invasion's coordination.

James's group receives a new mission to destroy a German radio station, headquarters, and nearby bridge.

James discovers a French family locked in the basement of the Nazi-occupied compound, giving him renewed purpose to keep fighting.

Bill confides to a fellow soldier that his father died in the first world war before Bill was ever born.

Henry recognizes his racist former commanding officer among the wounded on the beach and chooses to treat him anyway.

Dee watches a courageous soldier get shot while crossing the open beach and sprints into enemy fire to retrieve the body.

Dee is forced to admit to Sid that he was born in Germany in order to explain how he understood the Nazis' orders.

Monique overcomes her fear and steps out of the beach hut to help a wounded soldier calling out for a medic.

A commanding officer expels Monique and Dorothy from the medical tent solely because they are women, not soldiers.

Sid confesses to Dee that he chose to spare the Nazi prisoners, revealing that Dee's words changed his mind.

Across all six storylines in Allies, the most powerful moments are not the battles but the choices and realizations that reveal who each character truly is. Dee, Samira, James, Bill, Henry, and Monique each face a moment that forces them to act against fear, prejudice, or self-doubt. James finds genuine purpose in the war only when he sees the human cost of Nazi occupation firsthand. Monique must step out of literal and figurative hiding to become the capable medic she is meant to be. Henry chooses compassion over justified resentment, treating the man who humiliated him, and Dee must finally speak his most dangerous secret aloud. These turning points are the emotional backbone of the novel, showing that solidarity and courage are built not in grand gestures but in small, irreversible decisions made under impossible pressure.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define each character.

Alan Gratz

Novel

Fiction

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