Jean Brisset, the author of La Charge du Taureau, was not quite seventeen years old in August 1944 when the 'Charging Bulls' of 11th British Armoured Division liberated Flers, Normandy, his home town. The first French edition of his book was published in 1975. He wrote it not only to thank his British liberators but also to record the courage shown by his countrymen and neighbours, and the tragedies endured by them, during the terrible battles that led up to the defeat of the Germans and their expulsion from Normandy.
Tom Bates, who translated La Charge du Taureau into The Charge of the Bull, met Jean Brisset for the first time in 1984 while on a search in Normandy for the battlefield on which his namesake, Corporal Sidney Bates (no relation) of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Norfolk Regiment, earned the posthumous award of the Victoria Cross. Sidney's lone stand and act of self-sacrifice saved his battalion from being overrun by the panzer grenadiers of Hitler's elite 10 SS (Frundsberg) Panzer Division. It turned the tide of a crucial battle.
After some initial difficulty, and with Jean Brisset's assistance, Tom Bates, accompanied by two veterans of Sidney's old unit, Ernie Seaman, MM, and Bill Holden, MBE, found the actual battlefield. (Their adventures and experiences are recounted in the dual-language book, Normandy: The Search for Sidney / Normandie: A La Recherche de Sidney.) It was as a mark of appreciation for Jean Brisset's help, and their affection for him, that Tom Bates translated his book and Bill Holden printed and published it in England in 1989
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The major part of the book (240 pages) recounts the battles of 11th British Armoured Division from the time they landed in Normandy, on 13 and 14 June, 1944, between Bernières and Courseulles on the Channel coast, to January, 1946, when the Division was disbanded in Flensburg, Germany, on the Baltic Sea, at the Danish border. It covers the Division's role in Operations Epsom, Goodwood and Bluecoat and the closing of the Falaise Gap. Interspersed among the descriptions of the battles are details of the personal experiences of British soldiers and, what gives the book its special character, the parts, tragic and heroic, often played by Norman civilians in those battles.
Appendix A (1 page) gives the Order of Battle of the Division.
Appendix B (53 pages) recounts how the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division protected the left flank of 11th Armoured Division in the difficult country around Mont Pinçon, how the French Resistance helped them, how a senior German officer, by disregarding his orders, saved the lives of hundreds of French men, women and children and how, at the end of the war, they were able to repay him for his act of humanity.
Appendix C (17 pages) tells the story of how Annie, a five-year-old French girl, saved an Australian pilot from capture, and her family from torture and death, after he had crash-landed his disabled Spitfire in a field near her home in the battle area of Normandy covered by this book.