[1] When he moved to Maryland in 1981, by chance he met many residents who were veterans of the D-Day invasion, all members of the 29th Infantry Division, which spearheaded the assault.
[3] His thirty-year effort to detail the history of this celebrated outfit was praised by author Rick Atkinson, who described the series as "a magnificent achievement; the U.S. Army and the 29th Division are lucky to have an historian of Joe Balkoski's stature and skill to tell the tale of combat in Western Europe from the perspective of both the ordinary GI and his leaders.
"[2] In 2004, Balkoski published Omaha Beach, which meticulously documented the June 6, 1944, American invasion of that pivotal Normandy objective.
Two years later, he released Utah Beach, which told the story of the amphibious and airborne operation in Normandy' Cotentin Peninsula on D-Day.
"[2] Balkoski served for many years as the command historian of the Maryland National Guard, and runs the 29th Infantry Division Archives and Maryland Museum of Military History, both at the Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore, housing one of the finest collections in the United States of archival papers devoted to the World War II history of a single U.S. Army or Marine Corps division.