🌍 D-Day by Stephen E. Ambrose: The Invasion Begins - Part 1 🎖️💥 | Full Audiobook

At 00016 hours, June 6th, 1944, the Horsa glider crash landed alongside the Kong Canal, some 50 m from the swing bridge crossing the canal. Lieutenant Dan Brothridge, leading the 28 men of the first platoon, de company, the Oxford Shire and Buckingham Shire Light Infantry Regiment, British Sixth Airborne Division, worked his way out of the glider. He grabbed Sergeant Jack Bill Bailey, a section leader, and whispered in his ear, "Get your chaps moving." Bailey set off with his group to pitch grenades into the machine gun pillbox known to be beside the bridge. Lieutenant Brotheridge gathered the remainder of his platoon, whispered, "Come on, lads." and began running for the bridge.

The German defenders of the bridge, about 50 strong, were not aware that the long-awaited invasion had just begun. As Bridge led his men at a fast trot up the embankment and onto the bridge, 17-year-old Private Helmut Romer, one of the two German centuries on the bridge, saw the 21 British paratroopers appearing, so far as he was concerned, literally out of nowhere, coming at him, their weapons carried at their hips, prepared to fire. Ror turned and ran across the bridge, shouting, "Paratroopers!" at the other sentry as he passed him. That sentry pulled out his lo pistol and fired a flare. Brotheridge fired a full clip of 32 rounds from his Sten gun. Those were the first shots fired by the 175,000 British, American, Canadian, Free French, Polish, Norwegian, and other nationalities in the Allied Expeditionary Force set to invade Normandy in the next 24 hours. The shots killed the sentry who thus became the first German to die in defense of Hitler's fortress Europe.

Brotheridge, 26 years old, had been training for this moment for 2 years and for the specific task of seizing the bridge by a coup operation for 6 months. He had come up from the ranks. His company commander, Major John Howard, had recommended him for the OCTU, Officer Cadet Training Unit, back in 1942. His fellow platoon officers were university graduates, if not rich, at least well-to-do. If not aristocrats, at least upper class, and at first they were a bit uneasy when Brotheridge returned as an officer because he wasn't one of us. You know, Brother Bruidge played soccer, not cricket. He was a first class athlete, good enough that it was freely predicted he would become a professional soccer player after the war. He got on easily with the men and had no sense at all of that vast gulf that so often separates British subalterned men. Rotheridge would go into the barracks at night, sit on the bed of his Batman, Billy Gray, and talk soccer with the lads. He would bring his boots along and shine them as he talked. Private Wally Parr never got over the sight of a British lieutenant polishing his boots while his Batman lay back on his bed, gassing on about Manchester United and West Ham and other soccer teams. Den Brotheridge was a lanky, laughing, likable sort of chap, and his fellow officers warmed to him. Everyone admired him. He was fair, conscientious, hard-driving, quick to learn, a master at all the weapons in the company, an able teacher and an apt pupil, a natural leader. When Major Howard selected Brotheridge as leader of the first platoon, the other lieutenants in the company agreed that Den was the right man to lead the first troops to go into action on D-Day. Brotheridge was as good as any junior officer in the British Army, among the best the country had produced to fight for its freedom in the life and death struggle.

Brotheridge had more at stake in the struggle than most, for he was one of the few married men in deco company, and his wife Margaret was 8 months pregnant. So he had had an unborn child's future on his mind during the flight over the English Channel. Ror's shout, the L Pistola flare, and Bridg's sten gun combined to pull the German troops manning the machine gun pits and the slit trenches on both sides of the bridge into full alert. They began opening fire from their machin MG-34 and their gues and carabiners, rifles and carbines. Brotheridge almost across the bridge, his platoon following the men firing from their hips, pulled a grenade out of his pouch and threw it at the machine gun pit to his right. As he did so, he was knocked over by the impact of a bullet in his neck. He fell forward. His platoon ran past him with two other platoon from two other gliders close behind. The men of de company cleared out the machine gun pits and slit trenches in short order. By 0021, the enemy in the immediate vicinity of the bridge had either been killed or had run off.

Private Par went looking for Brotheridge, who was supposed to set up his command post at a cafe beside the bridge. "Where is Dany?" Par asked another private. To his face, the men all called him Mr. Brotheridge. The officers called him Dan, but the men thought of him and referred to him as Dany. "Where's Dany?" Par repeated. The private did not know. Parr ran to the front of the cafe. He found Brotheridge lying on the ground in the road opposite the cafe. His eyes were open and his lips were moving, but Par could not make out what he was saying. Par thought, "What a waste! All the years of training we put in to do this job, it lasted only seconds. And there he lies." Stretcherbears carried Brotheridge back across the bridge to an aid station. The company doctor, John Vaughn, found the wounded lieutenant, quote, lying on his back, looking up at the stars and looking terribly surprised. Just surprised. Vaughn gave him a shot of morphine and began to dress the bullet hole in the middle of his neck. Before he could complete the first aid, Brotheridge died. He was the first Allied soldier to be killed by enemy fire on D-Day.

Lieutenant Robert Mason Matias was the leader of the second platoon, E Company, 58th Parachute Infantry Regiment, US 82nd Airborne Division. At midnight June 5 and 6, 1944, he was riding in a C-47 Dakota over the English Channel headed toward the Kotantan Peninsula of Normandy. 2 hours later, the plane was over France and started to take some flack from German guns. At 0227 hours, Lieutenant Matias saw the red light go on over the open door of the plane, the signal to get ready. "Stand up and hook up." Lieutenant Matias called out to the 16 men behind him as he hooked the clip from his parachute to the static line running down the middle of the roof of the aircraft. He stepped to the open door, ready to jump the instant the pilot decided the plane was over the drop zone and turned on the green light. The Germans below were firing furiously at the air armada of 822 C-47s carrying the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions into battle. Flock the 38s 20mm four-barreled anti-aircraft guns filled the sky with explosions. Machine gun tracers, green, yellow, red, blue, white, arched through the sky. The site was at once awesome. Nearly every paratrooper thought this was the grandest Fourth of July fireworks display he had ever seen and terrifying. For every visible tracer, there were five unseen bullets. Unseen, but not unheard. The bullets rattled against the wings of the C-47s, sounding like rocks being shaken in a ten can. Flying at less than 1,000 ft and slower than 120 mph, the planes made easy targets. Looking out the door, Lieutenant Matias could see an intense fire raging. A hay barn on the edge of the village of Sme Gleas had caught fire, probably from a spent tracer, and was burning fiercely, illuminating the horizon. As the C-47 lurched this way and that, a consequence of the pilot's feudal attempts to escape the flack, the men behind Matias were calling out, "Let's go for Christ's sake. Let's go." Or, "Jump, damn it, jump." As machine gun bullets came up through the fuselage, the men instinctively put their hands over their crotches. They had made a dozen or more practice jumps. Never had it occurred to them they would be so eager to get out of an airplane in flight.

Matias had his hands on the outside of the doorway, ready to propel himself into the night the instant the green light went on. A shell burst just beside him. Red hot flack ripped through his reserve chute into his chest, knocking him off his feet. With a mighty effort, he began to pull himself back up. The green light went on. At 28 years of age, Matias was 5 or so years older than the other lieutenants in the 58th, but he did not look it. He had reddish blonde hair and an Irishman's freckles, which gave him a boyish appearance. Long and lanky, 6'1, 175 lb, he was in superb condition, all raw bone and muscle, strong enough to survive a blow that would have failed an ox, and recover almost instantly. He regained his feet and resumed his post at the door. It was the kind of action his men had learned to expect from Bob Matias. He was immensely popular with his platoon and fellow officers. For 2 years, he had been preparing himself and his platoon for this moment. He was known to be absolutely fair, totally dedicated. He was the best boxer in the regiment and the best marcher. On 125 mile march, an intraplatoon competitive hike, when everyone was pushing to the limit, one of his men gave out. Matias picked him up and carried him the last 3/4 of a mile home. When he censored the mail, one of his privates, Harold Kavanaaugh related, he took extreme pains so that all he would see were the contents. If something were written that should not have been, then and only then would he look to see the author's name. He personally would take it back to the writer to explain why certain sections had to be deleted. After the required correction, the letter was on its way. The least time possible was lost, and the author always knew what would be read by the address. Matias was a devout Catholic. He went to mass as often as possible and did all he could to make church attendance convenient for his men. He never swore. His company commander said of him, "He can hold more than his own with the toughest man alive, yet you won't ever hear him use hell or damn." When a man in the second platoon had a problem, Matias could sense it. He would discreetly offer his counsel, but he never intruded. One of his privates recalled, "He made allowances, but never compromised his standards. He seemed deeply hurt on the few occasions we failed to meet his expectations, but he never lost his temper."

He had prepared himself in every way possible for the upcoming struggle. He was a student of military history. He had mastered every weapon and skill necessary to a rifle company. He had studied German weapons, organization, and tactics. He had learned the German language well enough to speak it fluently and French well enough to ask directions. He had taught his men German commands and French phrases. Valuable lessons, Kavanaaugh remarked. Afraid the Germans would use gas, Matias had given his platoon schooling in vessicants, lacrimmators, sternitators, and the like. This knowledge later proved useless, Kavanaaugh remarked. But he wasn't overlooking a single phase of warfare. Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 5008th, said of Matias, "He will either earn the Medal of Honor or be the first 5008th man killed in action." At the airfield on the evening of June 5, as the 58th loaded up, Matias had shaken hands with each member of his platoon. The platoon was being carried in two planes. Private Kavanaaugh, who was in the other stick, recalled, "There was an air of deserved confidence about this grand fellow. We shook hands and he said, 'We'll show him, won't we, Irish?'"

When Lieutenant Matias was wounded from the shell burst and the green light went on, he had enough strength to push himself out of the way so that the men behind him could jump. Had he done so, the crew of the C-47 could have applied first aid and perhaps gotten him back to England in time for a life-saving operation. Later, every man in his stick was certain that Matias must have had that thought. Instead, Matias raised his right arm, called out, "Follow me!" and leaped into the night. Whether the shock from the opening parachute or the shock of hitting the ground, or excessive bleeding from his multiple wounds was the cause, no one knows, but when he was located a half hour or so later, he was still in his chute, dead. He was the first American officer killed by German fire on D-Day.

Operation Overlord, the invasion of German occupied France in June 1944, was staggering in its scope. In one night and day, 175,000 fighting men and their equipment, including 50,000 vehicles of all types, ranging from motorcycles to tanks and armored bulldozers, were transported across 60 to 100 m of open water and landed on a hostile shore against intense opposition. They were either carried by or supported by 5,333 ships and craft of all types and almost 11,000 airplanes. They came from southwestern England, southern England, the east coast of England. It was as if the cities of Green Bay, Rasine, and Kenosha, Wisconsin were picked up and moved, every man, woman, and child, every automobile, and truck to the east side of Lake Michigan in one night. The effort behind this unique movement, which British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill rightly called the most difficult and complicated operation ever to take place, stretched back 2 years in time and involved the efforts of literally millions of people. The production figures from the United States in landing craft, ships of war, airplanes of all types, weapons, medicine, and so much more were fantastic. The figures in the United Kingdom and Canada were roughly similar.

But for all that American industrial brawn and organizational ability could do, for all that the British and Canadians and other allies could contribute, for all the plans and preparations, for all the brilliance of the deception scheme, for all the inspired leadership, in the end, success or failure in operation overlord came down to a relatively small number of junior officers, non-coms, and privates or seammen in the American, British, and Canadian armies, navies, air force, forces and coast guards. If the paratroopers and glider troops cowered behind hedros or hid out in barns rather than actively seek out the enemy. If the coxins did not drive their landing craft ashore, but instead out of fear of enemy fire dropped the ramps in too deep water. If the men at the beaches dug in behind the seaw wall. If the noncoms and junior officers failed to lead their men up and over the seaw wall to move inland in the face of enemy fire. Why then the most thoroughly planned offensive in military history, an offensive supported by incredible amounts of naval firepower, bombs, and rockets, would fail. It all came down to a bunch of 18 to 28-year-olds. They were magnificently trained and equipped and supported, but only a few of them had ever been in combat. Only a few had ever killed or seen a buddy killed. Most were like Den Brotheridge and Bob Matias. They had never heard a shot fired in anger. They were citizen soldiers, not professionals. It was an open question toward the end of spring 1944 as to whether a democracy could produce young soldiers capable of fighting effectively against the best that Nazi Germany could produce. Hitler was certain the answer was no. Nothing that he had learned of the British army's performance in France in 1940 or again in North Africa and the Mediterranean in 1942 to44 or what he had learned of the American army in North Africa and the Mediterranean in 1942 to44 caused him to doubt that on anything approaching equality in numbers the Vermach would prevail. Totalitarian fanaticism and discipline would always conquer democratic liberalism and softness. Of that Hitler was sure. If Hitler had seen Den Brotheridge and Bob Matias in action at the beginning of D-Day, he might have had second thoughts. It is Brotheidge and Matias and their buddies, the young men born into the false prosperity of the 1920s and brought up in the bitter realities of the depression of the 1930s that this book is about. The literature they read as youngsters was anti-war, cynical, portraying patriots as suckers, slackers as heroes. None of them wanted to be part of another war. They wanted to be throwing baseballs, not hand grenades, shooting .22s at rabbits, not M1s, at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought. They were soldiers of democracy. They were the men of D-Day. And to them we owe our freedom. Before we can understand what they accomplished, however, and how they did it and appreciate their achievement, we must look at the big picture.

Chapter 1. The Defenders.

At the beginning of 1944, Nazi Germany's fundamental problem was that she had conquered more territory than she could defend. But Hitler had a conqueror's mentality and he insisted on defending every inch of occupied soil. To carry out such orders, the Vermach relied on improvisations, of which the most important were conscripted foreign troops, school-aged German youths and old men, and fixed defensive positions. It also changed its tactical doctrine and weapons design, transforming itself from the highly mobile Blitzkrieg army of 1940 and41 that had featured light, fast tanks and hard marching infantry into the ponderous all but immobile army of 1944 that featured heavy slow tanks and dug in infantry. Like everything else that happened in Nazi Germany, this was Hitler's doing. He had learned the lesson of World War I that Germany could not win a war of attrition and his policy in the first two years of World War II had been blitzkrieg. But in the late fall of 1941, his lightning war came a cropper in Russia. He then made the most incomprehensible of his many mistakes when he declared war on the United States in the same week that the Red Army launched its counteroffensive outside Moscow. In the summer of 1942, the Vermacht tried Blitzkrieg against the Red Army again, but on a much reduced scale. One army group on one front rather than three army groups on three fronts, only to come across her once more when the snow began to fall. At the end of January 1943, nearly a quarter of a million German troops at Stalenrad surrendered. In July 1943, the Vermach launched its last offensive on the Eastern Front at Kursk. The Red Army stopped it cold, inflicting horrendous casualties. From Korsk on, Hitler had no hope of winning a military victory against the Soviet Union. That did not mean his cause was hopeless. He had a lot of space to trade for time on the Eastern Front. And in time, it was inevitable that the strange alliance, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, that only he could have brought together would split us under. His death and the total defeat of Nazi Germany would for certain lead to the breakup of the alliance. But Hitler wanted the breakup to take place while it would still benefit him, and he had good reason to believe that it might happen if he could convince Stalin that he couldn't depend on the United States and Britain. In that event, Stalin could well conclude that the cost of victory to the Red Army fighting alone was too high. Once the Red Army had returned to the start line of June 1941, that is in occupation of Eastern Poland, Stalin might be willing to negotiate a peace based on a division of Eastern Europe between the Nazis and Soviets. Between August 1939 and June 1941, the Nazi and Soviet empires had been partners, joined together in an alliance based on a division of Eastern Europe between them. To return to that situation, Hitler had to persuade Stalin that the Vermacht was still capable of inflicting unacceptable casualties on the Red Army. To do that, Hitler needed more fighting men and machines. To get them, he had to strip his Western front. To do that, he had to hurl the forthcoming invasion back into the sea. That is why D-Day was critical.

In a November 3rd, 1943 furer directive number 51, Hitler explained it all with crystal clarity. Quote, "For the last 2 and 1/2 years, the bitter and costly struggle against bulcheism has made the utmost demands upon the bulk of our military resources and energies. The situation has since changed. The threat from the east remains, but an even greater danger looms in the west, the Anglo-American landing. In the east, the vastness of space will, as a last resort, permit a loss of territory, even on a major scale, without suffering a mortal blow to Germany's chance for survival. Not so in the West. If the enemy here succeeds in penetrating our defense on a wide front, consequences of staggering proportions will follow within a short time." What he meant was that a successful Anglo-American offensive in 1944 would pose a direct threat to Germany's industrial heartland, the Ry Rur region. Southeastern England is closer to Cologne, Dooldorf, and Essen than they are to Berlin. Put another way, in the fall of 1943, the front line in the east was more than 2,000 km from Berlin, while in the west, the front line was 500 km from the Ryan Rur, 1,000 km from Berlin. A successful 1944 Red Army offensive would overrun parts of Ukraine and White Russia, areas important, but not critical to Germany's war making capability. A successful 1944 Anglo-American offensive would overrun the Ryan Rur, areas that were indispensable to Germany's war makingaking capability. Thus, Hitler declared, "It was on the French coast that the decisive battle would be fought." Quoting again, "For that reason, I can no longer justify the further weakening of the West in favor of other theaters of war. I have therefore decided to strengthen the defenses in the West." This reversed a policy established in the fall of 1940 with the abandonment of preparations for operation zuva or sea lion the invasion of England. Since that time the vermach had stripped down its forces in France transferring men and equipment to the eastern front on an everinccreasing scale. Hitler's reasons for shifting priority to the west in 1944 were more political than military. On March 20th, he told his principal commanders in the west, quote, "The destruction of the enemy's landing attempt means more than a purely local decision on the western front. It is the sole decisive factor in the whole conduct of the war and hence in its final result." He went on to explain, "Once defeated, the enemy will never again try to invade. Quite apart from their heavy losses, they would need months to organize a fresh attempt. And an invasion failure would also deliver a crushing blow to British and American morale. For one thing, it would prevent Roosevelt from being reelected. With any luck, he'd finish up in jail somewhere. For another, war weariness would grip Britain even faster, and Churchill, already a sick old man with his influence waning, wouldn't be able to carry through a new invasion operation." End quote. At that point, the Vermacht could transfer 45 divisions from the west to the east to quote revolutionize the situation there. So the whole outcome of the war depends on each man fighting in the west and that means the fate of the Reich as well. End quote. This was Germany's only hope. More correctly, it was Hitler's and the Nazis only hope. For the German people and nation, the decision to continue the struggle spelled catastrophe. In any case, had Hitler's scenario worked out, in the summer of 1945, the US Army Air Force, secure in its bases in England, would have started dropping atomic bombs on Berlin and other German cities. But of course, in early 1944, no one knew when or even if the American Manhattan project would be able to produce such a bomb.

Hitler's problem was not his priorities. It was how to hurl the coming invasion back into the sea. That problem was compounded by many factors summed up in one word, shortages. Shortages of ships, planes, men, guns, tanks. Germany was overextended far worse than she had been in World War I. Hitler had criticized the Kaiser for getting into a two-front war, but at the end of 1943, Hitler was fighting a three-front war. On the Eastern Front, his troops were stretched over more than 2,000 km. On the Mediterranean front, which ran from southern Greece through Yugoslavia, then across Italy and southern France, his troops were defending a line of some 3,000 km. On the western front, his troops were called on to defend 6,000 km of coastline running from Holland to the southern end of the Bay of Bisque. Actually, there was a fourth front at home. The Allied air offensive against German cities had driven the Luftvafa out of France, forcing it to fight over German skies to defend German cities. The bombing had not had a decisive effect on German war production. Not even close, as Germany was increasing its output of tanks and guns through 1943, although not fast enough to make up the losses. But it had put the Luftvafa on the defensive. Hitler hated that. Everything in his own psychology, everything in German military tradition, cried out for taking the offensive. But Hitler could not attack his enemies, at least not until his secret weapons came online. It was Gaul and wormwood to him, but he had to stay on the defensive. That necessity so stuck in his craw that it led him to make strategic and technological blunders of the greatest magnitude.

When German physicists told him in 1940 that it might be possible to build an atomic bomb by 1945, he ordered them to abandon the project on the grounds that by then the war would have been won or lost. That was almost certainly a wise decision, not because his prediction was accurate, but because Germany did not have the industrial or natural resources to produce an atomic bomb. German scientists went to work instead on other weapons. At Hitler's insistence, these were offensive weapons such as diesel submarines, pilotless aircraft, and rockets. The Fergale Tunvafen or vengeance weapons were designed and used eventually, but in no way were they decisive. The V2, the world's first medium-range ballistic missile, was not a military weapon at all, but a terrorist device. The Scud missiles used by Iraq in 1991 in the Gulf War were only slightly improved versions of the V2. Like the V2, they were inaccurate and carried only a small explosive load. Hitler's passion for bombing London and his indifference to defending German cities led to a monstrous history-changing misjudgment.

In May 1943, Professor Villy Mesa had an ME262 twin jet fighter ready for serial production. Its cruise speed was 520 mph, more than 120 mph faster than any plane the Allies could send against it. And it mounted four 30mm cannon. Reich's Marshall Herman Garering wanted the plane, but he had to clear it with Hitler. Hitler had been burned by Garing's promises too many times, and not until December 1943 did Hitler witness a demonstration of the 262's capabilities. Hitler was impressed, but he wanted the bomber to hit London, not a fighter, to defend Germany. Garrying assured him that the 262 could be modified to carry bombs, whereupon Hitler went into great raptures about what the jet bomber would do to London and to the anticipated Allied landings in France. Garing typically had not known what he was talking about. Messormid could not make a fighter into a bomber and a larger jet airplane was pushing the technology too hard. So he ignored Hitler's order and the Messormid works started turning out 262s, a total of about 120 by April 1944. When Hitler got this news, he braced Garing and gave him strict orders that not only was the 262 not to be built as a fighter, but that nobody should even refer to it as a fighter. It was to be known as the Blitz Bomber. For the next 6 months, Meshmitt tried manfully to make a bomber out of a fighter. He got nowhere. Finally, in November 1944, Hitler authorized the formation of the first jet fighter wing. But by then the transportation system was a shambles. The fighter pilot force was decimated and the fuel sources all but dried up. The Luftvafa never got more than a token force into the air before things fell apart. The Germans built more than 1,000 ME262s, but only in the last 6 weeks of the war did they get as many as 100 in the air at one time. But as a secret report in 1960 to President Dwight Eisenhower pointed out, quote, "During that time, the Germans literally flew rings around our fighters and bored holes in our bomber formations with complete impunity. For example, 14 fighter groups escorted the 1,250 B7 raid on Berlin, March 18, 1945. Almost a one for one escort ratio. They were set upon by a single squadron of ME262s which knocked down 25 bombers and five fighters, although outnumbered roughly 100 to one. The Germans lost not a single plane." End quote. The report which Eisenhower had asked to have prepared for his personal use only was written by White House staff officer Ralph Williams. He said he had talked to General Carl Spatz, commander of the eighth air force in World War II. Spatz freely conceded that none of our fighters was any match for the German jets and added that if the Germans had been able to get them deployed in force to the French coast, they could have denied us air superiority and frustrated the Normandy landings and might even have compelled us to work our way up into Europe via the Italian route. But what might have been wasn't.

There were no German jets over France or the English Channel in June 1944 and precious few prop airplanes. There were also precious few ships of war. And those that were there were Eboats, an oversized German version of the American patrol boat or PTBO, almost as big as a destroyer escort. The E stood for enemy. They were capable of laying mines and firing torpedoes and running away at high speed. Other than the eboats, the only contribution the German Navy could make to the defense of Fortress Europe was mine laying. With no air force and no navy, the German defenders of Fortress Europe were blind and forced to stretch out to cover every conceivable landing site. Control of the air and sea gave the Allies unprecedented mobility and almost certain surprise. In briefest form, they would know where and when the battle would be fought, and the Germans would not. In World War I, preparations for a massive offensive could not be hidden. The buildup of troops took weeks. The artillery preparation took days. By the time the offensive began, the defenders knew where and when it would hit and could strengthen their positions at the point of attack. But in the spring of 1944, the Germans could only guess. Hitler's spiritual mentor, Frederick the Great, had warned, "He who defends everything defends nothing." It was the human and material wastage of the war on the Eastern front that forced Hitler to ignore Frederick's warning and adopt a policy on the Western Front of fixed fortifications.

Vermach's losses had been staggering. In June 1941, the Vermach went into Russia with 3.3 million men. By the end of 1943, it had suffered nearly 3 million casualties, about onethird of which were permanent, killed, missing, captured, or unfit for combat due to wounds. Despite heroic efforts to make up the deficit by drawing down in France and calling up fresh conscripts from within Germany after the Kursk battle next to Verdon, the greatest battle ever fought with more than 2 million men engaged. The Vermach on the Eastern front was down to 2.5 million, attempting to hold a line that stretched from Lennengrad in the north to the Black Sea in the south, nearly 2,000 km. When the Vermach invaded the Soviet Union, it prided itself on its racial purity. The desperate need for replacements forced it to drastically modify and eventually abandon that policy. Initially, so-called folks deutsche, racial Germans from Poland and the Balkan countries were required to quote unquote volunteer. They were classified as deutschenfists, section three of the German racial list. This meant that they were vested with German citizenship for a probationary period of 10 years and were liable to military service but could not rise above the rank of private first class. In 1942 and 43, recruiting in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union was aggressively pursued for the struggle against communism. Initially, there was some truth to the designation of these recruits as frivilligan volunteers as men from the western republics of the Soviet Empire signed up for the fight against Stalin. When the German retreat began, there were fewer fryilligan, more hilts, auxiliaries conscripted from the occupied territories and from Red Army prisoners of war. By the beginning of 1944, the Vermach had volunteers from France, Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Asian Russia, North Africa, Russia, Ukraine, Runia, the Muslim republics of the Soviet Union, as well as vulgar Tatars, vulgar fins, Crimean Tatars, and even Indians. The so-called or east battalions became increasingly unreliable after the German defeat at Kursk. They were therefore sent to France in exchange for German troops.

At the beach called Utah on the day of the invasion. Lieutenant Robert Brewer of the 56th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, US Army, captured four Asians in Vermach uniforms. No one could speak their language. Eventually, it was learned that they were Koreans. How on earth did Koreans end up fighting for Hitler to defend France against Americans? It seems they had been conscripted into the Japanese army in 1938. Korea was then a Japanese colony, captured by the Red Army in the border battles with Japan in 1939, forced into the Red Army, captured by the Vermach in December 1941 outside Moscow, forced into the German army, and sent to France. What happened to them? Lieutenant Brewer never found out, but presumably they were sent back to Korea. If so, they would almost certainly have been conscripted again, either into the South or the North Korean army. It is possible that in 1950 they ended up fighting once again either against the US army or with it depending on what part of Korea they came from. Such are the vagaries of politics in the 20th century. By June 1944, one in six German riflemen in France was from an battalion. Furthermore, the Vermach sharply relaxed its physical standards to bring more genuine Germans into the line. Men with stomach and lung ailments were sent to the front. Convolescence time was cut as was training time for recruits. Younger and older men were called up. Of an army of 4,270,000 men in December 1943, more than a million and a half were over 34 years old. In the 709th division on the Kotantan Peninsula, the average age was 36. In the Vermach as a whole, the average age was 31 a 12. In the US Army, the average age was 25 a2. Meanwhile, the classes of 1925 and 1926 were called up.

As a consequence of these desperate measures, the Vermach did not have the resources to conduct a defense in depth based on counterattacks and counteroffensives. It lacked sufficient high-quality troops. It lacked sufficient mobility. It lacked sufficient armor. The old men, boys, and foreign troops were of value only if they were put into trenches or cement fortifications, with German NCOs standing behind them, pistol in hand, ready to shoot any man who left his post. In 1939, Hitler had characterized the Vermach as an army such as the world has never seen. It was far from that. At the end of 1943, the US War Department described the German soldier as quote, "One of several different types. The veteran of many fronts and many retreats is a prematurely aged, warweary cynic, either discouraged and disillusioned or too stupified to have any thought of his own. Yet he is a seasoned campaigner, most likely a non-commissioned officer, and performs his duties with the highest degree of efficiency." The new recruit, except in some crack SS, stutto stafle or protection department units, is either too young or too old, and often in poor health. He has been poorly trained for lack of time. But if too young, he makes up for this by a fanaticism bordering on madness. If too old, he is driven by the fear of what his propagandists have told him will happen to the fatherland in case of an allied victory, and even more by the fear of what he has been told will happen to him and his family if he does not carry out orders exactly as given. Thus, even the old and sick perform to a certain point with the courage of despair. The German high command has been particularly successful in placing the various types of men where they best fit and in selecting those to serve as cannon fodder who are told to hold out to the last man while every effort is made to preserve the elite units which are now almost entirely part of the Vafan SS, the combat troops of the SS. The German soldier in these units is in a preferred category and is the backbone of the German armed forces. He has pledged never to surrender and has no moral code except allegiance to his organization. There is no limit to his ruthlessness." End quote.

Beyond the Vaan SS, the best of the young recruits went into the Falser Jagger, the paratroop or panzer armored units. These elite troops had been carefully brought up in Nazi Germany for just this challenge. Born between 1920 and 1925, they had grown up in Hitler's Germany, subject to constant and massive propaganda, members of the Nazi youth. Given good equipment, and they got the best Germany could produce, which in small arms, armored vehicles, and artillery was among the best in the world, they made first class fighting outfits. In naturally strong coastal defenses, made stronger by the skill of German engineers. Even second and third class troops could inflict heavy casualties on an attacking force. Hitler roundly declared that it was a soldier's duty, quote, "to stand and die in his defenses," unquote. That was a World War I mentality, a far cry from Blitzkrieg, inappropriate to the age of tanks and other armored vehicles, but given the situation, inevitable. What gave the concept some believability was the plan to use the KrakvaN SS paratroops and armored troops in an immediate counterattack. At the end of 1943, those troops and tanks were still on the Eastern front or forming up inside Germany. But Hitler's directive of November 3rd, 1943 meant that many of them, perhaps enough, would be standing just behind the Atlantic Wall when the assault began.

As early as March 1942, Hitler laid down the basic principle in directive number 40. He ordered that the Atlantic coast defenses should be so organized and troops so deployed that any invasion attempt be smashed before the landing or immediately thereafter. In August 1942, he decreed that fortress construction in France proceed with fanatismos fanatic energy to create a continuous belt of interlocking fire emanating from bomb-proof concrete structures. In the words of the official American historian Gordon Harrison, Hitler was not then and never would be convinced that defense could not be made invulnerable if enough concrete and resolution could be poured into it. In September 1942, at a three-hour conference with Guring, Reich Minister Albert Shar, chief of organization Tot, the German Construction Organization, Field Marshal Gertvan Runstead, Commander in the West, General Gunther Blumenstat, Chief of Staff, Obervvel Harour West, OB West, the German ground headquarters of the Western Front, and others. Hitler reiterated his orders to prepare the strongest possible fixed fortifications along the Atlantic Wall. They must be built, he said, on the assumption that the Anglo-Americans would enjoy air and naval supremacy. Only concrete could stand up to the crushing weight of bombs and shells. He therefore wanted 15,000 concrete strong points to be occupied by 300,000 men. As no portion of the coast was safe, the whole would have to be walled up. He wanted the fortifications completed by May 1st, 1943. Most of this was pure fantasy, and aside from the top priority positions, almost none of it was accomplished at the end of 1943, but the policy had been set, the commitment made. Brunstead was unhappy with the idea of fixed fortifications. He argued that the Germans should hold their armored units well back from the coast, out of range of Allied naval gunfire, capable of mounting a genuine counteroffensive. But shortages of armor, men, fuel, and air coverage made that questionable. What Hitler could do was attempt to anticipate the landing site, keep what armor was available for the West near that place, and use it for local counterattacks while the Atlantic Wall held up the invaders. Tanks could seal off any penetration. Tanks could drive the lightly armored and unarmored first wave of invaders back into the sea if the fortifications were strong enough to keep the allies from establishing momentum. The trick was to pick the place to make the fortifications that strong. The pod delay was the logical place for the invasion for two overwhelming reasons. Between Dover and Cal is where the English Channel is narrowest and the straight line from London to the Ryan Rur and onto Berlin runs London Dover Cala Belgium. Hitler had to make a bet and in 1943 he bet the invasion would come at the Padal. In a way he tried to force the allies to invade there. In the summer of 1943, he decided to install the launching sites for the V1 and V2 Fagelun weapons in that area. He believed that whatever the allies previous plans might have been, the VW weapons would be so dangerous as to force them to attack directly in the Padal in order to overrun the launching sites. Thus, the area around Kala became by far the strongest fortified portion of the canal, the channel coast. And in 1944, the location of by far the greatest concentration of German armor in the West. It was there that the Atlantic Wall came closest to what German propaganda claimed. It was an impregnable fortress.

He was a strange man, the German furer. In the view of the deputy chief of operations at overcommando de Vermach OKW, General Volter Volimont, quote, "He knew the location of the defenses in detail better than any single army officer." Hitler's passion for detail was astonishing. On one occasion, he pointed out that there were two fewer anti-aircraft guns on the Channel Islands than had been there the previous week. The officer responsible for this supposed reduction was punished. It turned out to have been a miscount. Hitler spent hours studying the maps showing German installations along the Atlantic wall. He demanded reports on building progress, the thickness of the concrete, the kind of concrete used, the system used to put in the steel reinforcement. These reports often ran to more than 10 pages. But after ordering the creation of the greatest fortification in history, he never bothered to inspect any part of it. After leaving Paris in triumph in the summer of 1940, he did not set foot on French soil again until midJune 1944. Yet he declared this was the decisive theater.

Chapter 2. The Attackers.

The Allied problem was to land, penetrate the Atlantic wall, and secure a lodgement in an area suitable for reinforcement and expansion. The sinuanon of the operation was to achieve surprise. If the Germans knew when and where the attack was coming, they could surely concentrate enough men, concrete, tanks, and artillery at the spot to defeat the assault. It was going to be difficult enough, even with surprise. Amphibious operations are inherently the most complicated in war. Few have ever been successful. Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror had managed it, but nearly every other invasion attempted against organized opposition had failed. Napoleon had not been able to cross the English Channel, nor had Hitler. The Mongols were defeated by the weather when they tried to invade Japan, as were the Spanish when they tried to invade England. The British were frustrated in the Crimea in the 19th century and defeated at Gallipoli in World War I. In World War II, the record got better. By the end of 1943, the Allies had launched three successful amphibious attacks. North Africa, November 8, 1942. Sicily, July 10, 1943. And Solerno, September 9, 1943. All involving British and American land, sea, and air forces under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. None of the coastlines, however, had been fortified. The only attack against a fortified coast by the Canadians at DP in northern France in August 1942 had been decisively defeated. In North Africa, the Allies had achieved surprise when they attacked a French colonial army without a declaration of war, and even then they encountered many difficulties. At Sicily, the opposition had been mainly dispirited Italian troops. Nevertheless, there were some horrendous foul-ups, including the shooting down by Allied naval craft of Allied transport planes carrying the US 82nd Airborne Division into battle. At Salerno, the Germans had quickly recovered from the twin surprises of the Italian double cross and the Seaborn landings and come awfully close to driving the Anglo-American troops back into the sea despite being outnumbered and outgunned. Going into 1944, in short, there was precious little in the way of precedent or historic example the Allies could look to for inspiration. What they were about to attempt had not been done before, but it had to be done.

US Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall had wanted to invade France in late 1942 and even more in mid 1943. British hesitation and political necessity had forced a diversion to the Mediterranean. At the end of 1943, however, the British overcame their doubts and the allies committed themselves to a cross channel attack as the decisive effort for 1944. There were manifold reasons of which the overriding one was the obvious point that wars are won by offensive action. For all his hesitation about when the offensive should begin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill always knew that it must happen. As early as October 1941, he had told Captain Lord Lewis Mountbatten, head of combined operations, "You are to prepare for the invasion of Europe, for unless we can go and land and fight Hitler and beat his forces on land, we shall never win this war." To precisely that end, Marshall had transformed the US Army from a cadra of 170,000 men in 1940 to an army 3 years later that numbered 7.2 million. 2.3 million in the Army Air Force. It was the best equipped, most mobile with the most firepower of any army on Earth. This achievement was one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the Republic. To

Use that army only in Italy was unacceptable. Failure to mount an assault to create a second front would be a double cross to Stalin and might lead to precisely the political consequence, a separate Nazi Soviet armistice Hitler was counting on. Or perhaps worse, a Red Army liberation and thus postwar occupation of Western Europe.

At a minimum, no cross-channel attack in 1944 would put off victory against the Nazis until at least late 1945, possibly until 1946. Meanwhile, the political pressure to say to the British, "To hell with it. If you won't fight in France, we will take our army to the Pacific," would become all but irresistible. So there had to be an assault.

And for all the difficulties, for all the German advantages—landlines of communication, fighting on the defensive, fixed fortifications—the Allies had a decisive edge. Thanks to their control of the sea and air, and to the mass production of a bewildering variety of landing craft, the Allies had unprecedented mobility. They would choose the time and place the battle would be fought.

As soon as the battle began, however, the advantage would shift to the Germans. Once in France, the Allied paratroops and seaborn troops would be relatively immobile until the beachhead had been expanded to allow self-propelled artillery and trucks to come ashore. Movement would be by legs rather than halftracks or tires. The Germans, meanwhile, could move to the sound of the guns by road and rail. And by spring 1944, they would have 50 infantry and 11 armored divisions in France. The Allies could hardly hope to put much more than five divisions into the attack on the first day. Enough to give them local superiority, to be sure, but all reinforcements, plus every bullet, every bandage, every K-ration, would have to cross the English Channel to get into the battle.

So the Allies really had two problems: getting ashore and winning the battle of the buildup. Once they had established a secure beachhead and one room to deploy inland, the weapons being produced in massive quantity in the United States could be brought into France, sealing the German fate. It would then be only a question of when and at what cost unconditional surrender was achieved. But if the Wehrmacht could bring 10 divisions of infantry and armor into the battle by the end of the first week to launch a coordinated counterattack, its local manpower and firepower advantages could be decisive.

Long-term, the Allied problem appeared to be even greater, for there would be 60-plus German divisions in France in the spring of 1944, while the Allies would need 7 weeks after D-Day to complete the commitment of the 40-odd divisions they would gather in Britain. To win the battle of the buildup, the Allies could count on their vast air fleets to hamper German movement, but interdiction would be effective only in daylight and good weather. Far more effective would be to immobilize the Panzer divisions through trickery, fooling the Germans not only in advance of the attack, but making them believe that the real thing was a feint. That requirement would be the key factor in selecting the invasion site.

Whatever site was selected, the assault would be a direct frontal attack against prepared positions. How to do that successfully at an acceptable cost was a problem that had stumped generals on all sides between 1914 and 1918, and had not been solved by the end of 1943. The Wehrmacht had outflanked and outmaneuvered its opponents in Poland in 1939, in France in 1940, and in Russia in 1941. Direct frontal attacks by the Red Army against the Wehrmacht in 1943 and by the British and Americans in Italy that same year had been costly and relatively ineffective. And the frontal attack on D-Day would be from sea to land.

In World War I, all frontal attacks had been preceded by tremendous artillery bombardments, sometimes a week or more long. Thanks to their enormous fleet, the Allies had the firepower to duplicate such artillery preparation. But the Allied planners decided that surprise was more important than a lengthy bombardment. So they limited the pre-assault bombardment to a half hour or so in order to ensure surprise. Later critics charged that the heavy losses suffered at the beach called Omaha would have been less had there been a pre-invasion air and sea bombardment of several days, as was done later in the Pacific at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

What the criticism missed was the central point. As Samuel Eliot Morison wrote in his official history of the U.S. Navy, the Allies were invading a continent where the enemy had immense capabilities for reinforcement and counterattack, not a small island cut off by sea power from sources of supply. "Even a complete pulverizing of the Atlantic Wall at Omaha would have availed us nothing if the German command had been given 24 hours' notice to move up reserves for counterattack. We had to accept the risk of heavy casualties on the beaches to prevent far heavier ones on the plateau and among the hedgerows."

In World War I, when the artillery barrage lifted, the infantry would climb out of the trenches and attempt to cross no man's land. In an amphibious assault, the attacking infantry would not have jump-off trenches close to the enemy line. Rather, they would have to struggle up out of the water and across wet sand, which would hamper their equipment and agility. And how would they get from transport ships suitable for bringing them across the Channel to the shore?

At the beginning of World War II, no one knew. In the late 1930s, the U.S. Marines, anticipating that a war against Japan in the Pacific would involve island attacks, had pressed the Navy to build landing craft. But the Navy was interested in aircraft carriers and battleships, not small boats, so little was done. The Wehrmacht had planned to cross the Channel to attack England in 1940 using towed barges to transport its infantry assault units. Those barges had been built for Europe's canal and river systems. On the open Channel, with anything other than an absolute calm, they would have been worse than useless.

The British got started on a solution in 1941 with the Landing Ship Tank, or LST, and the Landing Craft Tank, LCT. The LST was a big ship, as big as a light cruiser, 327 ft long, displacing 4,000 tons, but it was flat-bottomed and thus hard to control in any kind of sea. It was capable of grounding and discharging tanks or trucks on shallow-gradient beaches. When it beached, two bow doors opened to the sides and a ramp was lowered to allow the vehicles to drive ashore. It could carry dozens of tanks and trucks in its cavernous hold along with small landing craft on its deck. The LCT, in U.S. Navy parlament, a ship was over 200 ft in length. A craft less than that was a flat-bottom craft 110 ft long, capable of carrying from four to eight tanks. Eventually, there were four types of LCTs across relatively wide bodies of water such as the Channel, even in relatively rough seas, and discharging its cargo over a ramp.

When America came into the war, it took on the task of all LST and most LCT production, in the process, considerably improving the designs. The LSTs and the LCTs became the workhorses of the Allies. They were the basic vehicle-carrying landing craft used successfully in the Mediterranean in 1942 and 1943. But they had significant shortcomings. They were slow, cumbersome, easy targets. Those who sailed LSTs insisted the initials stood for "Long, Slow Target." They were not suitable for landing platoons of fighting men, the skirmishers who would have to lead the way in the first wave.

For that job, what was needed was a small boat of shallow draft with a protected propeller that could beach by the bow, extract itself quickly, and have a small turning circle to enable it to turn out to open water without danger of broaching in a heavy surf. It would also require a ramp so that the riflemen could move onto the beach in a rush rather than jumping over the sides. Various designers in America, both in and out of the Navy, took up the problem. They came up with a variety of answers, some of which worked. The best were the LCIs, Landing Craft Infantry, a seagoing troop landing craft of 160 ft length, capable of carrying a reinforced company of infantry, nearly 200 men, and discharging the men down ramps on each side of the bow. The LCMs, Landing Craft Medium, and the LCVPs, Landing Craft Vehicle and Personnel.

There were many other types, including the oddest of all, a floating 2 1/2-ton truck. It was designed by a civilian employee at the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Palmer C. Putnam. He took a deuce-and-a-half truck, the U.S. Army's basic and much-loved truck, and turned it into an amphibian by providing buoyancy through a body made up largely of sealed empty tanks, and by giving it a pair of small propellers to provide forward motion in water. Once it hit the sand, it would operate as a truck. The vehicle was capable of making five and a half knots in a moderate sea, 50 mph on land. It could carry artillery pieces, fighting men, or general cargo. Most everyone laughed at this hybrid at first, but it soon showed its stuff and was adopted. The army called it a DUKW. D for 1942, the year of design. U for amphibian. K for all-wheel drive. W for dual rear axles. The users called it a "duck."

Production was as great a problem as design. The difficulties involved in building a landing craft fleet big enough to carry three to five divisions ashore in one day were enormous. Neither the Navy nor the shipyards had any experience in such matters. There were competing priorities. In 1942, escort vessels and merchant shipping were more immediate necessities, and they got the available steel and marine engines. As a result, there were severe shortages, so severe that the chief limiting factor in planning the invasion was lack of sufficient landing ships and craft. Indeed, that was the single most important factor in shaping the whole strategy of the war in the Pacific, in the Mediterranean, in the Atlantic. Churchill complained with some bitterness that "the destinies of two great empires seemed to be tied up in some goddamn things called LSTs."

That these shortages were overcome was a miracle of production and a triumph of the American economic system. The Navy did not want to mess around with small boats, and their big contractors, the large shipyards, felt the same. Forcing the job fell to small businessmen, entrepreneurs, high risktakers with little boatyards, designing boats on speculation, producing them on the basis of a handshake contract. There were many such men, but the greatest designer and builder of landing craft was Andrew Jackson Higgins of New Orleans.

The first time I met General Eisenhower in 1964 in his office in Gettysburg, where he had called me to discuss the possibility of my becoming one of the editors of his official papers. He said at the end of the conversation, "I notice you're teaching in New Orleans. Did you ever know Andrew Higgins?" "No, sir," I replied. "He died before I moved to the city." "That's too bad," Eisenhower said. "He's the man who won the war for us."

My face must have shown the astonishment I felt at hearing such a strong statement from such a source. Eisenhower went on to explain, "If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different."

Andrew Higgins was a self-taught genius in small boat design. In the 1930s, he had been building boats for the oil industry, which was exploring in the swamps of South Louisiana and needed a shallow-draft vessel that could run up on a bank and extract itself. His Eureka boat, made of wood, filled the need perfectly. He was so confident there would be a war and a need for thousands of small boats, and so certain that steel would be in short supply, that he bought the entire 1939 crop of mahogany from the Philippines and stored it for future use.

When the Marines forced the Navy to begin experimenting with landing craft, Higgins entered the competition. The Navy Bureau of Ships wanted to do the design itself and wanted no part of this hot-tempered, loud-mouthed Irishman who drank a bottle of whiskey a day, who built his boats out of wood instead of metal, whose firm Higgins Industries was a fly-by-night outfit on the Gulf Coast rather than an established firm on the East Coast, and who insisted that, quote, "The Navy doesn't know one damn thing about small boats." The struggle between the bureaucracy and the lonely inventor lasted for a couple of years, but one way or another, Higgins managed to force the Navy to let him compete for contracts. And the Marines loved what he produced, the LCVP. It was so far superior to anything the Navy designers or the private competitors could build that excellence won out over blind, stupid, stuck-in-the-mud bureaucracy.

Once he got the initial contract, Higgins showed that he was as much a genius at mass production as he was at design. He had assembly lines scattered throughout New Orleans, some under canvas. He employed at the peak 30,000 workers. It was an integrated workforce of blacks, women, and men, the first ever in New Orleans. Higgins inspired his workers the way a general tries to inspire his troops. A huge sign hung over one of his assembly lines: "The man who relaxes is helping the Axis." He put pictures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito sitting on toilets in his factory's bathrooms. "Come on in, brother," the caption read. "Take it easy. Every minute you loaf here helps us plenty." He paid top wages regardless of sex or race.

Higgins improved the design of the LCTs and produced hundreds of them. He helped design the patrol boats, the PT boats, and built dozens of them. He had an important subcontractor role in the Manhattan Project. He made other contributions to the war effort as well. Mostly, however, Higgins Industries built LCVPs. It was based on the Eureka design, but substituted a square bow that was actually a ramp for the spoon-bill bow of the Eureka. At 36 ft long and 10 1/2 ft wide, it was a floating cigar box propelled by a protected propeller powered by a diesel engine. It could carry a platoon of 36 men or a jeep and a squad of a dozen men. The ramp was metal, but the sides and square stern were plywood. Even in a moderate sea, it would bounce and shake while swells broke over the ramp and sides. But it could bring a rifle platoon to the shoreline and discharge the men in a matter of seconds, then extract itself and go back to the mothership for another load. It fit the need perfectly.

By the end of the war, Higgins Industries had produced over 20,000 LCVPs. They were dubbed "Higgins boats," and they carried infantry ashore in the Mediterranean, in France, at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and at other Pacific islands. More American fighting men went ashore in Higgins boats than in all other types of landing craft combined. The Higgins boats were carried across the Atlantic and later across the Channel on the decks of LSTs. They were lowered by davits. One of Higgins' arguments with the Bureau of Ships had been about length. He insisted that a 36-ft boat was the right length to meet the requirements. While the Navy said it had to be a 30-ft boat because the davits on the LSTs were designed for a boat of that length. "Change the davits," Higgins thundered. And eventually that common-sense solution was adopted. Together with the LCTs and other craft, they gave the Allies unprecedented mobility.

The Allies had other advantages to help solve their problems. The Germans, who had been pioneers in creating a paratroop force, had given up on airborne operations after suffering disastrous losses in the 1941 capture of Crete, and in any case, they did not have the transport capacity to mount much more than a small raiding party. But the American, British, and Canadian armies had airborne divisions, and they had the planes to carry them behind enemy lines. Those planes were designated C-47s and dubbed Dakotas. Each could carry a stick of 18 paratroopers. The Dakota was the military version of the DC-3, a twin-engine plane built by Douglas Aircraft in the 1930s. It was unarmed and unarmored, but it was versatile. It was slow, 230 mph top speed, but the most dependable, most rugged, best-designed airplane ever built. A half century and more later, most of the DC-3s built in the '30s were still in service, primarily flying as commercial transports over the mountains of South and Central America.

The men the Dakotas carried were elite troops. There were two British Airborne Divisions, the First and Sixth, and two American, the 82nd and 101st. Every paratrooper was a volunteer. Glider-borne infantry were not volunteers. Each paratrooper had gone through a rigorous training course, as tough as any in the world. The experience had bonded them together. Their unit cohesion was outstanding. The men were superbly conditioned, highly motivated, experts in small arms. The rifle companies in the Allied Airborne Divisions were as good as any in the world. So were the other elite Allied formations, such as the American Rangers and the British Commandos.

The U.S. Army's infantry divisions were not elite by definition, but they had some outstanding characteristics. Although they were made up primarily of conscripted troops, there was a vast difference between American "drafties" and their German counterparts, not to mention the battalions. The American Selective Service system was just that, selective. One-third of the men called to service were rejected after physical examinations, making the average draftee brighter, healthier, and better educated than the average American. He was 26 years old, 5'8" tall, weighed 144 lb, had a 33 1/2" chest, and a 31" waist. After 13 weeks of basic training, he'd gained 7 lb and converted many of his original pounds from fat to muscle and added at least an inch to his chest. Nearly half the draftees were high school graduates. One in 10 had some college. As Jeffrey Perro puts it in his history of the U.S. Army in World War II, "these were the best educated enlisted men of any army in history."

At the end of 1943, the U.S. Army was the greenest army in the world. Of the nearly 50 infantry, armored, and airborne divisions selected for participation in the campaign in Northwest Europe, only two, the First Infantry and the 82nd Airborne, had been in combat. Nor had the bulk of the British army seen action. Although Britain had been at war with Germany for 4 years, only a small number of divisions had been in combat, and none of those designated for the assault had more than a handful of veterans.

This posed problems and caused apprehension, but it had a certain advantage. According to Private Carl Wise of the U.S. Fifth Ranger Battalion, "a veteran infantryman is a terrified infantryman." Sergeant Carwood Lipton of the 56th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) of the 101st Airborne commented, "I took chances on D-Day I would never have taken later in the war."

In the book *Wartime*, Paul Fussell writes that men in combat go through two stages of rationalization, followed by one of perception. Considering the possibility of a severe wound or death, the average soldier's first rationalization is: "It can't happen to me. I'm too clever, agile, well-trained, good-looking, beloved, tightly laced, etc." The second rationalization is: "It can happen to me, and I'd better be more careful. I can avoid the danger by watching more prudently the way I take cover, dig in, expose my position by firing my weapon, keep extra alert at all times, etc." Finally, the realization is: "It is going to happen to me and only my not being there is going to prevent it."

For a direct frontal assault on a prepared enemy position, men who have not seen what a bullet or a landmine or an exploding mortar round can do to a human body are preferable to men who have seen the carnage. Men in their late teens or early 20s have a feeling of invulnerability, as seen in the remark of Charles East of the 29th Division. Told by his commanding officer on the eve of D-Day that nine out of 10 would become casualties in the ensuing campaign, East looked at the man to his left, then at the man to his right, and thought to himself, "You poor bastards." Men like Sergeant Lipton and Private East, and there were thousands of them in the American Army, could overcome the problem of inexperience with their zeal and daredevil attitude.

The ordinary infantry divisions of the British army were another matter. They had been in barracks since the British Expeditionary Force retreated from the continent in June 1940. The ordinary soldier was not as well educated or as physically fit as his American counterpart. Superficial discipline, dress, saluting, etc., was much better than among the GIs. But real discipline, taking and executing orders, was slack. The British War Office had been afraid to impose discipline too strictly in a democratic army on the odd notion that it might dampen the fighting spirit of the men in the ranks.

Those British soldiers who were veterans had been badly beaten by the Wehrmacht in 1940. Their overseas mates had surrendered to an inferior Japanese army in Singapore in February 1941, to an inferior German army in Tobruk, Libya, in June 1942, and again to an inferior German force on the Greek island of Kos in November 1943. The one British victory in the war at El Alamein in November 1942 had been won over an undersupplied, outgunned, and outmanned Afrika Korps. In pursuing the defeated Afrika Korps into Tunisia, as in the ensuing campaigns in Sicily and Italy, the British Eighth Army had not displayed much of a killer instinct.

The Germans who fought against the British often expressed their surprise at the way in which British troops would do only what was expected of them, no more. They found it remarkable that the British would abandon a pursuit to brew up their tea, and even more remarkable that British troops would surrender when their ammunition ran low, when their fuel ran out, or when they were encircled. General Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of the 8th Army, wrote his superior, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, "The trouble with our British lads is that they are not killers by nature."

One reason for the shortcomings of the World War II British Army was inferior weaponry. British tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms were not as good as those of their enemies or of their American partners. Another reason was the way in which the poison of pacifism had eaten into the souls of British youth after the catastrophes of the Somme, Flanders, and elsewhere in World War I. In addition, senior officers were survivors of the trenches. They had nightmares from the experience. They mistrusted offensive action in general, direct frontal assaults, even more. What their generals had ordered them to do, charge across no man's land, they would not. They knew it was stupid, futile, suicidal. Their mistake was in thinking that the lessons of World War I applied to all offensive action.

On the eve of the invasion, General Montgomery visited D Company, the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, a glider outfit in the Sixth Airborne Division. Its commanding officer was Major John Howard. D Company had a special mission. It was composed of volunteers, had excellent junior officers, was well trained, and primed to go. It was an outstanding rifle company. Montgomery's parting words to Howard were, "Bring back as many of the chaps as you can." Montgomery's approach to the launching of an offensive was markedly different from that of Field Marshal Douglas Haig in World War I, and certainly far more commendable, and yet those were strange words to say to the commander of an elite force undertaking an absolutely critical task. One might have thought something like, "John, whatever else, get the job done," would have been more appropriate.

In part, Montgomery's caution was simple realism. Britain had reached her manpower limits. The British army could not afford heavy losses. There was no way to make them up. But it was precisely this point that infuriated Americans. In their view, the way to minimize casualties was to take risks to win the war as soon as possible, not to exercise caution in an offensive action.

Something else irritated the Americans: the supercilious contempt for all things American that some British officers could not help displaying and the assumed superiority of British techniques, methods, tactics, and leadership that almost all British officers shared and many of them displayed. Put directly, most British officers regarded the Americans as neophytes in war, who were blessed with great equipment in massive quantities and superbly conditioned but inexperienced enlisted men. Such officers felt it was their duty, their destiny to train and teach the Yanks. Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander wrote to Brooke from Tunisia about the Americans. Quote, "They simply do not know their job as soldiers, and this is the case from the highest to the lowest, from the general to the private soldier. Perhaps the weakest link of all is the junior leader, who just does not lead, with the result that their men don't really fight."

Another major problem the Allies faced at the end of 1943 was precisely the fact that they were allies. "Give me allies to fight against," said Napoleon, pointing to an obvious truth. "The Yanks got on British nerves. The Limeies got on American nerves." This was exacerbated by proximity. As the American army and Britain began to grow in anticipation of the invasion, the friction increased. According to the British, the trouble with the Yanks was that they were "overpaid, oversexed, and over here." The GIs responded that the trouble with the Limeies was that they were "underpaid" (which was true) and "undersexed" (which tended to be true, as British girls naturally gravitated to the GIs, who had money to throw around and were billeted in villages rather than segregated in isolated barracks).

In Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy, the Tommies and the GIs had fought side by side, but there had been too much friction, too little functioning as a team. If they were going to penetrate the Atlantic Wall, they were going to have to learn to work together. One indication that they could do so was the designation of the force. Back in 1917, when members of the American Expeditionary Force were asked what AEF stood for, the Yanks replied, "After England Failed." But in 1943, AEF stood for Allied Expeditionary Force.

As against the untested, cocky, "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead" American army and the war-weary, too cautious British army, the Germans could put into the battle troops who, as described by Max Hastings, possessed an "historic reputation as formidable soldiers." Under Hitler, their army attained its zenith. Hastings asserts, "Throughout the Second World War, wherever British or American troops met the Germans in anything like equal strength, the Germans prevailed." Hastings' judgment has become popular among military historians a half century after the war. The German soldier in World War II has assumed a mythical quality as the best fighting man, not only in that war, but in almost any war ever fought. The judgment is wrong. The Wehrmacht had many fine units and many outstanding soldiers, but they were not supermen. Not even the Waffen SS elite troops of 1944 and '45 were much, if any, better than ordinary Allied troops. And the Allied elite units—the airborne and Rangers and Commandos—were better than anything the Germans put into the field.

What made the Germans look so good, what so impressed Hastings and others, was the kill ratio. It was almost 2 to 1 in favor of the Wehrmacht, sometimes higher. But that criterion ignores a basic fact. The Wehrmacht versus the Anglo-American armies was almost always fighting on the defensive behind prepared positions or fixed fortifications such as the Mareth Line in Tunisia, the Winter Line in Italy, the Atlantic Wall in France, the West Wall in the final defense of Germany's borders. Even then, the Germans never did manage to hold a position. They were always driven back.

Of course, the argument is that they were driven back by overwhelming firepower. That the Allies won because they outproduced the Germans, not because they outfought them. There is truth to that. But the only time in World War II that the Wehrmacht undertook a genuine offensive against American troops, it was soundly whipped. In the Ardennes in December 1944, the Germans had the manpower and firepower advantage. At Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne was encircled, it was almost a 10 to 1 advantage. Allied control of the air was useless for the first week of the battle due to miserable weather. The Germans were close to their supply dumps, even to their manufacturing sites. Tanks rolling out of factories in the Rhine-Ruhr region could start firing almost as they left the factory gate. The Germans had some of their best Waffen SS and Panzer divisions in the attack. They had ample artillery support, but the lightly armed 101st, cut off from its supplies, cold, hungry, unable to properly care for its wounded, running low on or even out of ammunition with little artillery support, held off desperate German attacks for more than a week. The American elite unit prevailed over the elite German units. Elsewhere in the Ardennes, the same pattern prevailed. Once they had recovered from their surprise, the American regular infantry units gave an excellent account of themselves.

In 1980, *Time* magazine columnist Hugh Sidey asked General Maxwell Taylor, the wartime commander of the 101st Airborne, to assess the performance of the American soldiers under his command in World War II. "There were many problems at first," Taylor said, "but by December 1944, there were companies in his division, quote, 'that were better than anything anywhere.' The men were hardened, the officers tested, their equipment upgraded, and they had that wonderful flexibility and self-confidence imparted by a democratic society. No other system could produce soldiers like that." But it did take some time. So although the German army contained some very good units, it just won't do to call that army as a whole the best in the war. It would be more accurate to say that after 1941, the side on the defensive almost always gave a better account of itself.

Neither were the Germans superior to the Allies on the technological front. True, their infantry weapons tended to be better, and they had some innovative gadgets, such as the V-1 pilotless bomber and some genuine breakthroughs, such as the snorkel submarine and the V-2 ballistic missile. But they had fallen badly behind in the quality and design of fighter and bomber aircraft, except for the too-late Me-262. They were not even in the atomic bomb race. Their encoding system, the Enigma machine, had been hopelessly compromised. And strangely enough, for a country that had Mercedes and Volkswagen, they were badly outclassed in motor transport.

The British were outstanding in science and technology. The proximity fuse, radar, and sonar were British innovations, as was penicillin. Much of the basic work on the atomic bomb was done by British physicists. The British were inventive. For example, they were working on special tanks called "Hobart's Funnies" after General Percy Hobart of the 79th Armored Division. In March 1943, Hobart had been given the job of figuring out how to get armored support onto and over the beaches to breach the concrete and minefields of the Atlantic Wall. He came up with swimming tanks. Duplex Drive (DD), they were called, after their twin propellers working off the main engine. They had a waterproof, air-filled canvas screen all around the hull, giving the DD the appearance of a baby carriage. The inflatable screen was dropped when the tank reached the shore. Another of Hobart's Funnies carried a 40-ft box girder bridge for crossing anti-tank ditches. The Crab had a rotating drum in front of the tank. As it turned, it thrashed the ground in front with steel chains, safely detonating mines in its path. There were others.

Even more astonishing than swimming tanks was the idea of towing pre-fabricated ports across the Channel. By the end of 1943, thousands of British workers were helping to construct the artificial ports, codenamed Mulberries, and the breakwaters to shelter them. The docks consisted of floating piers connected by treadway to the beach. The piers were devised so that the platform or roadway could slide up and down with the tide on four posts that rested on the sea bottom. The breakwater, codenamed Phoenix, combined hollow floating concrete caissons about six stories high with old merchant ships. Lined up end to end off the French coast, the ships and Phoenixes were sunk by opening their seacocks. The result: an instant breakwater protecting instant port facilities in place and ready to go on D-Day plus one.

There were many other British triumphs. One of the most important was Ultra. Ultra was the code name for the system of breaking the German Enigma encoding machine. From 1941 onward, the British were reading significant portions of German radio traffic, giving the Allies a generally accurate and occasionally exact and total picture of the enemy order of battle. As that is the most basic and priceless of all intelligence in war—where are the enemy units? In what strength, with what capabilities?—Ultra gave the Allies an immense advantage.

When the Ultra secret was finally revealed in the early 1970s, people asked, "If we were reading German radio traffic right through the war, how come we didn't win the war sooner?" The answer is, "We did." The intelligence advantage was even greater thanks to the British Double Cross system and to German conceit. In 1940, the British had managed to arrest all German spies in the United Kingdom. They were turned, persuaded at the point of a gun to operate as double agents. For the next three years, they sent information to their controllers in Hamburg via Morse code, information carefully selected by the British. It was always accurate, as the aim of the operation was to build AB (the German security service) trust in the agents, but was always either insignificant or too late to be of any use.

Sometimes the information passed on could prove disconcerting to the Allied forces preparing for the invasion. Sergeant Gordon Carson of the U.S. 101st was stationed in Ashbourne, west of London, late in 1943. He liked to listen to Axis Sally on the radio. Sally, known to the men as the "Bitch of Berlin," was Mildred Gillars, an Ohio girl who had wanted to be an actress but had become a Parisian fashion model. There she met Max Otto Koischwitz, married him, and moved to Berlin. When the war came, she became a disc jockey. She was popular with the American troops because of her accent and her sweet, sexy voice, and because she played the latest hits interspersed with crude propaganda—"Why fight for the communists? Why fight for the Jews?" etc.—that gave the men a laugh. But they did not laugh when Sally interspersed her commentary with remarks that sent chills up the spines of her listeners, such as, "Hello to the men of Company E, 56th PIR, 101st Airborne in Ashbourne. Hope you boys enjoyed your passage to London last weekend. Oh, by the way, please tell the town officials that the clock on the church is 3 minutes slow." Axis Sally had her facts straight, and hundreds of GIs and Tommies tell stories similar to Carson's about the clock. 50 years later, the veterans still shake their heads and wonder, "How the hell did she know that?" She knew because the Double Cross system had given her the information. The receipt of so much information from their agents reinforced the German conceit that they had the best set of spies in the world. That added to their conviction that Enigma was the best encoding machine, absolutely unbreakable, and made them think that they had the best intelligence and counterintelligence systems in the world.

Fooling the Germans about Allied capabilities and intentions was the negative side of the espionage struggle. The positive side was gathering information on the German order of battle. Of course, Ultra was making a priceless contribution here. To supplement Ultra, the Allies had two sources that at the end of 1943 they were ready to put into full action. The first was air reconnaissance. With the Luftwaffe fighting on the defensive, mostly inside Germany, the Americans and British were free to fly over France and take all the photographs they wished. But tank and artillery parks could be hidden in woods, field emplacements camouflaged, which brought into play the second Allied source, the French Resistance. Partly to keep the economy producing at full capacity, partly because in France the German occupiers tried to act in a decent fashion in order to make friends, French civilians were not evacuated from the coastal areas. They could see where the Germans were positioning their guns, hiding their tanks, placing their mines. When the time came, they had ways of getting that information over to England. Primarily by working with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a part of the vast British intelligence-gathering covert operations network that was one of the great British accomplishments in the war.

It is far too simple to say that the marriage of British brains and American brawn sealed the fate of Nazi Germany in the West. The British contributed considerable brawn, for one thing, and the Americans contributed considerable brains. Still, there is some truth in it. If the British miracles of World War II included Hobart's Funnies, Mulberries, Ultra, and the Double Cross system, the American miracles included production of war material such as the world had never seen. At the beginning of 1939, American industry was still flat on its back. Factory output was less than 1/2 of capacity. Unemployment was above 20%. 5 years later, unemployment was 1% while factory capacity had doubled, then doubled again and yet again. In 1939, the United States produced 800 military airplanes. When President Franklin Roosevelt called for the production of 4,000 airplanes per month, people thought he was crazy. But in 1942, the United States was producing 4,000 a month, and by the end of 1943, 8,000 per month. There were similar, all but unbelievable, great leaps forward in the production of tanks, ships, landing craft, rifles, and other weapons. And all this took place while the United States put a major effort into the greatest industrial feat to that time, the production of atomic weapons, hardly begun in 1942, completed by mid-1945.

That a cross-channel attack against the Atlantic Wall could even be contemplated was a tribute to what Dwight Eisenhower called "the fury of an aroused democracy." What made D-Day possible was the never-ending flow of weapons from American factories, the Ultra and the Double Cross system, victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, control of the air and sea, British inventiveness, the French Resistance, the creation of citizen armies in the Western Democracies, the persistence and genius of Andrew Higgins and other inventors and entrepreneurs, the cooperation of business, government, and labor in the United States and the United Kingdom, and more. All summed up in the single word: teamwork.

Chapter 3. The Commanders.

The two men had much in common. Born in 1890, Dwight Eisenhower was one year older than Erwin Rommel. They grew up in small towns. Eisenhower in Abilene, Kansas. Rommel in Heidenheim, Swabia. Eisenhower's father was a mechanic, Rommel's a school teacher. Both fathers were classic Germanic parents who imposed a harsh discipline on their sons, enforced by physical punishment. Both boys were avid athletes. Eisenhower's sports were football and baseball. Rommel's cycling, tennis, skating, rowing, and skiing. Although neither family had a military tradition, each boy went off to military school. In 1910, Rommel entered the Royal Officer Cadet School in Danzig, while Eisenhower in 1911 went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

As cadets, neither was an outstanding student, but both were competent, and they shared a proclivity for breaking the rules. Rommel wore a forbidden monocle, while Eisenhower smoked forbidden cigarettes. They were dashingly good-looking in their uniforms. Each courted and won the hand of a vivacious young and much-sought-after beauty. In 1916, Rommel married Lucie Moll. The next year, Eisenhower married Mamie Dowd.

Their careers diverged in World War I. Rommel was a combat leader in France and Italy, highly decorated—Iron Cross, first and second class, and the coveted Pour le Mérite. Eisenhower was stuck in the States as a training commander, a bitter blow to him from which he feared he would never recover. Still, as junior officers, both showed remarkable leadership ability. Teodor von Werner, one of Rommel's platoon leaders, recalled, "When I first saw him in 1915, he was slightly built, almost schoolboyish, inspired by a holy zeal, always eager and anxious to act. In some curious way, his spirit permeated the entire regiment right from the start. At first barely perceptibly to most, but then increasingly dramatically until everybody was inspired by his initiative, his courage, his dazzling acts of gallantry. His men idolized him and had boundless faith in him." Sergeant Major Claude Harris recalled of Eisenhower, "He was a strict disciplinarian, an inborn soldier, but most human, considerate. Despite his youth, he possessed a high understanding of organization. This principle built for him high admiration and loyalty from his officers, perhaps unequaled by few commanding officers." Lieutenant Eder, one of Eisenhower's subordinates, wrote of him, "Our new captain, Eisenhower by name, is, I believe, one of the most efficient and best army officers in the country. He has given us wonderful bayonet drills. He gets the fellows' imaginations worked up and hollers and yells and makes us shout and stomp until we go tearing into the air as if we meant business."

In the interwar years, Rommel remained a line officer, while Eisenhower was a staff officer. Promotions were slow at best, but neither ever thought of any life other than that of a soldier. Even though each was ambitious and could have been a success at any number of civilian occupations, they impressed their superiors. Rommel's regimental commander wrote of him in 1934, "Head and shoulders above the average battalion commander in every respect." That same year, Eisenhower's superior, Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, wrote of him, "This is the best officer in the army. When the next war comes, he should go right to the top."

The war brought both men out of obscurity. Rommel made his reputation first as commander of the Panzer division that led the way through France in 1940. He added enormous luster to it and became a world figure as commander of the Afrika Korps in the eastern North African desert in 1941 and '42. Eisenhower became a world figure in November 1942 in the western North African desert as commander of the Allied forces.

Despite his spectacular victories in the desert after Rommel lost the Battle of El Alamein in the late fall of 1942, he became what Hitler called a "defeatist," what others would call a realist. On November 20, when he learned that of 50 transport planes bringing fuel for his tanks, 45 had been shot down thanks to an Ultra intercept, Rommel went for a walk in the desert with one of his young battalion commanders, Major Baron Hans von Luck. "Luck, that's the end," the major recalled Rommel saying. "We can't even hold Tripolitania, but must fall back on Tunisia. There, in addition, we shall come upon the Americans. Our proud Africa army and the new divisions that have landed in northern Tunisia will be lost." Major Luck protested that they still had a chance. Rommel said no. As Luck recalled the conversation, Rommel said, "Supplies will not be forthcoming. Hitler's HQ has already written off this theater of war. All he requires now is that the German soldier stands or dies. Luck, the war is lost." Despite his misgivings, Rommel fought on.

The Americans coming from the west were waiting for the Afrika Korps in Tunisia. There, in February 1943, Rommel and Eisenhower first clashed in the Battle of Kasserine Pass. Through surprise and audacity, Rommel scored impressive initial gains against the untried and inadequately trained American troops who were led by untried and ill-prepared American generals, including Eisenhower, who was fighting his first real battle. Eisenhower made many mistakes, but recovered from them, used his logistical and firepower superiority effectively, and eventually won the battle.

By this time, Rommel was suffering from high blood pressure. So was Eisenhower. Violent headaches, nervous exhaustion, and rheumatism. Partly to preserve Rommel's health, partly to preserve his reputation, surrender in North Africa was imminent, partly to save himself from daily demands for more supplies for North Africa, Hitler ordered Rommel home. After promoting him to field marshal, he spent most of the remainder of 1943 without a command. Eisenhower spent the remainder of 1943 commanding the assaults on Sicily and Italy. Both attacks were successful, but the campaigns that followed were disappointing. In Sicily, the American 7th Army, five divisions strong, and the British Eighth Army, four divisions strong, took 5 weeks to drive two German divisions from the island. In Italy, progress was excruciatingly slow, and the Germans managed to impose a stalemate far south of Rome.

Despite the disappointments and personal exhaustion, Eisenhower was consistently optimistic. He wrote his wife, "When pressure mounts and strain increases, everyone begins to show the weaknesses in his makeup. It is up to the commander to conceal his, above all to conceal doubt, fear, and distrust." How well he was able to do so was indicated by a member of his staff who wrote from North Africa: "Eisenhower was a living dynamo of energy, good humor, amazing memory for details and amazing courage for the future. He made a study of leadership which in his view was not an art but a skill to be learned. 'The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men,' he declared." He wrote that it was at his first command post in Gibraltar in early November 1942, quote, "that I first realized how inexorably and inescapably strain and tension wear away at the leader's endurance, his judgment, and his confidence. No matter how bad things got, no matter how anxious the staff became, the commander had to preserve optimism in himself and in his command. Without confidence, enthusiasm, and optimism in the command, victory is scarcely obtainable." Eisenhower realized that optimism and pessimism are infectious, and they spread more rapidly from the head downward than in any other direction. He learned that a commander's optimism has a most extraordinary effect upon all with whom he comes in contact. With this clear realization, he said, "I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory, that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow." Eisenhower never talked to

A subordinate the way Raml talked to Major Luke. Of course, Eisenhower had much more to be optimistic about, but there were other striking differences between the two men, based as much on personality as on their positions. Raml was impatient with the difficulties of logistics and administration, while Eisenhower, for almost two decades a staff officer, was a master at both. Raml tended toward arrogance, while Eisenhower carefully cultivated an image of himself as a simple Kansas farm boy trying to do his best. Raml did not like his Italian allies. Indeed, hardly tried to hide his contempt for them. While Eisenhower had a genuine liking for his British allies and did all he could to ensure smooth cooperation with them. Raml often allowed his temper to flare with his staff, as did Eisenhower, and found it hard to delegate authority, an area in which Eisenhower was his exact opposite. Raml was a loner, a solitary genius, a general who led by inspiration and intuition. Eisenhower was a team player, a manager of vast enterprises, a general who led by deciding what was the best plan after careful consultation with his staff and field commanders, then getting everyone behind the plan. On the battlefield, RML was an aggressive risk-taker. Eisenhower a cautious calculator. Raml won battles through brilliant maneuvering. Eisenhower by overwhelming the enemy. As Raml always commanded forces that were inferior in numbers and firepower, his method was appropriate to his situation. As Eisenhower always commanded forces that were superior, so was his. Perhaps they would have acted differently had their situations been reversed, but that can be doubted. The way they exercised leadership fit their personalities.

For all these differences, they had some remarkable similarities. Historian Martin Blumenson has written of Raml, "If he demanded much from his men, he gave no less of himself. He worked hard, fought hard, lived simply, talked easily with his troops, and was devoted to his wife and son." Exactly those same words could be written about Eisenhower. Each general had a strong, happy marriage. Through the war years, each man wrote regularly to his wife. In the letters, they said things they said to no other person, revealed their hopes and apprehensions, complained about the small irritations of life, expressed a constant desire to get back together, to enjoy a quiet domestic life, recalled incidents from the early years of their marriages, and in short used the letterwriting moments as an opportunity to find some peace and quiet in the midst of the war raging all around them. Each general had one son. Manfred Raml joined the Luftvafa as an anti-aircraft gunner in early 1944 immediately after his 15th birthday. John Eisenhower was a cadet at West Point who graduated on June 6th, 1944 and went straight into the army. Each son has had a successful career in a field different from his father's. Manfred as a politician, John as a writer of military history.

Raml and Eisenhower shared another fundamental trait. Each hated what the war made him do. They wanted to build, not destroy, to nurture life, not snuff it out. Destruction appalled them. Construction delighted them. Raml once said that when the war ended, he wanted to go to work as a hydraulic engineer building water-powered generators all across Europe. His son as mayor of Stoutgart sponsored tremendous construction projects in that booming city in the 70s, 80s and 90s. With the St. Lawrence Seaway and the interstate highway system, Eisenhower, the president, became one of the great constructors in American history. Had he lived, Raml might have played a similar role as chancellor of West Germany. What we know about him leads to the thought that he might have been as popular a politician as Eisenhower proved to be.

In late October 1943, General Alfred Yodel, chief of operations of Ober Commando de Vermacht, OKW, suggested to Hitler that Raml be given tactical command in the west under field marshal Gered varett who was commander-in-chief west. Runet was Germany's senior serving field marshal at 69, much too old to command in battle. He was short of energy and short of supplies. So although he had been charged with building an impregnable Atlantic wall, outside of the Padal, little had been done. Yodel's idea was that Raml would provide the badly needed drive to get on with the work. Typically, Hitler temporized. He did not give Raml tactical command for the invasion battle, but he did order him to make an inspection of the Atlantic wall and report back to him. When he gave Raml this news on November 5, Hitler stressed the significance of the assignment, telling him, "When the enemy invades in the west, it will be the moment of decision in this war, and the moment must turn to our advantage. We must ruthlessly extract every ounce of effort from Germany."

Raml spent the middle two weeks of December on his inspection tour, traveling from the North Sea to the Pyrenees Mountains. He was shocked by what he saw. He denounced the Atlantic wall as a farce. Quote, "A figment of Hitler's Vulcan cukukshime cloud cuckoo land, an enormous bluff more for the German people than for the enemy. And the enemy through his agents knows more about it than we do." Drawing on his experience in North Africa, Raml told his chief engineer officer, General Wilhelm Misa, that Allied control of the air would prevent the movement of German reinforcements to the battle area. So, quote, "Our only possible chance will be at the beaches. That's where the enemy is always weakest." As a start on building a genuine Atlantic Wall, he said, "I want anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, anti-parat mines. I want mines to sink ships and mines to sink landing craft. I want some minefields designed so that our infantry can cross them, but no enemy tanks. I want mines that detonate when a wire is tripped. Mines that explode when a wire is cut, mines that can be remote controlled, and mines that will blow up when a beam of light is interrupted." Raml predicted that the Allies would launch their invasion with aerial bombings, naval bombardments, and airborne assaults, followed by seaborn landings. No matter how many millions of mines were laid, he felt that the fixed defenses could only hold up the assault, not turn it back. It would take a rapid counterattack on D-Day itself by mobile infantry and panzer divisions to do that. So those units had to be moved close to the coast to be in position to deliver the decisive counterattack.

On this critical issue, Brunstad disagreed. Brunst wanted to let the allies move inland, then fight the decisive battle in the interior of France, well out of range of the heavy guns of the British and American battleships and cruisers. This fundamental disagreement would plague the German high command right through to D-Day and beyond. Runstead and Raml were offensive-minded generals, as were all Vermach's trained officers, but they were on the defensive now. German generals never learned to like it, although in a tactical sense they became proficient at it, as the Red Army could attest. In the strategic sense, they never learned the plain lesson the Red Army could have taught them had they studied Red Army strategy, that a flexible defense that can give under pressure and strike back when the attacker was overextended best suited the conditions of World War II. Raml's repost that Allied air power would make movement inland difficult, if not impossible, ignored Brunstad's point that by fighting on the beach, the Germans would be putting themselves under the guns of the Allied fleet. Despite their disagreement, Raml and Runstead got on well together, and in any case, they were agreed that the attack would most likely come at the Pad Cal. Runstead recommended that Raml's Army Group B headquarters be given command of the 15th and seventh armies stretching from Holland to the Lir River in southern Britany. Hitler agreed. On January 15, 1944, Raml took up his new command.

At the end of November 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill and their staffs went to Tehran, Iran for a meeting with Stalin. The Soviet leader wanted to know about the second front. Roosevelt assured him that the invasion was definitely on for the spring of 1944. It had a code name selected by Churchill from a list kept by the British chiefs of staff. Overlord. Stalin demanded to know who was in command. Roosevelt replied that the appointment had not yet been made. Stalin said in that case he did not believe the Western Allies were serious about the operation. Roosevelt promised to make the selection in 3 or 4 days. Despite his promise, Roosevelt shrank from the distasteful task of making the decision. His preferred solution, Chief of Staff George Marshall for Overlord, with Eisenhower returning to Washington to become Chief of Staff of the Army, had little to recommend it. It would make Eisenhower Marshall's boss, an absurd situation, and worse, put Eisenhower in a position of giving orders to his old boss, MacArthur, now commander in the Southwest Pacific theater. Nevertheless, Roosevelt desperately wanted to give Marshall his opportunity to command in the field the army he had raised, equipped, and trained. When the entourage arrived in Cairo, Egypt in early December, Roosevelt asked Marshall to express his personal preference, and thus, the president hoped, make the decision for him. But Marshall replied that while he would gladly serve wherever the president told him to, he would not be the judge in his own case.

Roosevelt reluctantly made his decision. As the last meeting at Cairo was breaking up, Roosevelt asked Marshall to write a message to Stalin for him. As Roosevelt dictated, Marshall wrote, "The immediate appointment of General Eisenhower to command of overlord operation has been decided upon." Eisenhower got the most coveted command in the war by default, or so it seemed. In explaining his reasoning afterward, Roosevelt said that he just could not sleep at night with Marshall out of the country. Since the commander had to be an American because the Americans were contributing 3/4s of the total force committed to Overlord, a process of elimination brought it down to Eisenhower. But there were manifold positive reasons for Eisenhower's selection. He had commanded three successful invasions, all of them joint operations involving the British and American air, sea, and land forces. He got on well with the British and they with him. General Montgomery, already selected as commander of the ground forces committed to overlord, said of Eisenhower, "His real strength lies in his human qualities. He has the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him as a magnet attracts the bit of metal. He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once." Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the first sea lord, told Eisenhower it had been a great experience to serve under him in the Mediterranean. He had watched Eisenhower bring together the forces of two nations made up of men with different upbringings, conflicting ideas on staff work, and basic, apparently irreconcilable ideas, and forge them into a team. I do not believe, Cunningham said, that any other man than yourself could have done it. The key word was team. Eisenhower's emphasis on teamwork, his never flagging insistence on working together, was the single most important reason for his selection.

On December 7, 1943, Eisenhower met Roosevelt in Tunis, where the president was stopping on his way back to Washington. Roosevelt was taken off his plane and put in Eisenhower's car. As the automobile began to drive off, the president turned to the general and said almost casually, "Well, like you're going to command overlord." His title was Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force. At Marshall's insistence, Eisenhower returned to the States for a two-week furlow, followed by a series of briefings and meetings. He flew to Britain in mid January, landing in Scotland and taking a train to London. On January 15, 1944, he took up his new command.

When Eisenhower had first visited London in June 1942, there was a suite waiting for him at Clarages, then London's best and most expensive hotel. But the liveried footmen were not to his taste, nor was the ornate lobby, and he found his suite, with its black and gold sitting room and pink bedroom appalling. He moved to a less elegant hotel and had aids secure for him a quiet place in the country where he could relax. It was a small, modest two-bedroom house in Kingston, Siri, called Telegraph Cottage. When Eisenhower returned to London in January 1944, he immediately complained that having overlord headquarters in the city was distracting. Churchill, the American ambassador, and other VIPs felt free to call on him at any hour, and the staff found the temptations of London night life too much to pass up. Within two weeks he moved the headquarters to Bushy Park outside the city. There the staff, with considerable grumbling, moved into tents. AIDS found a nearby mansion in Kingston Hill for his residence. He found it much too grand. He asked about Telegraph Cottage and found that Air Marshal Arthur Tedar, his deputy Supreme Commander, was living there. He persuaded Tedar to switch residences. The Supreme Commander thus had the least pretentious home of any general officer in England.

When Raml went to Paris at the beginning of January 1944 to meet with Runstead, who was living in considerable splendor in the Hotel George V, the city seemed to him like a babble. He wanted to establish his headquarters somewhere else. His naval aid, Vice Admiral Friedri Ruga, said he had just the place. On a trip back to Paris from the coast, Ruga had stopped in at the Chateau Rosh Guuon located on the Sen River in a village of 543 residents some 60 km downstream from Paris. The chateau had been the seat of the Duke's Daros Fukul for centuries. Thomas Jefferson had been a guest there in the late 18th century when he was American ambassador to France and a friend of the most famous of the Dukes, the writer Francois Ruga. Ruga was an avid reader of Lar Ro Fuko's maxims and had called on the duchess to pay his respects. Ruga told Raml the location was perfect, out of Paris, within equal distance of the 7th and 15th army's headquarters, and the chateau was large enough to hold the staff. So the staff, with much grumbling, left Paris to set up headquarters in the sleepy village of Lar Roong.

Eisenhower wanted a dog for a companion. AIDS found him a Scotty puppy. He named it Telk, a shortened form of telegraph cottage. Raml wanted a dog for a companion. AIDS found him a dachshund puppy. The dogs slept in their respective master's bedrooms.

There were more meaningful comparisons. Each general jammed his feet into the stirrups, took hold of the reins, and galloped into action. Where there had been hesitation and drift, there was now conviction and movement. Their resolution was absolute. "I'm going to throw myself into this new job with everything I've got," Raml wrote his wife. "And I'm going to see it turns out a success." Eisenhower said on arrival, "We are approaching a tremendous crisis with stakes incalculable." The generals set a pace that left other men in their early 50s panting and exhausted. They were typically on the road by 6:00 a.m. each day, inspecting, driving, training, preparing their men. They ate on the run, field rations, or a sandwich and a cup of coffee. They did not return to their quarters until well after dark. Eisenhower averaged 4 hours sleep per night. Raml hardly more. One difference: Eisenhower smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, while Raml never smoked.

There were other significant differences. Although both men were full of resolve, the defender could not keep his doubts out of his mind, while the attacker refused to entertain any doubts. On January 17, Raml wrote his wife, "I think we're going to win the battle for the defense of the West for certain, provided we get enough time to set things up." For Eisenhower, there were no provideds, only challenges. On January 23, he told his superiors on the Combined Chiefs of Staff, CCS, quote, "Every obstacle must be overcome, every inconvenience suffered, and every risk run to ensure that our blow is decisive. We cannot afford to fail."

One factor in Raml's pessimism was the confused command structure. For all their prattling about the Führer principle of "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" (one people, one state, one leader), the Nazis ran the armed services as they ran the government by the principle of divide and rule. Hitler deliberately mixed the lines of authority so that no one ever knew precisely who was in command of what. This characteristic of the Führer was exacerbated by the natural and universal tendency of air, sea, and ground forces to indulge in interservice rivalry. So in Raml's case, he did not have control over the Luftwafa in France, nor of the navy, nor of the administrative governors in the occupied territories. He did not have administrative control of the Waffen SS units in France, nor of the paratroop or anti-aircraft units. They belonged to the Luftwafa. The fragmentation of command reached ridiculous proportions. For example, the naval coastal guns along the Channel would remain under naval control as the Allied fleets approached the coast. But the moment Allied troops began to land, command of the coastal batteries would revert to the Wehrmacht. Bad enough for Raml. It was never clear whether he or Runstead would control the battle. Worst of all, Hitler wanted to command himself. Hitler kept control of the Panzer divisions in his hands. They could be committed to the battle only on his orders, and his headquarters was a thousand kilometers from the scene, and those were the divisions Raml was depending on for a first-day counterattack. It was madness.

Eisenhower had no such problems. His command was clear-cut, absolute. Initially, he had not been given command of the Allied Bomber Forces, US 8th Air Force, British Bomber Command. But when he threatened to resign if not allowed to use the bombers as he saw fit, the CCS gave him what he wanted. Every soldier, every airman, every sailor, every unit in the United Kingdom in the spring of 1944 took orders from Eisenhower. Thus did the democracies put the lie to the Nazi claim that democracies are inherently inefficient, dictatorships inherently efficient. Thanks to the clear-cut command authority, a single-minded clarity of purpose pervaded Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, or SHA, in contrast to the situation at OB West and Army Group B.

A factor in creating unity at SHA was Eisenhower's relationship with his immediate subordinates, which contrasted sharply with Raml's command structure. Eisenhower had worked with most of his team in the Mediterranean and had played a role in the selection of most of the army corps and division commanders, while Raml hardly knew the generals commanding his armies, corps, and divisions. This is not to say that Eisenhower liked or even wanted all his subordinates. He did not like General Montgomery and feared that he would be too cautious in battle. But Eisenhower knew that Monty, Britain's only hero thus far in the war, absolutely had to have a major role, and so he was determined to work as effectively with Monty as possible, as he had done in the Mediterranean. He thought the tactical air commander, Air Vice Marshal Sir Trafford Lee Mallerie, too cautious and pessimistic, but he determined to get the most out of him. He liked and admired his deputy, Air Marshal Tedar, enormously. So too the naval commander-in-chief, Admiral Bertram Ramsay. Eisenhower had worked closely and well with Tedar and Ramsay in the Mediterranean. His principal American ground commander, General Omar N. Bradley, was a West Point classmate, an old and close friend, a man whose judgments Eisenhower trusted implicitly. His chief of staff, General Walter B. Smith, had been with him since mid-1942. Eisenhower characterized Smith as the perfect chief of staff, a crutch to a one-legged man. "I wish I had a dozen like him," Eisenhower told a friend. "If I did, I would simply buy a fishing rod and write home every week about my wonderful accomplishments in winning the war."

Raml had never worked with his army commanders, General Hans van Salmouth of the 15th and General Friedrich Dalman of the 7th. With Salmouth, he would have shouting arguments. Dolman had little field experience, was in poor health, and did not much like Raml. Neither Salmouth nor Dolman were ardent Nazis. General Baron Leo Guier von Shrepenborg commanded the Panzer group in the west. A veteran of the Eastern Front, Shrepenborg was horrified at Raml's proposal to use the tanks close up. In his view, that was to misuse the tanks as fixed artillery. Their controversy was never resolved, but it hardly mattered as Raml did not command the Panzer group. Raml fired his first chief of staff. The successor was General Hans Spidel, a Suabian from the Verinberg district who had fought with Raml in World War I and had served with him in the 20s. Spidel was an active plotter against Hitler, more politically adroit and aware than his chief. Eventually, he was able to persuade Raml to support the conspiracy against Hitler, which was growing through the early months of 1944.

Here was a profound difference between Raml and Eisenhower. Eisenhower believed with all his heart in the cause he was fighting for. To him, the invasion was a crusade designed to end the Nazi occupation of Europe and destroy the scourge of Nazism forever. He hated the Nazis and all they represented. Although a patriot, Raml was no Nazi, even though at times he had been a toady to Hitler. To Raml, the coming battle would be fought against an enemy he never hated and indeed respected. He approached that battle with professional competence rather than the zeal of a crusader.

Chapter 4. Where and When.

In March 1943, shortly after the battle of Casarine Pass and nearly two months before the final victory in Tunisia, the CCS appointed British Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan to the post of Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander Designate and charged him with coordinating and driving forward the plans for cross-channel operations this year and next year. Within a month, the CCS decided that no such operation could be mounted in 1943. The final directive issued in late April ordered Morgan to begin planning for a full-scale assault against the continent in 1944 as early as possible. It would be hard to imagine a broader directive: where could be anywhere between Holland and Brest, as early as possible could be anytime between March and September 1944. Morgan put together a staff of British and American officers with Major General Ray Barker of the US Army as his deputy, called the group COSSAC (COSSAC after the initial letters of his title) and went to work. COSSAC operated under one particularly severe constraint. The number of landing craft allotted to the operation limited the planners to a three-division assault. Coupled with the presumption that the Germans were certain to improve the Atlantic wall, that limitation removed all temptation to plan for widely dispersed attacks. From the first, COSSAC committed the Allies to the principle of concentration of force. There would be one invasion site, the divisions landing side by side.

Where? There were many requirements. The site had to be within range of Allied fighter planes based in the United Kingdom. There had to be at least one major port close at hand that could be taken from the landside and put into operation as soon as possible. There was no thought of landing where the Atlantic wall was complete, that is around the French ports. The disastrous Dieppe raid by the Canadians in August 1942 convinced COSSAC that a direct frontal assault against a well-defended port could not succeed. Therefore, the beaches selected had to be suitable for prolonged unloading operations directly from the LSTs and have exits for vehicles and adequate road nets behind them for rapid massive deployment inland. Those were tactical requirements. Most of them could be met easily on the French Mediterranean coast or in Brittany. But the strategic requirement was to land as close to the ultimate objective, the Rhine-Ruhr region, as possible, for the obvious reason that the farther away from the objective the landing took place, the greater would be the distance to be covered and the longer the supply line. Holland and Belgium had excellent ports, but they were too close to Germany and the Luftwafa bases. The area inland too easily flooded, too well defended. The Pas-de-Calais coast in northernmost France was ideal in every way but one. It was the obvious place to come ashore, and thus it was there that the Germans had built the strongest part of the Atlantic wall.

Le Havre in upper Normandy, on the north bank of the mouth of the Seine, was an excellent port, but it had numerous disadvantages. To take it, the Allies would have to land on both sides of the river. The two forces could not be mutually supporting, which would allow the Germans to defeat them in detail. East of Le Havre, the coastline is dominated by cliffs with only a few small beaches that had even fewer exits. With Brest as its main port and with smaller but good ports along its north coast, Brittany had advantages, but they were overshadowed by the distance from the United Kingdom and from the objective. Cherbourg was closer to both, which made the Cotentin Peninsula tempting. But the west coast of the Cotentin was open to storms coming in off the Atlantic and was guarded by the German-held Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey. The east coast of the Cotentin was low-lying ground, easily flooded. Further, the narrow base of the Cotentin would make it relatively easy for the Germans to seal off the beachhead. A process of elimination brought the choice down to the Calvados coast of Normandy. The port of Caen, although small, could be captured quickly, probably in the initial assault. There was an airfield just outside Caen called Carpiquet that could be captured by airborne assault on the first day. The capture of Caen would cut the railroad and highway from Paris to Cherbourg, thus simultaneously isolating the Cotentin Peninsula and putting the invaders in a position to threaten Paris. There were other advantages. The mouth of the Orne River was the boundary between the Wehrmacht's 15th Army to the northeast and Seventh Army to the southwest. And boundaries between armies are inherently areas of weakness. The attack would come against the Seventh Army, which had only one Panzer division, the 21st, to the 15th Army's five. Calvados was 150 km or so from the major southern British ports of Southampton and Portsmouth. The Cotentin Peninsula protected it from the worst effects of Atlantic storms. From the mouth of the Orne River westward, there were 30 km of open sand beaches, for the most part, with only a gradual rise inland, and there was a good road net inland. From Aroman westward for another 10 km, the bluffs were almost vertical, but beginning at Colleville, the bluffs receded from the coastline for a 10 km stretch. Although the bluff behind was as much as 40 to 50 m high, it was not vertical, and the beach was open, sandy, and 200 or so meters wide at low tide, 10 m at high tide. There were four draws with roads running down to that beach, making for suitable exits.

Already, the British had collected an enormous amount of intelligence on the French coast. Shortly after Dunkirk, the BBC had broadcast an appeal for postcards gathered over the years from families who had taken pre-war vacations in France. 30,000 arrived in the first post and eventually 10 million pictures were collected. Throughout 1942 and 1943, aerial reconnaissance photographs had been gathered. They were put together into panoramic photos. The French Resistance supplied information on beach obstacles, strong points, enemy units, and the like. Information on tides, currents, and topography could be dug out of old guidebooks. So, a great deal was known about the Calvados coast, but not the answer to a key question: Would the beaches west of the mouth of the Orne River support DUWKs, tanks, bulldozers, and trucks? There was reason to fear that they would not because British geographers and geologists reported that there had been considerable erosion of the coastline over the past two centuries. The original port at Calvados, the old Roman port, had been 2 km out from the 20th-century shoreline. French Resistance people managed to smuggle four volumes of geological maps out of Paris. One in Latin, done by the Romans who had surveyed their entire empire for a report on fuel sources. The survey indicated that the Romans had gathered peat from the extensive reserves on the Calvados coast. If there were boggy peat fields under a thin layer of sand on the current coast, it would not hold tanks and trucks. COSSAC had to know. The only way to find out was to obtain samples.

Number one Combined Operations Pilotage and Beach Reconnaissance Party, consisting of Major Logan Scott-Bowden and Sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith, set off on New Year's Eve 1943 in a submarine to take samples. They figured the Germans would be celebrating that night. Lieutenant Commander Nigel Wilott of Combined Operations was in command with a submarine skipper and an engineer. Major Scott-Bowden and Sergeant Ogden-Smith swam ashore carrying pistols, daggers, wrist compasses, watches, waterproof flashlights, and a dozen 12-inch tubes. They came in on a rising tide at the seaside village of Luc-sur-Mer on the beach, later given the code name Sword. They could hear singing from the German garrison. They crawled to shore, walked inland a bit, went flat when the beam of the lighthouse swept over the beach, walked some more. They made sure to stay below the high-water mark so that their tracks would be wiped out by the tide before morning. They stuck their tubes into the sand, gathering samples and noting the location of each on underwater writing tablets they wore on their arms. "The trouble really started," Scott-Bowden recalled, "when we had filled our tubes." He recounted, "The breakers were quite heavy and we were positively bogged and tattered up with all our kit and we had a go at getting out to sea and were flung back." They took a breather, tried again, were flung back a second time. Scott-Bowden continued, "So we went as far out in the water as we could. There were smaller waves coming over us and watched the rhythm of these breakers until we could time it. The third attempt, having timed it right, we got out, but we got separated a bit, and we swam like hell to make sure we weren't going to be pitched back in again. We didn't quite lose contact." Suddenly, Ogden-Smith started yelling. "I was thinking that he'd probably got a cramp or something," Scott-Bowden related. "But when I got close enough to him, all he was yelling was, 'Happy New Year.' He's a good chap, a marvelous fellow." I swore at him, then wished him a happy new year, too.

The samples showed that the sand could bear the necessary weight. The Combined Operations Pilotage Parties, COPPs, or COPS, did a series of reconnaissances all along the Calvados coast that winter at beaches named Juno and Gold. They sometimes set the submarine on the sea bottom at periscope depth to take bearings and photographs. Scott-Bowden explained, "We could see things which weren't visible from air photographs, as we were looking from a worm's-eye view. It was quite a tricky operation because if anybody moves inadvertently in a submarine, and you're bottomed at periscope height on a wavy beach, you can upset the trim and put the bottom off, put the stern up, or anything. So, one had to be very careful indeed." On one occasion, the submarine passed right underneath a French fishing troller with a German spotter in the bow. Scott-Bowden was able to watch workmen on the beach using two-wheeled carts pulled by horses. He and Ogden-Smith made other swims, including one at the beach between Colleville and Vierville. By this time, late January, codenamed Omaha, and did other reconnaissance missions.

At the end of January, Scott-Bowden was called to COSSAC headquarters at Norfolk House, St. James Square, by then taken over by SHA, to report to Admiral Ramsay, General Bradley, General Smith, four other generals, and five more admirals. Admiral George Creasy, Ramsay's chief of staff, drew the curtains and said, "Now describe your reconnaissance." Scott-Bowden looked at the map. It was too big, too general. He said, "Well, I'm afraid, sir, it's going to be very difficult to give much detail from this." "Oh," Creasy replied, "we've got another map down the other end. It might be better." So, the major followed him across the large room, looked at the map hanging there, and indicated it would do. Creasy called out, "Come on, chaps, bring your chairs down here." As the generals and admirals picked up their chairs and came over, the 23-year-old Scott-Bowden thought, "Oh dear, oh dear, I'm getting off to a bad start." "I'd never been confronted with such a galaxy before," he recalled. "So I stumbled through my account. Then they started shooting questions for getting on to an hour. The Navy were not quite so interested in what I had to say, but General Bradley was. He wanted me to say whether Sherman tanks could go up this track or that track. I thought of the two-wheeled carts and said it must be possible and so on." When the brass ran out of questions, Scott-Bowden offered an opinion. "If you don't mind my saying so, sir," he told Bradley, "I think that your beach, with all these tremendous impediments, with guns defilading the beaches from here and there and all over, it's going to be a very tough proposition indeed." Bradley patted Scott-Bowden on the shoulder and said, "Yes, I know, my boy. I know."

When Eisenhower and his team arrived in London to take over from COSSAC, they studied Morgan's plan and accepted his logic, except that everyone involved, Montgomery, Eisenhower, Smith, Bradley, and the others, insisted that the invasion front had to be widened to a five-division assault. They demanded and got an allotment of additional landing craft. Extension to the east toward Le Havre was not advisable because it would bring the assaulting troops directly under the Le Havre coastal guns, among the most formidable in the Atlantic wall. Morgan had ruled out extension to the west on the southeast corner of the Cotentin Peninsula because the Germans were flooding the hinterland there. Eisenhower overruled Morgan. He decided to extend to the west. He would deal with the problem of flooded areas behind the coastline by dropping the American airborne divisions inland and giving them the task of seizing the raised roads that crossed the flooded areas so that the seaborn assault troops could use the roads to move inland. The US 4th Infantry Division would lead the way on the Cotentin, where the beach took the code name Utah. The US 29th and 1st Infantry Divisions would land at the beach on the Calvados coast, codenamed Omaha. The British and Canadians would land on the beaches stretching westward from the mouth of the Orne, codenamed from east to west: Sword (British 3rd Division plus British and French commandos), Juno (Canadian 3rd and Gold British 50th). The British Sixth Airborne would land between the Orne and Dives rivers to protect the left flank.

COSSAC had been tempted to use only one army, either British or American, in the initial assault. That would make things very much simpler and eliminate what is always the weakest spot in any Allied line, the boundary between the forces of the two nationalities. But it was politically impossible. As General Barker had put it in July 1943, "It can be accepted as an absolute certainty that the Prime Minister would not for one moment allow the assault to be made wholly by American troops. The same is true with relation to the US government. We must be practical about this and face facts." So it was settled. The invasion would come against the Calvados coast with the British on the left and the Americans at Omaha, with an extension to the right onto the Cotentin coast at Utah. The great disadvantage of the Calvados coast was that landing there would put the Allied armies ashore southwest of the Seine River, thus putting between them and their objective the major river barriers of the Seine and the Somme. But disadvantages could be made into advantages. In this case, COSSAC believed that the bridges over the Seine could be destroyed in pre-invasion bombardments, thus making it difficult for the Wehrmacht to bring Panzer divisions from the Pas-de-Calais across the river and into the battle. The greatest advantages of Calvados were that surprise could be achieved there and that the Germans might be fooled into believing the landing was a feint designed to draw their armor away from the Pas-de-Calais to the west of the Seine. The basic reason for surprise was that by going to Calvados, the Allies would be moving south from England, away from the area the Germans absolutely had to defend, the Rhine-Ruhr, rather than east from England on the straight line toward their objective. It might be possible to persuade the Germans on an ongoing post-invasion basis that Calvados was a feint by mounting a dummy operation aimed at the Pas-de-Calais. COSSAC recognized that it could not reverse the process. That is, the Allies would not be able to attack the Pas-de-Calais and mount a dummy operation aimed at Calvados that would be believable. If the attack came ashore at Pas-de-Calais, the Germans would not keep troops in Lower Normandy for fear of their being cut off. Instead, they would bring their forces from Lower Normandy to Pas-de-Calais and into the battle. But they might be persuaded to keep troops in the Pas-de-Calais following a landing on the Calvados coast, as the men and tanks in the Pas-de-Calais would still stand between the Allied forces and Germany. In short, geography would help to pin down the German armor in the Pas-de-Calais.

To reinforce the German need to keep their Panzer armies northeast of the Seine, COSSAC proposed, and Eisenhower after he took command mounted, an elaborate deception plan. The code name was Fortitude. The objectives were to fool Hitler and his generals into thinking that the attack was coming or it was not, and into believing that the real thing was a feint. Each objective required convincing the Germans that the Allied invasion force was about twice as powerful as it actually was. Fortitude was a joint venture with British and American teams working together. It made full use of the Double Cross System, Ultra, dummy armies, fake radio traffic, and elaborate security precautions. Fortitude had many elements designed to make the Germans think the attack might come on the Biscay coast or in the Marseilles region or even in the Balkans. The most important parts were Fortitude North, which set up Norway as a target, the site of Hitler's U-boat bases, essential to his only remaining offensive operations, and thus an area he was extremely sensitive about, and Fortitude South, with the Pas-de-Calais as the target.

To get the Germans to look toward Norway, the Allies first had to convince them that they had enough resources for a diversion or secondary attack. This was doubly difficult because of the acute shortage of landing craft. Right up to D-Day, it was touch-and-go as to whether there would be enough craft to carry six divisions ashore at Normandy as planned. Therefore, the Allies had to create fictitious divisions and landing craft on a grand scale. This was done chiefly with the Double Cross System, the talents of the American and British movie industries, and radio signals. The British Fourth Army, for example, stationed in Scotland and scheduled to invade Norway in mid-July, existed only on the airwaves. Early in 1944, some two dozen overage British officers went to northernmost Scotland where they spent the next months exchanging radio messages. They filled the air with an exact duplicate of the wireless traffic that accompanies the assembly of a real army, communicating in low-level and thus easily broken cipher. Together, the messages created an impression of corps and division headquarters scattered all across Scotland. Of course, the messages could not read, "We will invade Norway in mid-May." The Germans would never believe such an obvious subterfuge. Instead, they read, "88th Division requests 1,800 pairs of krampons, 1,800 pairs of ski bindings," or "7th Corps requests the promised demonstrators in the Billgi method of climbing rock faces," or "2nd Corps Car Company requires handbooks on engine functioning in low temperatures and high altitudes." There was no 80th Division, no Seventh Corps, no Second Corps Car Company. But the Germans did not know that, and they would come to their own conclusion as to what was going on in Scotland.

Fooling the Germans was not easy. They were experts at radio deception. At the beginning of 1942, they had mounted one of the more elaborate and successful deception operations of World War II, Operation Kreml. Its objective had been to make the Red Army think that the main German offensive for 1942 would take place on the Moscow front, not at Stalingrad. As historian Earl Ziem writes, "Kreml was a paper operation, an out-and-out deception, but it had the substance to make it a masterpiece of that highly speculative form of military art." The Germans used radio traffic to manufacture dummy armies that supposedly threatened Moscow. In most of its essentials, Kreml was similar to Fortitude. Thanks to the Double Cross System, however, the Allies had one advantage over Kreml. The turned German spies in the United Kingdom, whose reliability had been proved to the AB over the past three years, were put to work. They sent encoded radio messages to the AB in Hamburg describing heavy train traffic in Scotland, new division patches seen on the streets of Edinburgh, and rumors among the troops about going to Norway. In addition, wooden twin-engine bombers began to appear on Scottish airfields. British commandos made some raids on the coast of Norway, pinpointing radar sites, picking up soil samples, in general, trying to look like a pre-invasion force. The payoff was spectacular. By late spring, Hitler had 13 army divisions in Norway along with 90,000 naval and 60,000 Luftwafa personnel. These were hardly high-quality troops, but still they could have filled in the trenches along the Atlantic wall in France. In late May, Raml persuaded Hitler to move five infantry divisions from Norway to France. They had started to load up and move out when the Abwehr passed on to Hitler another set of intercepted messages about the threat to Norway. He canceled the movement order. To paraphrase Churchill, never in the history of warfare have so many been immobilized by so few.

Fortitude South was larger and more elaborate. It was based on the First US Army Group (FUSAG), stationed in and around Dover and threatening the Pas-de-Calais. It included radio traffic, inadequately camouflaged dummy landing craft in the ports of Ramsgate, Dover, and Hastings, fields full of papier-mâché and rubber tanks, and the full use of the Double Cross System. The spies reported intense activity around Dover, including construction, troop movements, increased train traffic, and the like. They said that the phony oil dock at Dover, built by stagehands from the film industries, was open and operating. The capstone to Fortitude South was Eisenhower's selection of Lieutenant General George S. Patton to command FUSAG. The Germans thought Patton the best commander in the Allied camp and expected him to lead the assault. Eisenhower, who was saving Patton for the exploitation phase of the coming campaign, used Patton's reputation and visibility to strengthen Fortitude South. The spies reported his arrival in England and his movements. So did the British papers available to the Germans in a day or two via Portugal and Spain. In addition, German agents in Dublin had the London papers the day they were printed and could send on hot items by radio. FUSAG radio signals told the Germans of Patton's comings and goings and showed that he had taken a firm grip on his new command. FUSAG contained real as well as notional divisions, corps, and armies. The FUSAG order of battle included the US Third Army, which was real but still mostly in the States; the British Fourth Army, which was imaginary; and the Canadian First Army, which was real and based in England. There were, in addition, supposedly 50 follow-up divisions in the United States, organized as the US 14th Army, which was notional, awaiting shipment to the Pas-de-Calais after FUSAG established its beachhead. Many of the divisions in the 14th Army were real and were actually assigned to Bradley's US First Army in Southwest England.

Fortitude's success was measured by the German estimate of Allied strength. By the end of May, the Germans believed that the Allied force included 89 divisions when in fact the number was 47. The Germans thought the Allies had sufficient landing craft to bring 20 divisions ashore in the first wave when they would be lucky to manage six. Partly because they credited the Allies with so much strength, partly because it made good military sense, the Germans believed the real invasion would be preceded or followed by diversionary attacks and feints. It was more important for the Germans not to know that Calvados was the site than it was for them to think that the Pas-de-Calais and Norway was.

"The success or failure of coming operations depends upon whether the enemy can obtain advanced information of an accurate nature," Eisenhower declared in a February 23rd, 1944 memorandum. To ensure security, the Allies went to great lengths. In February, Eisenhower asked Churchill to ban all visitor traffic to the coastal areas in southern England, where the base for the attack was being built and where training exercises were underway, for fear that there might be an undiscovered spy among the visitors. Churchill said no. He could not go so far in upsetting people's lives. General Morgan growled that Churchill's response was all politics and warned, "If we fail, there won't be any more politics." Still, the British government would not act. But when Montgomery said he wanted visitors banned from his training areas, Eisenhower sent an eloquent plea to the War Cabinet. He warned that it "would go hard with our consciences if we were to feel in later years that by neglecting any security precaution, we had compromised the success of these vital operations or needlessly squandered men's lives." Churchill gave in. Visitors were banned. Eisenhower also persuaded a reluctant War Cabinet to impose a ban on privileged diplomatic communications from the United Kingdom. Eisenhower said he regarded the diplomatic pouches as "the gravest risk to the security of our operations and to the lives of our sailors, soldiers, and airmen." When the government imposed the ban on April 17, it did not apply to the United States or the Soviet Union. Foreign governments protested vigorously. This gave Hitler a useful clue to the timing of Overlord. He remarked in early May that "The English have taken measures that they can sustain for only 6 to 8 weeks." With the British government cooperating so admirably, Eisenhower could not do less. In April, Major General Henry Miller, chief supply officer of the US

9th Air Force and a West Point classmate of Eisenhower's, went to a cocktail party at Clarage's hotel. He began talking freely, complaining about his difficulties in getting supplies, but adding that his problems would end after D-Day, which he declared would be before June 15. When challenged on the date, he offered to take bets.

Eisenhower learned of the indiscretion the next morning and acted immediately. He ordered Miller reduced to his permanent rank of colonel and sent him back to the States, the ultimate disgrace for a career soldier. Miller protested. Eisenhower insisted and back he went. Miller retired shortly thereafter.

There was another flap in May when a US Navy officer got drunk at a party and revealed details of impending operations, including areas, lift, strength, and dates. Eisenhower wrote, "Marshall, I get so angry at the occurrence of such needless and additional hazards that I could cheerfully shoot the offender myself. This following so closely upon the Miller case is almost enough to give one the shakes." That officer too was sent back to the states to check on how well fortitude and security were working.

Sha relied on ultra intercepts. Each week the British Joint Intelligence Committee issued a summary of German appreciation of Allied intentions in the West. one or two-page overviews of where, when, and in what strength the Germans expected the attack. Week after week, the summaries gave Sha exactly the news it hoped to receive, that the Germans were anticipating an attack on Norway, diversions in the south of France, Normandy, and the Bay of Bisque, and the main assault with 20 or more divisions against the Padal. The Germans poured more concrete to make more fortifications in the Padal than anywhere else. They stationed more troops there, backed up by the Panzer divisions. They concentrated their minds in the channel off the coast of the Padal. They grossly exaggerated the resources available to Sha. They were, in short, badly fooled, but not completely.

The mobility the Allied Expeditionary Force enjoyed thanks to command of the sea and air forced the Germans to regard almost any suitable beach as a possible invasion site. At a March 19 conference at Bereskaden, Hitler put the problem to his senior commanders. "Obviously, an Anglo-American invasion in the West is going to come. Just how and where, nobody knows, and it isn't possible to speculate." But speculate he did. As the German ability to penetrate fortitude was non-existent and their ability to penetrate the AEF's security measures was limited, a few reconnaissance planes did get through. They did spot the buildup of shipping in the southern ports of Southampton and Portsmouth. But as Hitler pointed out, such intelligence was almost useless. "You can't take shipping concentrations at face value for some kind of clue that their choice has fallen on any particular sector of our long western front. from Norway down to the Bay of Bisque," he said, "Because such concentrations can always be moved or transferred at any time under cover of bad visibility, and they will obviously be used to dup us."

That did not stop him from guessing. Indeed, he had to guess. "The most suitable landing areas," he said, "and hence those that are in most danger are the two west coast peninsulas of Sherborg and Breast. They offer very tempting possibilities." It was a bad guess. Admiral Teodor Kank, commanding navy group west, guessed that the invasion would come between Bolognia and Sherborg, either in the Kotanten or at the mouth of the or the mouth of the Sen or the mouth of the S, which was a little better, but as Bolognia to Sherborg included most of the canal coust, hardly pinpoint accuracy. Raml's guess was the Padal. He spent more of his time there than anywhere else on his long front, inspecting, proddding, building defenses. At the beginning of May, he began to look slightly to the southwest, telling Lieutenant General Ghard Vanerin, commanding the crack 116th Panzer Division of the 15th Army, "We expect the invasion on either side of the Som Estuary." But all the evidence available to the Germans continued to indicate the pad delay. The pattern of Allied Expeditionary Force air activity, for example, reinforced fortitude. There were twice as many AEF reconnaissance flights over 15th Army's sector as there were over seventh armies. There were almost 10 times as many air raids on targets northeast of the Sen as in lower Normandy. So Raml continued to look to the Pad. He was confident that if the AEF invaded there, he could defeat the assault.

On April 27, German Schnellboots, abbreviated Esboot and called Eboats by the Allies for enemy boat, penetrated an Allied shipping concentration for a practice exercise cenamed Tiger and sank two LSTs. For the AEF, the loss of more than 700 men was a major blow. For the Germans, the information that the Allies were practicing at Slapton Sands on the south coast of England was potentially useful. Hitler saw this at once. Although he had never been to England or to the Katantan or Calvados, he had the most amazing ability to store topographical information in his mind. In this instance, he noticed the similarity between Slapton Sands and the Katan Beach, which was why the AEF was carrying out practice exercises at Sleptton Sands and began to insist strongly on the need to reinforce the defense in Lower Normandy. Within the severe limits in which the Vermach in the West was required to operate, this was done. On May 29, the weekly AEF intelligence summary included a chilling sentence. "The recent trend of movement of German land forces towards the Sherborg area tends to support the view that the Laav Sherborg area is regarded as a likely and perhaps even the main point of assault." Had the Germans penetrated the secret of overlord. Only the event would tell. Meanwhile, the good news was that the main Panzer forces remained northeast of the Sen with 15th Army.

When Morgan's directive declared as soon as possible. March was out. Even if the AEF got a couple of good days to cross and land, the probability of a spring storm smashing against the Calvados coast during the establishment and buildup phase made March too risky. April 1, the target date suggested by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the JCS, was no good because of uncertain and unpredictable channel weather, and because the spring thaw in Russia would make it impossible for the Red Army to launch a coordinated offensive. Morgan therefore picked May 1. When Eisenhower took command, he moved the target date back to June 1 in order to have the use of an extra month's production of LSTs, LCVPs, and other landing craft. The target date meant the AEF would go on the first suitable day after June 1.

A number of requirements went into the selection of D-Day, the chief of which concerned tides and moon conditions. The admirals wanted to cross the channel in daylight to avoid confusion, to control the thousands of craft involved, and to maximize the effectiveness of the fire support. The Air Force generals wanted daylight before the first waves went ashore in order to maximize the effectiveness of their bombing runs. Both had to give way to the Army general's insistence on crossing at night in order to preserve surprise up to the last minute and landing right after first light in order to have a full day to get established. Raml anticipated that the attack would come at high tide, as that would give the first waves the shortest open beach to cross, but that only showed how little he knew about amphibious operations. From the beginning, the AEF was determined to land on a rising tide so that the landing craft could run right onto the beach, then float free on the rise. The AEF needed at least a half moon the night of the crossing, enough to provide some illumination for the fleet and for the paratroopers who would be dropping into France some 5 hours before h hour. A rising tide at first light following a night with a suitable moon occurred during two periods in June, the 5th, 6th, and 7th, and again on the 19th and 20th. Eisenhower picked June 5 for D-Day. The southeast coast of the Kotanten and the Calvados coast of lower Normandy would be the place. June 5 would be the date. H hour would be dawn.

Raml had no inkling that the AEF suffered from a shortage of landing craft. He thought just the opposite. Further, the double cross spies were feeding him false information. His guess as to the date, therefore, was badly off. In April, he thought it would come in the first or third week of May. On May 6, he wrote his wife Lucy, "I'm looking forward with the utmost confidence to the battle. It may be on May 15. It may not be until the end of the month." On May 15, he wrote, "Lucy, midmay already, and still nothing doing. I think it's going to be a few more weeks yet." On June 1, he consulted moon and tide tables and declared there were no good invasion tides. high tide at dawn in his view until after June 20. The next day he wrote Lucy, "There is still no sign that the invasion is imminent." Hitler was no better. He indulged himself in the hope that there would never be an invasion. On April 6th, he declared, "I can't help feeling that the whole thing's a shameless charade." More realistically, he went on to complain, "We've no real way of finding out what they're really up to over there."

"We cannot afford to fail," Eisenhower had said. The Allied Expeditionary Force acted on that basis. There was no contingency planning. In a general ground offensive mounted in a specific area over a broad front, World War II attackers had some flexibility in their plans. If the initial assault did not force a breakthrough, follow-up units could be diverted to the flanks or held back to try again another day at another place. Overlord, however, was all or nothing. Hitler and Raml were absolutely right in assuming that if the Vermacht could deny the AEF a foothold, the Allies would not be able to mount another offensive in 1944. The size of the gamble on Overlord concentrated the minds of the men at SHA wonderfully, but it also increased the workload and raised tension to nearly unbearable levels. "If I could give you an exact diary account of the past week," Eisenhower wrote my in late January, "you'd get some idea of what a flea on a hot griddle really does." Toward the end of May, he wrote, "I seem to live on a network of high tension wires."

Chapter 5. Utilizing assets.

In World War I, the side undertaking an offensive always had to worry about an enemy counteroffensive almost anywhere along the line from the Swiss border to the Channel Coast. Adequate forces had to be maintained all along that line. The same was true of the Germans in Western Europe in World War II. Shae had an enormous advantage here. There was no possibility of a German offensive against the United Kingdom. So the AEF was free to concentrate all its resources on the point of attack.

Before 1918, when the first bombing squadrons came into being and began initial, although still very small, operations, there was no physical way a World War I attacking force could reach behind enemy lines to disrupt the movement of the enemy's men and supplies to the battle area. It could do so only through faints and deceptions. Schae made full use of faints and deceptions, but in addition, the AEF had three means to prevent or at least disrupt the movement of German reserves and reinforcements to the lodgement area, isolating Lower Normandy, and turning it into a sort of strategic island. The first three ways involved the airborne divisions, the French resistance, and the strategic air force. Because they were new and untried, there was great controversy over how to utilize them effectively. But in the end, agreement was reached and the job was done.

The initial Kasac plan had called for using the British 6th Airborne Division in and around Khan to take the city and the airfield at Karpik. That was a bold plan, too bold for Montgomery, who insisted on using the division in what was essentially a defensive role, dropping it into the area between the Dev and Ors isolate Sword Beach. Bradley, meanwhile, decided to use the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions behind German lines in the Kotantan to prevent the Germans from launching local counterattacks against Utah Beach and to seize the exits from that beach so that the fourth infantry division could move inland.

When General Marshall saw these plans, he was upset. At the beginning of the war, Marshall had held great hopes for the paratroops as a new element in warfare, but his hopes had not been realized. In September 1943, for example, a plan to drop the 82nd Airborne on airfields around Rome had been abandoned at the last minute as too risky, and instead the division had been used for tactical support of the Salerno beach head. Early in 1944, Marshall told Eisenhower that the failure to use paratroops in a strategic role had been a severe disappointment to him. He thought the AEF could do much more to exploit its command of the air and the elite airborne divisions that had been built at such cost. Marshall felt there had been a lack of conception caused by a peacemeal approach with each commander grabbing at a piece to assist his particular phase of the operation. If he had been given command of overlord, Marshall said, he would have insisted on a single large airborne operation. "Even to the extent that should the British be in opposition, I would carry it out exclusively with American troops."

Marshall suggested to Eisenhower that the AEF use the airborne south of Evu, some 100 plus kilome inland from Khan. There were four good airfields near Evu that could be captured quickly so the lightly armed airborne troops could be reinforced. "This plan appeals to me," Marshall declared, "because I feel that it is a true vertical envelopment, and would create such a strategic threat to the Germans that it would call for a major revision of their defensive plans. It would be a complete surprise, would directly threaten both the crossings of the Sen River and Paris, and would serve as a rallying point for the French resistance." The only drawback Marshall could see was that "we have never done anything like this before, and frankly, that reaction makes me tired."

Eisenhower hated to disagree with Marshall and almost never did so. Thus, his reply was long and defensive. He said that for more than a year, one of his favorite subjects for contemplation was getting ahead of the enemy in some important method of operation, and the strategic use of airborne troops was an obvious possibility. Nevertheless, on this one, Marshall was wrong. First, Eisenhower told his boss he had to have the airborne on the flank at Sword and behind German lines at Utah in order to get ashore. Second, and more important, an airborne force well inland would not be self-contained, would lack mobility, and would therefore be destroyed. The Germans had shown time and again in the war that they did not fear a strategic threat of envelopment. Using the road nets of Western Europe, they could concentrate immense firepower against an isolated garrison and defeat it in detail. Enzio was an example. An inland airborne force cut off from all supply except what could be brought in by air without tanks or trucks, immobile and inadequately armed would be annihilated. Eisenhower told Marshall that far from being a strategic threat to the Germans, airborne troops at Evo would just be wasted. "I instinctively dislike ever to uphold the conservative as opposed to the bold," Eisenhower concluded. But he insisted on using the 6th, 82nd, and 101st Airborne Divisions as Montgomery and Bradley wanted to use them to keep German reinforcements away from the invasion beaches.

When Eisenhower took command, the Luftvafa had been driven back into Germany to fight a defensive action, giving the allies command of the air over France. Britain and America had put a tremendous effort into building their airfleets, including fighters, but most of all medium and heavy bombers. The expense was staggering. One reason for the shortage of landing craft, for example, was the amount of steel, engines, and production capacity in general that had gone into building bombers. In addition, the air forces got first call on personnel at the expense of the armies where junior officer and non-com leadership suffered as a result. Building the air armadas, in short, had been a gamble in technology and technique. The Armadas gave the allies command of the air and thousands of planes to exploit it. Those two facts gave the AEF a great asset unique in the history of war. Was it worth the effort? That was a question no longer worth asking. The asset existed, but it left an outstanding question. How to use it?

There was no dispute about how to use it on D-Day. Everyone agreed that just before H hour and through D-Day, every Allied bomber that could fly would participate in the attack on the Normandy coastal defenses. But there was intense dispute over the role of the bombers in the two months preceding the invasion. General Carl Spatz of the US 8th Air Force and Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris of RAF Bomber Command were wedded to the theory that the bombers by themselves could win the war. General JFM Whitley, a British officer who had served as Eisenhower's deputy chief of staff in the Mediterranean, had gone to the Churchill Roosevelt CCS conference in Quebec in September 1943. Likely reported that there was much discussion in Quebec about Overlord. His impression was that within the RAF and US Army Air Forces, AAF, commanded by General Henry Hap Arnold, there were powerful groups who, in his words, hoped Overlord would meet with every success, but who were sorry that they could not give direct assistance because, of course, they were more than fully occupied on the really important war against Germany.

Reduced to its essentials, the dispute between the airmen and the ground soldiers was simply put. Spatz and Harris believed that the further behind the front lines their bombers operated, that is within Germany itself, attacking strategic targets, the more effective they could be. Eisenhower and the SHA staff believed that the closer to the front lines the bombers operated, that is within France, attacking tactical targets, the more they could contribute to Overlord. There was in addition a dispute between the bomber commanders. Although they agreed that overlord was not really necessary, Harris and Spatz had their own strategies. Harris felt RAF bomber command could bring about a German capitulation through terror bombing of German cities. Spatz felt the eighth air force could bring about a German surrender through the selective destruction of certain key industries, especially oil and synthetic fuel production facilities. The army commanders, most of all Eisenhower, believed that the only way to bring about a German surrender was to overrun Germany on the ground, and that to do so required, first of all, a successful overlord. They further believed that only air superiority made overlord feasible.

As so often happens with the military, the dispute was fought out not over the straightforward question of targeting, but rather over the more complex question of organization and command structure. Here, things were well muddled. Although Eisenhower was the supreme commander, in fact, he commanded only those forces assigned to him by the CCS, and these did not include the eighth air force or bomber command. The only air power SHA possessed was the British Tactical Air Force and the American Tactical Air Force, 9th Air Force, under the immediate command of Air Vice Marshal Sir Trafford Lee Mallerie. Lee Mallerie's experience had been solely with fighters. He was a cautious, pessimistic sort. Harris and Spatz neither trusted nor liked him. They refused to serve under him or SHA.

In January, Eisenhower argued with Marshall and Arnold about command. He insisted that Harris and Spatz should be under Schae for a period of several weeks before the invasion so that Schae could pick the targets. He told Arnold he had "strong views on the subject." To his surprise and relief, Arnold said he agreed that the bombers, in his words, "should be placed under your direct command for the impending operations."

Eisenhower intended to use the bombers to paralyze the French railway system. He believed it could be done and that once accomplished it would hamper German movement of reinforcements to lower Normandy. The program called the transportation plan would take time. It could not be accomplished with a 2 or three-day blitz on the eve of overlord. The strategic air force commanders were offering to participate in an interdiction program that would begin shortly before D-Day and would concentrate on line cutting, strafing, bridge breaking, and the destruction of a few railroad focal points. The transportation plan called for a prolonged attack on railards, sidings, stations, sheds, repair shops, roundhouses, turntables, signal systems, switches, locomotives, and rolling stock.

Forest Pogue, the official historian of SHA, writes that in getting their proposal adopted, Eisenhower, Tedar, and Lee Mallerie were vigorously opposed on both strategic and political grounds by most of the bomber commanders, by members of the 21st Army Group staff, and by the Prime Minister and most of the war cabinet. Harris and Spatz led the protest. Harris argued that bomber command built for night raids and area bombing could not achieve the accuracy required to hit marshalling yards, repair facilities, bridges, and other pinpoint railroad targets. Tedar, the strongest advocate at SHA of the transportation plan, indeed the man who had convinced Eisenhower of its necessity, even accused Harris of juggling figures to prove that his bombers could not hit the proposed targets. Spatz insisted that the continuing success of operations against German oil refineries would assure the greatest support for Overlord. He convinced Arnold to change his mind and support him. Spatz argued that his oil plan would in the long run immobilize the Germans much more effectively than the transportation plan. Eisenhower replied that the oil plan would have no immediate effect. The Germans had accumulated stocks of oil and gasoline in France in scattered and camouflaged depots. Only when those supplies were used up, that is well after D-Day, would a stoppage of oil production affect German military operations in France. Spatz shrugged off this point by saying that the transportation plan would be only of slight help in isolating the battlefield, while the oil plan would be of major help later. This was the crux of the matter. Spatz assumed that it would be easy to get ashore and stay there. Eisenhower did not. The oil plan would also allow 8th Air Force to retain its independence from Sha, a point on which Spatz insisted because of Lee Mallerie. Eisenhower was embarrassed by Spatz's open hostility to Lee Mallerie and tried to reassure Spatz that Tedar would personally supervise the air campaign. Further, as Spatz noted in his diary, Eisenhower tried subtly to sell Lee Mallerie to me, saying that he felt that maybe proper credit had not been given to the man's intelligence. I told him that my views had not and would not change.

Unable to persuade the air commanders, Eisenhower turned to his superiors. He convinced Churchill that Tedar could act as the aviation lobe of Eisenhower's brain, thus bypassing Lee Mallerie so far as the bombers were concerned. But he could not persuade Churchill on the key point. The prime minister ruled that, in his words, "there can be no question of handing over the British bomber command as a whole to the Supreme Commander and his deputy." Further, Churchill insisted that SHA airplanes should be subject to CCS approval. Eisenhower objected to submitting his plans to the CCS and demurred at anything short of complete operation control of the whole of Bomber Command and the American Strategic Forces. He felt so strongly that he told Churchill unless he was given command of the bombers, he would simply have to go home. This extreme threat, all but unique in the history of war, it evidently never occurred to Raml to tell Hitler that unless he got control of the panzers, he would go home, brought the British around. The war cabinet drew up a directive that gave Eisenhower supervision of the bombers. Marshall suggested the word be changed to command. The British refused, leaving Eisenhower, in his word, astonished. On March 22nd, he wrote in his diary, "If a satisfactory answer is not reached, I am going to take drastic action and inform the CCS that unless the matter is settled at once, I will request relief from this command." That same morning, the British chiefs were meeting. When Eisenhower heard the results of their deliberations, he added the postcript to his diary entry. He said, "I was told the word direction was acceptable. Amen."

Tedar prepared a list of more than 70 railroad targets in France and Belgium for the obvious reason that it would give away the invasion site. The bombing could not be concentrated around Lower Normandy. On April 3, it went before the war cabinet for approval. The British had previously forbidden air attacks on occupied countries if there was a risk of high civilian casualties, and now they drew back from the transportation plan for that reason. The argument for concentration on these particular targets, Churchill wrote Eisenhower, "is very nicely balanced on military grounds." He added that the cabinet took "rather a grave and on the whole an adverse view of the proposal." Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was especially adamant. He pointed out that after the war, Britain would have to live in a Europe that was already looking to Russia more than he would wish. He did not want the French people to regard the British and Americans with hatred. Eisenhower replied that he was convinced the transportation plan was necessary to the success of Overlord and he said, "Unless this could be proved to be an erroneous conclusion, I do not see how we can fail to proceed with the program." He reminded Churchill that the French people were slaves and that they would benefit most from Overlord. "We must never forget," Eisenhower added in his strongest argument, "that one of the fundamental factors leading to the decision for undertaking Overlord was the conviction that our overpowering air force would make feasible an operation which might otherwise be considered extremely hazardous, if not foolhardy." He said it would be sheer folly, to refuse approval to the transportation plan.

Churchill put Eisenhower's views before the war cabinet. He spoke eloquently of Eisenhower's ownerous responsibilities. "Care should be taken," he said, "not to add unnecessarily to his burdens." Still, he complained that he had never realized that air power would assume so cruel and remorseless a form. The transportation plan, he feared, "will smear the good name of the Royal Air Forces across the world." Churchill wanted the French consulted. Eisenhower's chief of staff, General Walter B. Smith then talked to General Pierre Joseph Koig, the representative of General Charles de Gaul's Alers'sbased French Committee of National Liberation. "To my surprise," Smith reported, "Koig takes a much more cold-blooded view than we do." His remark was, "This is war, and it must be expected that people will be killed. We would take the anticipated loss to be rid of the Germans."

Churchill was almost, but not quite, beaten down. He decided to take the issue to Roosevelt and thus forced the Americans to take their share of the responsibility for approval of the plan. He told Roosevelt of the war cabinet's anxiety about these French slaughters, and of the British doubts as to whether almost as good military results could not be produced by other methods. Roosevelt must decide. Roosevelt replied that the military considerations must dominate. The transportation plan had won.

Schae put the bombers to work on the French railway system. By D-Day, the Allies had dropped 76,000 tons of bombs, 76 kilotons, or about 7 times the explosive power of the atomic bomb used against Hiroshima, on railway targets. The Sen River bridges west of Paris were virtually destroyed. Based on an index of 100 for January and February 1944, railway traffic dropped from 69 in midmay to 38 by D-Day. But by no means was this accomplished exclusively by the bombers. The French resistance played a major role. There was some French resentment, although not so much as Eden feared. Casualties were lighter than the pessimists in the war cabinet had predicted.

On June 3 in weekly intelligence summary number 11, SHA G2 assessed the results to date. The report began, "The enemy controlled railway system in the West has undergone and continues to undergo an attack such as no transport system has hitherto experienced, either in intensity or duration." Some 1,700 locomotives and 25,000 wagons had been destroyed or put out of action, which sounded impressive, but which constituted only 13% and 8% respectively of the pre-rade figures. Worse, the Germans were able to replace rolling stock by taking it from French civilian needs. As the summary noted, "the prime sufferers have been the French people. French traffic has invariably been curtailed at the expense of German requirements and an already greatly strangled French economy has experienced further setbacks. Consequently, the losses are not such that the enemy will be prevented from moving up supplies and reinforcements as required, although such movement will be less efficiently operated."

Beyond rolling stock, the transportation plan was directed against depots, turntables, and bridges. Some 58,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on 90 targets, inflicting great damage. But unfortunately, the Germans were adept at repairs. In many cases, the report stated, "the damage has been cleared and the lines reopened within 24 hours and in many more within 48 hours." More encouraging was the report on railway bridges across the Sen from Paris to the sea. Eight of the nine had been destroyed. Of the nine highway bridges attacked, seven had been destroyed or partially damaged. On the eve of D-Day, the SHA G2 conclusion was ominous. "Evidence as to the effect on German troop movements remains unsatisfactory, but the effects till now do not appear to have been very serious." That judgment cast doubts on the wisdom of the transportation plan. The bomber commanders were never convinced that it was wise or effective. After the war, the official US Army Air Force historians wrote, "Long after D-Day, there remained the sobering question as to whether the results of the plan were commensurate with the cost and air effort and the ruin inflicted on French and Belgian cities." But those in the best position to know, the German generals, were strong in their belief that the various air attacks were ruinous to their counteroffensive plans.

The plane that did the most damage was the B-26 Marauder developed by the Glennel Martin Company. A medium bomber, it flew at low altitudes and could be extremely accurate. So, it was the principal attacker of the railroad bridges and rail yards. After the war, Raml's chief of staff, Hansidel, said destruction of railways was making regulated railway supply impossible as early as midmay 1944. Lack of fuel paralyzed all movement. The Sin bridges below Paris and the Lir bridges below Orlon were destroyed from the air before 6th June 1944. Spidle's statement is inscribed on the B-26 memorial at the USAF Air Museum in Dayton, Ohio. In a 1946 interview, General Yodel said that the complete construction of the coastal defenses was not yet finished and never would have been because the necessary sand and cement could no longer be brought up. Gordon Harrison, the official historian of the cross channel attack, concluded that by D-Day, the transportation system in France was on the point of total collapse, and this was to prove critical in the battle for Normandy.

There was more involved in the disruption of the transportation system than just the bombers. The French resistance played a part that was perhaps as important and that certainly was more efficient per pound of explosive. The resistance had grown from practically nothing in the dark days of 1940 to a considerable force by early 1944. Like all successful clandestine operations, its organization was complex and fragmented, divided regionally and politically. Its acknowledged head was Charles de Gaul, but he was in alers, far from the scene, and incapable of exercising anything like rigid control. Liaison was provided by the special operations executive SOE established by the British in late 1940. The first agents parachuted into France in the spring of 1941 and the American Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, modeled on SOE. OSS began operating in 1943.

The resistance had many significant weaknesses. It was always subject to German penetration. It was inadequately armed, in many cases, totally unarmed. Lines of authority tended to be unclear. Communication within units was poor, between units almost non-existent. It was mistrusted by the bulk of the population, as most French people wanted no trouble with the Germans and feared the consequences of stirring them up. The resistance had assets, including bravery, a willingness to make personal sacrifices for the goal of liberation, and fierce patriotism. Most of all, it was behind enemy lines. It could provide intelligence of the most accurate kind. I saw it with my own eyes. It could sabotage rail lines, bridges, and the like. And it could provide an underground army in the German rear areas that might be able to delay the movement of German forces toward the battle.

With regard to intelligence gathering, the resistance was the best possible source on the Atlantic wall because most of that wall was built by Frenchmen. Mrs. Clement Marie of Porto Bbasan in Calvarados was one of many who in June 1942 was forced by the Germans to work on the construction of a major fortress at Ponta Duh Hook just west of what came to be called Omaha Beach. There was no heavy equipment. Everything was done by shovel, by hand cart, by horsepower and manpower. The fortification was dug 23 ft deep into the ground. All the works, tunnels, trenches, and so on were covered. Bunkers above soil level were also covered with top soil and sod. Marie helped to pile earth on the sides of the bunkers so that it gently sloped from the top to natural ground level. Marie also worked at Quanta de la Pers, the western edge of Omaha, building radar sites for the German criggs marine, the Navy. He recalled the time in early 1944 when it was announced that Raml was coming to inspect. The Germans gave the French workers an order to do their caps when the field marshall appeared. Very quickly, he says, the word was spread, and when Raml came, there was not a single man in Portoan wearing a cap or hat, and consequently no obligation to salute. Naturally, Raml did not notice such a small act of defiance. Anyway, he needed more workers to make up for the absence of heavy equipment.

In many ways, the Atlantic Wall was constructed in exactly the same way as the Great Wall of China by human labor. The big difference was that the Germans had concrete and steel reinforcing rods. "Get the French country folk to help erect the obstacles," Raml told the division near La Hav. "Pay them well and promptly for it. point out that the enemy is least likely to invade where the most obstacles have been erected. The French farmers will be only too glad to line their purses." Naturally, the Germans never did pay enough. They established an exchange rate between the mark and the franc that was ruinous to the French. Nor did they feed the workers well enough to win their loyalty. So, the workers complained and grumbled among themselves, and a few of them passed information along to active resistance figures. S SOE had many ingenious ways of getting the information back to London, including the use of carrier pigeons dropped from airplanes.

Andre Rouge Ron was a resistance member in Normandy. In a memoir, he described this curious wedding of an ancient method of communication with the most modern technology as follows. "I receive a visit from Ernest Gazdon. He is very happy since he found in his pasture a carrier pigeon that had been parachuted in. This is one of many pigeons discovered. This method of British information services works remarkably well. The birds are dropped at night in a cage attached to a small parachute. They are found the next morning by the user of the pasture or orchard. The equipment to accomplish this communication is meticulously put together. A packet of food for the bird, parchment envelope containing all the necessary instructions, and two molded tubes for sending messages. The tubes are attached to the ring encircling the pigeon's leg. There is some very thin special paper, a pencil, and instructions on how to feed and return the bird. A questionnaire about occupying troops, their moves, their morale, to say nothing of the defensive works." Ruener was head of an escape section that rescued many young American pilots and crews shot down over France. He used the pigeons to send messages saying that the men, last names only, no rank, were safe. He said, "We did not want to say anything else, fearing the pigeon might be shot down on its way."

The Germans built a four gun battery on the cliff just west of Port Ambassan. Big fortifications, big guns, 155 mm, beautifully camouflaged with nets and dirt embankments. They could not be seen from the air. The farmer on whose land they were built was furious because he could not graze his cattle or grow crops on the field. He paced off the distances between the bunkers, from the bunkers to the observation post on the very edge of the cliff, from the cliff to the bunkers, and so on. He had a blind son, eight or nine years old. Like many blind people, the boy had a fabulous memory. Because he was blind, the Germans paid little attention to him. One day in early 1944, the boy hitched a ride to Bayou. There, he managed to get in touch with Andre Heints, an 18-year-old in the resistance. The boy gave Heints his information. He sent it on to England via his little homemade radio transmitter hidden in a Campbell soup can, today on display in the Battle of Normandy Museum in Khan. Thus, the British Navy on D-Day had the exact coordinates of the bunkers.

At the little village of Benovil on the bank of the Kong Canal, where the bridge crossed the waterway, Madame Teresa Gondri had a cafe. The Germans who bought wine and snacks there did not know that she spoke German. She passed on what she picked up from their conversations to Madame Vion, the head of the local maternity hospital and of the local resistance, who passed it on to her superiors in the resistance in Kong, who passed it on to SOE agents in the area, who got it back to England via radio or small airplane. Thus, Major John Howard of the Ox and Bucks, Sixth Airborne Division, who was training his company for a coup operation against the bridge on D-Day, knew a great deal about the enemy, including the location of the button that would set off the demolition charge to blow the bridge to prevent capture.

The 56th Parachute Infantry Regiment PIR of the 101st Airborne had as one of its D-Day objectives the village of Smarid Dum. Thanks to the resistance, Lieutenant Richard Winters of Company E of the 56th knew among other things that the local German commander was seeing the local teacher and that he took his dog for a walk every day at precisely 1700 hours. Morgillom Merkar of Bayo owned a bicycle shop. He had been a professional bicycle racer before the war. In an interview he related, "I could under the occupation renew my license and under the pretext of training I was able to travel about without difficulty. Thanks to the compulsory labor policy, he was able to gather from workers specific intelligence on defense construction, on infrastructures, on armaments, on troop locations, on beach obstacles and the like." He said, "My responsible departmental person was Mashure Meslin, alias Kodat Morven, head of the subdivision. Every week at number 259 St. Jean Street in Khan. I met with him so I could hand over to him requested information we had obtained." Thanks to the information gathered and passed on from the French resistance, supplemented and enhanced by ultra intercepts and aerial reconnaissance, the AEF undoubtedly had better information on the enemy dispositions and strength than any attacking force in history.

Sabotage was another resistance specialty. In the period 1941 to 1943, it consisted of sporadic, uncoordinated pin pricks against war industries, railroads, canals, and telephone and telegraph systems. It was not of such a scale as to cause the Germans much worry. But beginning in early 1944, after SOE came under SHA control, railway sabotage was greatly accelerated and tied into the transportation plan. A resistor with a stick of dynamite who knew where to place it on a bridge could be much more effective than a B7 dropping a 500 lb bomb from 15,000 ft on the same target. The man on the spot could also time the explosion so as to take out a locomotive when the bridge went up. In the first 3 months of 1944, the resistance destroyed 88 locomotives compared to 387 damaged by air attack. After the transportation plan went into effect, the figures were reversed. In April and May, the bombers put 1,437 locomotives out of action compared to only 292 credited to the resistance.

The British hoped for more direct support from the resistance. A committee consisting of representatives from S SOE and the army considered the possibility of a national uprising. The resistance could make a strategic contribution to overlord if it were backed by a general strike or by arising on a national scale. Calmer heads prevailed. A French officer pointed out that the notion of a mass uprising posited the existence of universal courage whereas courage inspired only a few men as it has always inspired the few rather than the many. And the idea of mass uprisings implied battling against modern tanks with the stonethrowing catapults of Caesar's time. Sha was more realistic. It wanted to use resistance groups to prepare demolitions to blow main trunk lines leading into the lodgement area beginning on D-Day. Plan it was called. By May, SOE was able to report to SHA that 571 railroad targets were ready for demolition. Plan Ver was supplemented by Plan Tour, a project for blocking enemy road movements through guerilla action, which meant in practice firing Sten and Bren guns into German columns, then running off into the woods, hoping the Germans would follow.

As the Germans were regularly picking up resistance members and torturing them to get information, the resistance could not be told in advance the date of D-Day. Therefore, arrangements had to be made to order the execution of sabotage plans by code messages broadcast over the BBC. Leaders were told to listen to BBC broadcasts on the 1st, 2nd, 15th, and 16th of each month. If the invasion was imminent, they would hear a preparatory code message. They would then remain on alert to listen for a confirmatory message B to be followed within 48 hours by a code launching the units into action. Each region had a different code in Bayou. The action code for Msure Merkar's unit was "it is hot in Suez" followed by "the dice are on the carpet." He recalled the day he heard them over the BBC in Bio in my cellar. "The radio was on. At 6:30 p.m., the first message said, 'It is hot in Suez. It is hot in Suez.' twice. Then a definite silence. Then, 'The dice are on the carpet. The dice are on the carpet.' Twice again, as well as other messages which didn't concern us. Stunned by listening to these messages, an instant of emotion invaded me. But quickly enough, I came to myself, and after having turned off the radio and climbing the steps from the cellar four at a time, I informed in the first place my wife of what I had heard. I then took my bicycle and went to contact my principal responsible people of an imminent landing. The night was going to be long."

She considered limiting the sabotage activity on D-Day to Lower Normandy. A strong argument for doing so was to wait in other regions until the destruction of bridges would be immediately helpful to the AEF. This applied especially to the south of France where another landing was scheduled for mid- August. Further, if the resistance went into action all across France, it would expose its members to identification and capture by the Germans, who meanwhile would have time to repair the damage. Those arguments gave way to the view that it was preferable to obtain the maximum amount of chaos behind enemy lines at the moment of landing. And anyway, Shea figured that it would be impossible to keep the various resistance groups quiet after the news of D-Day broke.

Anthony Brooks, a 20-year-old Englishman who had grown up in French-speaking Switzerland and had been studying in France when the war began, was in 1944 an S SOE agent in southern France near Tulus. He had been receiving airdrops of explosives which he distributed to his resistance people who hid them in cesspools or even on locomotives when the drivers were resistance. "We would hide the explosives on an electric locomotive," he recalled. "And no German soldier is going to open up a thing that says 16,000 volts on it and it has got a key. Some went into laboratory water tanks. They would hold up to 20 kilos of explosive." Like most S so S SOE agents, Brooks found that his recruits were impatient, eager for action. So he said we had to let them blow up trains every now and again, even if it was too soon and we had no orders. Every now and again we derailed the wrong one, and we had some bad press, you might say. And one train we derailed was a Swiss Red Cross train. And there were four enormous vans full of eggs. And people were trying to scoop the yolks out of the river to make omelets and cursing us all the while.

In April 1944, the second SS Panzer Division, the Dash Reich, moved into a town near Tulus named Montaban. It was refitting after hard service on the Eastern front, receiving brand new tanks, Tigers, the biggest and best Germany could produce. The tanks were gas guzzlers. Tigers weighed 63 tons and got 1/2 mile to the gallon. They were subject to mechanical problems. They had only steel tracks which wore out quickly on highway travel. Therefore, the Germans always moved the Tigers for any distance on railroad cars. The tigers were concentrated in Montaba and kept under heavy guard. The railway cars they rode on were hidden in village railway sightings round Montaban, each concealed by a couple of worn out French trucks dumped on top. These transporter cars were unguarded. Brooks put his sub agents to work. One of them was a beautiful young 16-year-old girl named Teddy, who he said

was the daughter of the local boss who ran a garage, and she had long ringlets, and her mother was always smacking her and telling her not to play with him.

All through May, Teddy and her boyfriend, her 14-year-old sister, and others sied out after dark by bicycle to the cars, where they siphoned off all the axle oil, replacing it with an abrasive powder parachuted in by SOE. Brooks told Teddy and the others to throw away the oil, but he said, "Of course, the French said it was ludicrous to throw away this beautiful green oil, so they salvaged it as it was real highquality motor oil that fetched a fine price on the black market."

On D-Day, the Das Reich got orders to move out for Normandy. The Germans loaded their Tigers onto the railway cars. Every car seized up before they reached Montalban. The damage was so extensive to the cars axles that they could not be repaired. It was a week before the division found alternative cars in Perigo 100 km away. Bad luck for the tanks tracks and fuel supply. The resistance harassed the division from Montaba to Perigo. As a consequence, the Das Reich expected by Raml in Normandy by D + 3 or 4 actually arrived on D + 17. Furthermore, as Brookke notes with a certain satisfaction, no train went north of Montaba after the night of the 5th of June until it went out flying the French flag or the Union Jack.

The contributions of the paratroops on the night before D-Day and of the bombers and the resistance in the weeks before D-Day cannot be appraised with precision. But it is clear that while Eisenhower never had to worry about his rear, Raml always did.

Chapter 6. Planning and preparing.

According to General Eisenhower, before the battle is joined, plans are everything. As supreme commander, he directed a planning operation that seemed infinite in scope, was complex, almost beyond description, and on which the outcome of the war depended. He insisted on and got an all-out effort from staff officers at SHA down through 21st Army Group Montgomery's headquarters, British Second and American First Armies, the core divisions, battalions, and companies, and all levels of staff at the various Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard commands. As a result, Overlord was the most thoroughly planned amphibious operation in history.

When Eisenhower visited Bradley's headquarters, he told the officers, "This operation is not being planned with any alternatives. This operation is planned as a victory, and that's the way it's going to be. We're going down there and we're throwing everything we have into it, and we're going to make it a success."

In a 1964 interview with Walter Kankite, Eisenhower repeated those words. He spoke with intensity, frowning a bit, giving some reminder of the power of his voice, body posture, attitude, and aura of certainty and command that he had displayed in 1944. Then he visibly relaxed, let that shy grin creep up the corner of his mouth, and added, "But there's nothing certain in war. Unless you can put a battalion against a squad, nothing is certain."

The job of the planners was to make certain of as much as possible. To do that, they needed to be in constant touch with troops in the field, monitoring the results of exercises and training maneuvers to decide what would work, what might work, and what wouldn't work. They had to put all that information together with the input from the other services to come up with a comprehensive plan that everyone agreed to. The process started at the top and worked down. Eisenhower decided where and when.

To deal with the objection that adding the Kotanten, Utah Beach, would be too costly because of the flooded areas behind the beach. Eisenhower's chief of staff, General Smith, suggested using airborne divisions to seize the causeways leading inland over the flooded areas. There was intense opposition from the airborne commanders, but Eisenhower ruled for Smith. By late January, Eisenhower's basic decisions were in place. On February 25, Bradley's headquarters had an outline plan drawn up. British Second Army had one completed a month later. The process moved down to core, division, regiment, battalion levels. General Freddy Duenand, Montgomery's chief of staff, recalled that right along the chain of command, nothing was ever proposed that didn't meet with heated opposition. If core wanted it, division didn't. If the army proposed something and the navy agreed, the air force was sure to object. Dwin Gandant reported that it was Monty's 21st Army Group staff that made the decision to send the DD tanks, the swimming tanks in on the first wave with naval guns firing over their heads. He recalled, "Our reasons for using DD tanks in the van were to achieve an element of surprise which might be effective in demoralizing the enemy. Also, they would provide rallying points for the infantry."

At the higher levels, the temptation to reach down to solve lower echelons problems was great, but it was overcome. General Dwinand explained, "At first, we all tried to discover a school solution to the composition of the assault waves, guns, engineers, tanks, infantry, in what order, where, etc. But after the first training rehearsal, we decided the notion of a single formula was nonsense. And we let the particular assault section solve its own problem. Its own problem depended on the nature of the defensive work facing the particular core, division, regiment, battalion. Each had a different problem depending on the shape of the beach it would assault, and even more on Raml's defensive works."

But Raml could not plan, only prepare. Planning made possible a concentration of energy and force. But it required a knowledge of where and when that Raml did not have. Preparation for an attack anywhere required a dispersal of energy and force. On every beach that was remotely suitable for an amphibious landing, Ramble built defenses. Offshore, the Germans first line of defense consisted of mines anchored in the channel. Not enough to satisfy Raml, but enough to cause a major problem for the Allied navies. Onshore, the defenses differed to suit local terrain conditions, but the beach obstacles on the tidal flat between the high and low water marks were similar on Omaha, Utah, and the British beaches.

The tidal flat obstacles began with so-called Belgian gates, which were gate-like structures built of iron frames 10 ft high. These sat in belts running parallel to the coastline about 150 m out from the high water line. Teller mines, anti-tank mines carrying 12 lb of TNT, were attached to the structures, or old French artillery shells brought in from the Majinino line, pointed out to sea and primed to fire. Admiral Ruga had no faith in landmines and artillery shells stuck underwater as they had no waterproofing. But the marine mines he preferred were not available in sufficient quantity. Next, at about 100 m out from the high water mark, a band of heavy logs were driven into the water at an angle pointed seawward with teller mines lashed to the tips of some of the logs. At about 70 m from shore, the main belt of obstacles featured hedgehogs. three or four steel rails cut in two-meter lengths and welded together at their centers that could rip out the bottom of any landing craft.

Raml bestowed France like a colossus. He could and did flood the countryside by damning rivers or letting in the sea. He could and did uproot and evacuate French civilians, tear down vacation homes and buildings to give his artillery a better field of fire, cut down forests to get trees he needed for his beach obstacles. The obstacles forced the Allies to choose between risking their landing craft on a full tide or coming in on a rising tide and thus giving the German soldiers an opportunity to cut down the first waves of attackers as they struggled through the tidal flat and up to the first feature on the beach, which at Omaha was a bank of shingle, small smooth rocks, or a line of sand dunes at Utah that could provide some cover.

To make full use of the killing zone, Raml had his static divisions, many of whose battalions were units. In some divisions, the men were 50% Polish or Russian, right up close. At each of the beach exits at Omaha, for example, riflemen and machine gunners were in fire trenches on the lower part of the bluff, halfway up the bluff, and at the top. Scattered along the slopes of the draws and on the plateau above were hundreds of tows, circular concrete lined holes big enough for a mortar team, a machine gun, or even the turret of a tank. The tows were connected by underground tunnels. Beside and around them, the Germans had fixed fortifications of reinforced concrete looking straight down onto the beach. In them, as in the Tow Brooks, there were panoramic sketches of the ground features in front of them, giving range and deflection for specific targets. In other words, they were zeroed in.

Back down on Omaha Beach proper, the Germans had 12 strong points built to provide infelad fire the length of the beach. Big guns, 88 mm and even 105 mm, were put into casemates with embraasers that opened down the beach, not out to sea. The casemates had an extra wing on the seawward side to hide the muzzle blast from the Allied navies. Up on the bluff, there were eight concrete casemates and four open field positions for 75 mm to 88 mm guns, all cited for both grazing and plunging fire on every yard of the beach. The guns came from all over the Nazi Empire. French 75s, big Russian guns, 105s from Czechoslovakia, others from Poland. The big casemates could take any shell the Allied navies could throw against them and still protect the guns. To protect the casemates from the real threat, an infantry assault with grenades and flamethrowers, the Germans surrounded them with landmines and barbed wire.

So the GI hitting the beach in the first wave at Omaha would have to get through the minefields in the channel without his LST blowing up, then get from the ship to shore in a Higgins boat taking fire from inland batteries, then work his way through an obstaclestudded tidal flat of some 150 m crisscrossed by machine gun and rifle fire, with big shells whistling by and mortars exploding all around, to find his first protection behind the shingle. There he would be caught in a triple crossfire. Machine guns and heavy artillery from the sides, small arms from the front, mortars coming down from above. If the GI was not killed getting off his landing craft or crossing the tidal flat, if by some miracle he made it to the shingle, Raml wanted him wounded before he got there. If not wounded, paralyzed by fear. To keep that GI huddled there, Raml had more mines laid.

Between the shingle and the bluffs, there was a shelf of beach flat, in some places marshy. Raml loaded in the barbed wire, but relied mainly on mines. They were irregularly placed throughout the shelf, and of all types. Some were simple charges of TNT, covered by rock and set off by trip wires. Smines were devices of the devil. They jumped up when activated, then exploded at waste height. There were others. Altogether, Raml laid 6.5 million mines and wanted many millions more. His goal was 11 million anti-personnel mines. Behind the mines and a stride the draws were the anti-tank ditches 2 m or so deep and cement anti-tank or anti-truck barriers across the exit roads. All this was backed up by big guns at Pont Duhok where there was to be a six gun battery of 155s capable of firing into the mass of shipping off both Omaha and Utah beaches. Another at some Marou looking right down on Utah, another at Long Sumere covering gold and so on.

Behind Omaha, once one got inland from the plateau, there were no fixed defenses of any kind. Mainly this reflected the impossibility of Raml's building a genuine Atlantic wall that had depth to it. The length was too great, the resources insufficient. Partly it reflected Raml's all or nothing attitude about the battle for the beaches. But as every GI who fought in Normandy can testify, in the country of hedros and stonewalled villages, farmhouses, barns, and outuildings, fixed fortifications were not needed. The hedro country of Normandy was ideal for fighting a defensive struggle with the weapons of the midentth century.

At Gold, Juno, and Sword, the beach obstacles were extensive, but the dunes were not so high as at Utah, and instead of bluffs behind the seaw wall, there were French vacation homes. Some of these were torn down to give a better field of fire. Some were used as strong points. There were casemates, large and small, scattered along the coast. As elsewhere, there was no depth to the defense. At Utah, the beach obstacles were in place, but there was no bluff behind the beach, only sand dunes behind the 1 to 3t seaw wall. So the extensive trench system manned by infantry was absent. But the Germans had dug into the dunes a series of towbrooks with tank turrets mounted on them connected by underground trenches along with casemates holding heavy artillery, thousands of miles of barbed wire and thousands of mines. The strong point at Utah was a block house at Ladalane. It had an 88mm cannon, two 50mm anti-tank guns, two 75mm cannon, a 16-in howitzer, five grenade launching mortars, two flamethrowers, three heavy machine guns, one under an armored turret, and eight Goliaths. These were miniature tanks, hardly bigger than a child's wagon, but they were stuffed with explosives and had a radio guidance mechanism.

Behind the dunes at Utah, a road ran parallel to the beach. Four exit roads, or causeways as the Americans called them, ran inland perpendicular to the beach. The causeways crossed the flooded fields created by damming up local rivers. Behind the flooded fields, Raml had troops stationed in every village along with field artillery preited on the causeways. The troops came from the 709th and 716th divisions consisting of the Georgian battalion and the 642nd battalion. They had almost no organic motor transport. These inland units were used to build defenses locally, consisting of sticking logs into the ground in any open field suitable for a glider landing. The allies had used gliders extensively, if not very successfully, in Sicily in July 1943, and Raml assumed they would again. To prevent it, he devised Raml's asparagus, 10-ft logs driven into the ground to be topped with shells attached by interconnecting wires. The shells didn't arrive from Paris until after D-Day, but the logs by themselves were enough to bust up a wooden glider going better than 100 kmh.

For deception purposes, Raml built casemates that held no guns. Admiral Ruga recalled, "Dummy batteries attracted a great many Allied air attacks and helped the real guns to survive. The Americans were making extensive use of rubber blown up tanks and other heavy vehicles as part of Operation Fortitude. But the Germans did not develop such devices. Instead, Raml poured more concrete and planted more asparagus."

Colonel General Gayor Vansen Stern, commander of the 19th Army in southern France, thought Raml mad. He commented on Raml's fixed defenses. "As no man in his senses would put his head on an anvil over which the smith's hammer is swung, so no general should mass his troops at the point where the enemy is certain to bring the first powerful blow of his superior material." To which Raml replied, "Our friends from the east cannot imagine what they're in for here. It's not a matter of fanatical hordes to be driven forward in masses against our line with no regard for casualties and little recourse to tactical craft. Here we are facing an enemy who applies all his native intelligence to the use of his many technical resources, who spares no expenditure of material, and whose every operation goes its course as though it had been the subject of repeated rehearsal."

He was right in his analysis of the American army, but in the view of General Baron Leo Gaur vanepenberg, badly wrong in his conclusion about how to meet the attack. Shreffenborg commanded Panzer Group West. When Raml began moving the second Panzer division closer to the coast north of Amyen, Shreffenborg protested. Raml insisted and put the leading battle group right on the coast. Dug in. He growled to Admiral Ruga. The Panzer divisions are going to be moved forward whether they like it or not.

Shortly thereafter, an angry General Schepenberg, accompanied by Hitler's Panzer expert, General Hines Gudderion, confronted Raml. The latter blandly told them he intended to dig in every tank on the coastline. Gderrion was shocked. He insisted that the very strength of Panzer formations lies in their firepower and mobility. He advised Raml to pull the tanks back out of range of Allied naval guns. He insisted that the lesson from the Sicily and Salerno landings was crystal clear. The Germans could not fight a decisive battle while they were under those naval guns. Gudderion knew that an amphibious force is not at its most vulnerable when it is half ashore, half at sea. It is at its most powerful at that time, thanks to those big naval guns. He urged Raml to think in terms of a counteroffensive launched on the Vermach's terms at some choke point inland where the enemy was overstretched. That was the way the Russians did it with great success. As Goodion could testify. Raml would not budge. "If you leave the Panzer divisions in the rear," he warned, "they will never get forward. Once the invasion begins, enemy air power will stop everything from moving."

When Gudderion reported to Hitler, he recommended pulling back and fighting England, which specifically meant keeping command and control of the Panzer divisions out of Raml's hands. Hitler tried a weak need, half-hearted compromise. On May 7, he turned over three Panzer divisions to Raml, the 2nd, 21st, and 116th. The other four Panzer divisions were to be held inland. General Alfred Yodel, chief of OKW, assured Raml that although the four divisions were under OKW's control, they "will be released for operations without further application by yourself the moment we can be certain about the enemy's intentions and focus of attack."

That sounded reasonable but skipped over this fact. The leadership principle had led to a situation in which a German panzer division commander would in a crisis look to not one man but three for his orders. Raml, Brunstat, Hitler. Yodel's sensible sounding words also ignored the failure to choose between competing strategies. Hitler backed neither Raml nor the Shrepenberg Gudderian team. Just as he could not trust people, neither could he trust one plan over another. He split his resources and invited defeat in detail.

Raml got his three Panzer divisions up as close as he could, especially the 21st, which went into camp around Khan. The 21st had been Raml's favorite in Africa, where it had been decimated. It had been rebuilt around a cadra of former officers, including Colonel Hans Vanluke. Its commander was General Edgar Futtinger, whose qualifications for the job were that he had organized the military displays at the annual party rallies. He had no combat experience, knew nothing of tanks. According to Luke, Finger was a live and let live person. He was fond of all the good things of life for which Paris was a natural attraction. He was wise enough to leave the reality of command in the hands of his immediate subordinates. Raml put the other two Panzer divisions under his command. The 12th SS and Panzer Lair, equally distant from Cala and Calvados. They were not close enough to get to the beaches in a few hours. However, a reflection of the immense front line the Germans had to cover.

General Fritz Berline, commanding Panzer, described the division as "The best equipped Panzer division that Germany ever had. It was 100% armored. Even the infantry was completely armored." When he took the command, Gderrion told him, "With this division alone, you must throw the allies into the sea. Your objective is the coast. No, not the coast. It is the sea."

Aside from the three Panzer divisions, Raml's forces had little mobility. Grunstead, true to his analysis that fighting a mobile battle inland was preferable to fighting a pitched battle from fixed fortifications, put most of his effort in the first five months of 1944 into improving transport facilities for the coastal divisions. But Runstead's efforts to put wheels under his army were offset by Raml's insistence on digging in every available soldier and gun along the coast. Anyway, as Gordon Harrison observes, German notions of mobility in the West in 1944 hardly corresponded to American concepts of a motorized army. German mobile units had at best one or two trucks to move essential supplies with horsedrawn artillery and general transport. The men were listed as mobile because they had each got a bicycle.

The Vermacht of 1944 was a strange army. In the Panzer divisions, it had highly mobile forces with superior firepower, absolutely up to-date. But it did not have the fuel to sustain operations. Thanks to the Allied bombing campaign against the Romanian oil fields, Germany had desperate fuel shortages in France. That meant the Panzer divisions had to sharply curtail their training in the infantry divisions. Meanwhile, the Vermach of 1944 was almost a replica of the Kaiser's army of 1918. It was dependent on rail and horse for its supplies, on foot power for movement. In organization, tactics, and doctrine, it was prepared to fight a 1918 battle. Just as the Atlantic Wall was an attempt to build a replica of the World War I trench system, despite the handicap of inadequate equipment, the German infantry divisions could have been made more mobile through training maneuvers. But so great was Raml's obsession with pouring concrete and sticking logs into the tidal flats that he put his fighting men to work building beach obstacles. Challenged by a subordinate who wished to emphasize training, Raml ordered, "I hereby forbid all training and demand that every minute be used for work on the beach obstacles. It is on the beaches that the fate of the invasion will be decided, and what is more, during the first 24 hours." Even 21st Panzer units around Kong were put to work putting in asparagus.

In March, after the spring thaw had immobilized the armies on the eastern front, Hitler began transferring units to the west. Raml put them into the line where they were most needed. The Kotantan got a new division, the 91st, supposedly mobile, and the sixth parachute regiment commanded by Colonel Friedri Vanderhite, a legend for his exploits in Cree. His regiment was an elite all volunteer unit. Average age was 17 and a half. In the 709th Infantry Division on the Katan, average age was 36. When he arrived in Normandy, the colonel was shocked by the mediocrity of the armament and equipment of the German divisions. There were weapons from every land that had fallen into German hands over the past 30 years. His own regiment had four kinds of grenade launchers and seven types of light machine guns. Height was also shocked when he was shown a document and told to sign. It came from Hitler. He wanted each commander to give his written promise to remain in place to hold every inch of ground when the invasion came. Height refused to sign. His core commander simply shrugged.

Throughout the Kotantan by May, Raml had three divisions, the 243rd, the 79th, and the 91st. Along the Calvados coast, he had the 352nd facing Omaha, the 716th at the British beaches with 21st Panzer around Ka. This was neither fish nor foul. The whole point to pouring all that concrete and digging all those trenches along the coast was to check the enemy long enough to allow a concentrated Panzer counterattack before the end of D-Day. But with only one division to cover the whole Calvados Kotantan coastline and only two to cover the area from Lahav to Holland, Raml could not possibly hope to make an early concentrated Panzer attack. By denying Raml command of the tanks, Hitler denied Raml his strategy.

At that point, a less stubborn general might have taken steps to begin implementing the strategy he didn't believe in, but had been forced by circumstances to adopt. Not Raml. He stuck to a strategy that, by his own logic, given available resources, couldn't work. On the day the battle would be joined, therefore, the mighty Vermach's armored divisions would be immobilized, not so much by the Allied air forces or by the Allied navies or by the resistance as by the leadership principle of the Third Reich.

But suppose that Raml had persuaded Hitler to put the armored divisions under his immediate command. Suppose further that he got lucky and stationed one Panzer division in Bayou, another at Karantan, as according to General Berline, commander of the Panzer division, he wanted to do. Then suppose that on D-Day, Raml launched a panzerled counterattack against the fourth infantry at Utah and another at Omaha's left flank and gold's right. That surely would have created a crisis and caused some chaos on the landing beaches as well as many casualties. But consider the price to the verbach. With the allied communications network, including fire control parties on shore and in the air in radio contact with the navy gunners, the US and Royal navies supported by Canadian, Norwegian, Polish, and French warships would have killed every tank in the assault. In other words, Raml's most basic idea to stop the invaders cold on the beach was flawed. Bringing the panzers down in range of the Allied navies was madness, as Gudderion had argued. At Sicily and again at Salerno, German tanks managed to penetrate the Allied lines and get down close to the beach. There they were blasted by Allied destroyers, firing point blank. But Raml had not been at Sicily or Serno. Grunstead was right. The Germans best hope was to fall back from the coast as the Japanese were learning to do in the Pacific Islands and fight the battle out of range of an overwhelming naval barrage. That would have required depth to the defense, a series of strong points as in World War I to fall back on. Had the same amount of labor gone into building defensive positions at every choke point, river crossing, and so forth as went into building the Atlantic wall, then the Germans might have held on in France until winter weather closed down operations in 1944. Such a delay would not have won the war for Germany, however, because in the spring of 1945, the Allies would have been able to launch a tremendous air and land bombardment on German lines, culminating in August in an atomic bomb over Berlin. But that would take time, and meanwhile, Germany's only hope would have come into play. A long winter along the Sen or Psalm would have had a terribly depressing effect on Allied morale, given a boost to the German A long winter along the Sen would have caused Stalin to wonder whether he might not be better off reaching a compromised peace. A long winter would give the Germans time to bring in their secret weapons, most notably the ME262.

Raml's decision to put as much of his strength on the beaches as possible behind the strongest fortifications possible was based on his military judgment. Hitler's decision to approve partly Raml's concept of the Atlantic wall was based on his political megalamania. His conqueror's mentality forbade him giving up any territory without a fight. Raml and Hitler made fundamental errors in planning for D-Day based on faulty judgments. The old man, Field Marshall Runstead, who was there for window dressing, was the one who got it right. Get out from under those naval guns. But Raml and Hitler were land fighters. They were more afraid of airplanes than they were of ships. They looked overhead instead of out to sea for danger. They made a mistake.

Dr. Detle Vogel of the Military Gishlik for Shungumpt in Fryberg comments, "It is truly amazing that the senior army commanders who had once conducted such nimble operations suddenly wanted to hide behind a rampart." Equally amazing was the way that Raml, who had made his reputation as a commander who used brilliant tactics, long range movements, and lightning strikes, had so completely adopted a defensive posture.

On May 11, he visited Lamad Lane on Utah Beach. The company commander at the fortification was Lieutenant Arthur Yankee, a 23-year-old who had been badly wounded on the Eastern Front. Raml arrived in his horse with accordians stuffed into the trunk. Raml's habit was to give an accordion to units that were performing to his satisfaction. Lieutenant Yankee and his men did not get an accordion. Raml was in a bad mood, which got worse as he stroed along the dunes, followed by his staff and the hapless Yankee. His criticism fell like hail. Not enough obstacles on the beach. Not enough mines around the blockhouse. Not enough barbed wire. Yankee had enough. He protested. "Marshall, sir, I string all the wire I'm sent, but I can't do more than that." "Your hands, Lieutenant, I want to see your hands," Raml ordered. Bewildered, Yankee removed his gloves. At the sight of the deep scratches that disfigured his palms, Raml softened. "Very well, Lieutenant," he said. "The blood you lost building the fortifications is as precious as what you shed in combat." As he got back into his horse, Raml counseledled Yankee to keep an eye on each high tide. "They surely will come at high tide."

The Allies, meanwhile, went ahead with plans that they were sure would work. To them, the Atlantic Wall was formidable, but by no means impregnable. On April 7, Good Friday, 21st Army Group had completed the overall outline plan and was ready to present it to the division corps and army commanders. Montgomery presided over a meeting at his headquarters, St. Paul's School, of which Montgomery was a graduate. "This exercise," he began, "is being held for the purpose of putting all general officers of the field armies in possession of the whole outline plan for Overlord, so as to ensure mutual understanding and confidence."

He then laid out the plan. Working from left to right, it called for the British Sixth Airborne Division to begin its assault right after midnight with the objectives of knocking out an enemy battery at Mev, seizing intact the bridges over the Orin River and the Orin Canal, blowing the bridges over the Dev and generally acting as flank protection. The British third division with French and British commandos attached was to push across Sword Beach then pass through Wistrom to capture Khan and Carp airfield. The Canadian third division was to push across Juno Beach and continue on until it cut the K bayou highway. The British 50th division at Gold had a similar objective plus taking the small port of Arom and the battery at Long Sumere from the rear. At Omaha, the US 1st and 29th divisions were to move up the exits, take the villages of Kovville, Saluran, and Vierville, then push inland. Attached Ranger battalions were to capture the battery at Pontu Hoke, either by land or sea or both. At Utah, the fourth infantry was to cross the beach, establish control of the coast road, and move west along the causeways to the high ground inland, ready to wheel to the right to drive for Sherborg. The 101st Airborne would land southwest of Smegle to secure the inland side of the causeways and to destroy the bridges in the vicinity of Carantan while seizing others to protect the southern flank at Utah. The 82nd airborne was to land west of Savir Levikt to block the movement of enemy reinforcements into the Gotanten in the western half of the peninsula.

At the briefing, Montgomery acted on the assumption that getting ashore was not the problem. What worried him was staying ashore. He told his subordinates, "Raml is likely to hold his mobile divisions back from the coast until he is certain where our main effort is being made. He will then concentrate them quickly and strike a hard blow. His static divisions will endeavor to hold on defensively to important ground and act as pivots to the counterattacks. By dusk on Dminus one, the enemy will be certain that the Neptune area, code name for the seaborn portion of Overlord, is to be assaulted in strength. By the evening of D-Day, he will know the width of frontage and the approximate number of our assaulting divisions." Montgomery thought that Raml would bring two Panzer divisions against the lodgement on D plus1. By D plus 5, it would be six Panzer divisions. Protecting and expanding the lodgement area would be more difficult than establishing it.

With their objectives set, the generals and colonels went to work at division, regimental, and battalion levels to develop specific plans for getting ashore. As they and their staffs worked through April and into May, Raml was building, pouring concrete, setting posts. They could not be so confident as Montgomery that getting ashore was the least of their problems. For them, it was the first of their problems, the one that had to be overcome, or there would be no more problems.

The plan that emerged ran as follows. The first regiments to hit the shore would come in on the heels of a pre-assault air and naval bombardment. It was designed to neutralize known gun positions and demoralize enemy troops. It would begin at midnight with an RAF attack against coastal batteries from the mouth of the sand to Sherborg. 1,333 heavy bombers, dropping 5,316 tons of bombs. At first light, the US 8th Air Force would hit enemy beach defenses in the assault area. Strong points at Omaha were due to get hit by 480 B-24s carrying 1,285 tons of bombs. Troops scheduled to go ashore at Omaha were assured that there would be innumerable craters on the beaches, more than enough to provide protection and shelter. Naval gunfire would commence at sunrise and continue to hus at 0558. Hour set for 0630. At Omaha, the battleships Texas and Arkansas would fire their 10 14in and 12-in guns respectively from 18 km offshore, concentrating on Ponta Duh Hook and enemy strong points defending the exits. They would be joined by three cruisers with 6-in guns and eight destroyers with 5-in guns. If that bombardment failed to render the defenders dead, incapacitated, or immobilized by fright, smaller fire support craft would precede the first wave to add to the Germans misery. At Omaha, 16 LCTs carrying four DD tanks each were fitted so that two tanks could fire up to 150 rounds per cannon over the ramp beginning from a range of 3 km at about hus 15 minutes. 10 LCTs would carry 36 105 mm howitzers self-propelled of the 58th and 62nd Armored Field Artillery battalions. The howitzers were mounted so that they could fire 100 rounds per gun from the LCTs at a range of 8 km commencing at Hminus 30 minutes. Finally, 14 LCTRs were outfitted as rocket launchers. Each LCTR fired 1,000 high explosive rockets simultaneously from 3 km offshore. Under that cover, the first waves would land.

The plans for the assault landings varied from regiment to regiment, beach to beach. That of the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division on the Western right flank at Omaha was representative. The 116th's plan to penetrate the defenses was complex and detailed down to the seconds. At Hminus 5 minutes, just as the naval and air bombardments lifted, and as the rockets from the LCTRs whistled overhead, companies B and C of the 743rd Tank Battalion, 32 tanks strong, would touch down on the right. These were DD tanks, which would swim ashore from 6,000 yds out. They would take up firing positions at the W's edge to cover the first wave of infantry. At H hour 0630, eight LCTs would land to the left, bringing ashore with them company A of the 743rd Tank Battalion. With Company A, there would be eight tank dozers towing trailers of explosive to be used by combat engineers in demolishing the obstacles before the tide covered them. At H + 1 minute, the first wave of infantry would touch down. Company A on the far right at dog green. Companies E, F and G had easy green, dog red, and dog white. Each company was about 200 men strong. Firepower included rifles, machine guns, Bangalore torpedoes, bazookas, mortars, and grenades. Behind these skirmishers would come engineers, followed by light artillery and anti-aircraft batteries, more engineers. Then at H + 50 minutes, another wave of infantry, the 116th L, I K and C companies. At H + 60 minutes, two Ranger battalions would come in on the right. At H + 110 minutes, DUKWS would bring in heavy artillery. At H plus 3 hours, Navy salvage units and truck companies would move in. By then, the beach should be clear. the fighting rifle companies moving inland.

Brigadier General Norman Dutch Cota, second in command of the 29th Division, did not like the idea of storming ashore an hour after first light. He had little faith in the accuracy of air and naval bombardment, thought it would do little good, and wanted to land the first wave in total darkness. That way, the assault troops could cross the tidal flat safely and would be able to take up firing and attacking positions at the foot of the bluff before the Germans could see them. "The beach is going to be fouled up in any case," he declared. "Darkness will not substantially alter the percentage of accuracy in beaching, not enough to offset the handicaps of a daylight assault." He was overruled.

Each movement required an exact timing schedule that would begin 3 or 4 days before h hour at ports in southwestern England that were up to 160 km from Omaha. Men and equipment would load up on LSTs, LCIS, and LCTs. Off the mouths of the harbors, the convoys would form up. After crossing the channel, the ships would anchor off the coast of France. Men would climb down the rope nets to their LCVPs or descend in the boats as they were lowered by the davits. They would circle, circle, circle until they got clearance to form up line of breast and go in. There was much more to the plan of assault than outlined here, and there were variations at different sectors and beaches, but basically the 116th plan was similar to those elsewhere. The emphasis was on a crescendo of high explosives hitting the beach defenses for a half hour before the tanks arrived to be immediately followed by the first wave of skirmishers who should be able to take advantage of the dazed enemy and seize the trenches as well as the exits from the beach. After that, it was a question of getting enough transport and firepower ashore quickly enough to take the plateau area and move inland. All this was planned out on a timetable that was exceedingly rigid and complicated, and it was done without a single computer.

When Private John Barnes of Company A 116th Infantry attended the briefing on the assault plan, he was mighty impressed. He would be going ashore at Hour. One minute later, E company would come in behind him, followed by engineers at Hour plus 3 minutes. Then would come headquarters company and anti-aircraft artillery, then more engineers, then company L at Hour plus 50 minutes, and so on through the day. It seemed so organized, Barnes recalled, that nothing could go wrong. Nothing could stop it. It was like a train schedule. We were almost just like passengers. We were aware that there were many landing boats behind us, all lined up, coming in on schedule. Nothing could stop it.

Others were not so sure. Captain Robert Miller of the 175th Regiment, 29th Division, remembered his CO, Colonel Paul Pop Good, holding up the operation plan for the regiment. It was thicker than the biggest telephone book you've ever seen. After the briefing was completed, Colonel Good stood up. He picked it up and tried to tear it in half, but it was so thick that this strong man couldn't do it. So, he simply threw it over his shoulder and said, "Forget this goddamn thing. You get your ass on the beach. I'll be there waiting for you and I'll tell you what to do. There ain't anything in this plan that is going to go right."

Had Eisenhower heard the remarks, he would have agreed. Whenever he said that before the battle, plans are everything. He added that as soon as the battle was joined, plans were worthless. By midMay, the plans down to regimental level were complete, but not poured in cement. Changes were made right up to D-Day in response to new information or the pace of Raml's construction activities at Omaha. For example, Major Kenneth Lord, assistant G3 operations for the First Division, spotted an ominous development. Up to midApril, First Division staff had noted happily that the hedgehogs and Belgian gate obstacles were piled up on the beaches rather than being put in place. But when a B7 happened to jettison some bombs onto Omaha Beach before returning to England from an aborted raid, Lord examined a photograph of the bombs exploding. He saw a series of sympathetic detonations of underwater mines just at Easy Red Beach. Major Lord appealed to the Navy to take care of the mines, pointing out that the official landing operations manual gave the Navy responsibility up to the high tide mark. The Navy did not disagree. It just said it did not have an ability to demolish those mines. First division appealed to SHA and got two engineering battalions assigned to it. The division HQ put them into the first wave. When Lord informed the engineers that they would lead the way, they expressed great shock. Lord assured them that they would have plenty of support from the DD tanks. He pointed out that the DDS had worked beautifully during practice exercises.

Those exploding mines caused consternation at 21st Army Group. Were they electric or pressure or magnetic or what? To find out, they sent Captain George Lane, a commando working with COPS, to bring back a sample. One night in late April, he swam among the obstacles. He could find only teller mines. He brought one back. His superiors "nearly died of fright when I presented it because it was not waterproofed. It was never meant to be an underwater mine. So they realized that the corrosion must have played havoc with its mechanism and it might go off any minute." They told Lane there must be something else and sent him back not only to look for new types of mines but to take infrared photographs of the underwater obstacles. In May they sent him back once again and his luck ran out. He was captured by a German eboat and brought to Raml's headquarters at Lar Rokuong. An elegant staff officer came into the room and asked, "Well, how are things in England? The weather must be beautiful. End of May is always nice in England." It turned out he had an English wife. He took Lane in to see Raml. "You are in a very serious situation," Raml said, "because we think you're a sabotur." Llayne turned to the interpreter. "Please tell his excellency that I know that if he thought I was a sabotur, he wouldn't have invited me here." Raml laughed. "So, you regard this as an invitation?" "Yes, indeed," Lane answered. "And I consider this a great honor indeed, and I'm delighted about it." Raml laughed again, then asked, "So, how's my friend Montgomery?" Lane said he did not know Montgomery. "Well, what do you think he's doing?" Raml asked. "I only know what I read in the Times," said Lane. "It says he's preparing the invasion." "Do you really think there's going to be an invasion?" Raml asked. "The British will invade. That's what I read in the Times," said Lane. "So, I believe it." "Well, if they are," said Raml. "This is going to be the first time that the British army will do some fighting." "What can you mean?" Lane demanded. "They always get other people to do the fighting for them," said Raml. "the Australians, the Canadians, the New Zealanders, the South Africans. They are very clever people, these English." Then Raml grew serious. "Well, where do you think the invasion is coming?" "I certainly don't know," Lane responded. "They don't tell junior officers. But if it was up to me, I would do it across the shortest possible way." "Yes," Raml nodded. "That's very interesting." They talked politics. Raml thought the British should be fighting side by side with the Germans against the Russians. Lane thought not.

When Lane was dismissed, he was driven to Paris and turned over to the Gestapo. But the Gestapo asked no questions, used no torture. After all, he had been interrogated by Raml himself. So Lane was very lucky, as were the allies. Lane's missions had all been directed against the Calvados's coast of France. Other adjustments had to be made in the Kotantan. The arrival in late May of the German 91st Division in the area where the 82nd Airborne was scheduled to come down caused a change in plan. On May 28, the drop zone was moved west a stride the Murder with the objective of seizing the ground between the Murder and Duv rivers.

Daily I viewed new aerial photographs of Utah. Colonel James Van Fleet, commander of the Eighth Regiment, Fourth Division, recalled, "The Germans were working furiously to strengthen their defenses." "It seemed a terrible assault against steel and cannon for us to make. I kept asking the Navy to land us further south to get away from these defenses, but the Navy commander said the water was too shallow and our boats would ground." Van Fleet did win one fight with the Navy. The operations manual said the skippers of the LCTs would decide when to launch the DD tanks. Van Fleet had little faith in the DDS. He wanted the Navy to take them in as close as possible before launching because the DDS moved so slowly in water and were terribly vulnerable to artillery. The Navy insisted that the skipper would decide when to launch. Vanfleet recalled, "I argued back so strongly that the Navy backed down. the tank commander would give the launch command."

Multiply Lords and Vanfleet's experiences by hundreds to get some idea of the scope of the everchanging planning operation. With such dedication and with such awesome firepower, how could the invasion not work? Montgomery had no doubts. On May 15, he held the final great dress rehearsal for Overlord at his St. Paul's school headquarters. Churchill was there and King George V 6th and all the brass admirals and generals from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Montgomery presided in a large lecture room. The audience looked down from a crescent-shaped auditorium. On the floor, Montgomery had placed a huge colored map of Lower Normandy. Churchill arrived smoking a cigar. When the king arrived,

Churchill bowed in his usual jerky fashion, retaining the cigar in one hand. As we took our seats, Admiral Morton Deo of the US Navy in command of the bombardment group for Utah later wrote, "The room was hushed and the tension palpable. It seemed to most of us that the proper meshing of so many gears would need nothing less than divine guidance. A failure at one point could throw the momentum out of balance and result in chaos. All in that room were aware of the gravity of the elements to be dealt with. Eisenhower spoke first. He was brief. I would emphasize but one thing, he said. I consider it to be the duty of anyone who sees a flaw in the plan not to hesitate to say so."

According to Deo, his smile was worth 20 divisions. Before the warmth of his quiet confidence, the mists of doubt dissolved. Montgomery took over. He was wearing a well-cut battle dress with knifelike trouser creases. He looked trim and spoke in a tone of quiet emphasis. According to the notetaker, Churchill occasionally interrupted him to ask questions designed to show off his military knowledge. At one point the PM intervened, saying a trifle Riley that at Anzio we had put ashore 160,000 men and 25,000 vehicles and had advanced only 12 m. He thought, therefore, that to take a risk occasionally would certainly do no harm.

Montgomery remained quiet and deliberate. Montgomery's message was, "We have a sufficiency of troops. We have all the necessary tackle. We have an excellent plan. This is a perfectly normal operation which is certain of success. If anyone has any doubts in his mind, let him stay behind." He was more realistic about Raml's plans than he had been in April when he had expected the enemy to hold back his tanks for the first couple of days. Now he said, "Raml is an energetic and determined commander. He has made a world of difference since he took over. He is best at the spoiling attack. His forte is disruption. He is too impulsive for the setpiece battle. He will do his level best to dunkerk us by using his own tanks well forward."

Montgomery said, "We have the initiative. We must rely on A, the violence of our assault, b our great weight of supporting fire from the sea and the air, c simplicity, d robust mentality." He went on to say some words that later would come back to haunt him. "We must blast our way ashore and get a good lodgement before the enemy can bring sufficient reserves up to turn us out. Armored columns must penetrate deep inland and quickly on D-Day. This will upset the plans and tend to hold him off while we build up strength. We must gain space rapidly and peg out claims well inland." The meeting began at 0900 hours and concluded at 14:15, thus ending, according to the minutes, the greatest assembly of military leadership the world has ever known.

Churchill was all pumped up. At the beginning of 1944, he had expressed qualms about Overlord, saying to Eisenhower on one occasion, "When I think of the beaches of Normandy choked with the flower of American and British youth, and when, in my mind's eye, I see the tides running red with their blood, I have my doubts. I have my doubts." Early in May, Eisenhower had lunched alone with the prime minister. When they were parting, Churchill had grown emotional. With tears in his eyes, he had said, "I'm in this thing with you to the end, and if it fails, we will go down together." But after the St. Paul's briefing, Churchill grabbed Eisenhower by the arm and said, "I am hardening toward this enterprise." That was a bit late to be getting on the team, but it was good that he had finally joined up. As for Eisenhower, his confidence was high.

Chapter 7. Training. No matter how brilliant the plan, no matter how effective the deception, no matter how intense the pre-invasion sea and air bombardment, Overlord would fail if the assault squads did not advance. To make sure that they did, the Allies put a tremendous effort into training. The Americans thought that they had emphasized training in 1942. Indeed, that they were putting their divisions through as tough a training regimen as any in the world. In February 1943 at Casserine Pass, they discovered that their training was woefully inadequate to the rigors of modern warfare. Men had run. Commanders had panicked. Men who thought they were in top physical condition found out they weren't. Our people from the very highest to the very lowest have learned that this is not a child's game and are ready and eager to get down to the fundamentals. Eisenhower wrote Marshall. From now on, I'm going to make it a fixed rule that no unit from the time it reaches this theater until this war is won will ever stop training. As supreme commander, he enforced that rule.

The point of the training was to get ashore. Everything was geared to the D-Day assault. The AEF later paid a price for this obsession. Nothing was done to train for hedgero fighting. Techniques suitable to offensive action in Normandy had to be learned on the spot. But of course, there would be no hedro fighting if the AEF did not get ashore. For some divisions, the assault training had begun in the states. The airborne divisions had been formed in 1941 and 42 for the purpose of landing behind the Atlantic wall, and their training reflected that goal. After jump school, the airborne troops had carried out jump, assembly, and attack maneuvers throughout the middle south. Colonel James Van Fleet took command of the eighth infantry regiment of the fourth division on July 21, 1941. The eighth had been activated a year earlier for the express purpose of developing tactics to contain a blitzkrieg offensive. But when Van Fleet took over, the situation had changed and he trained the ETH, quote, "As an assault unit, the American force that would make the first landings." He explained, "The initial thrust of our training was how to storm and seize enemy strong points such as pillboxes. By the time Allied forces reached Europe, the enemy would have had years to construct concrete imp placements to shield artillery and heavy weapons. We spent long months practicing how to assault these positions, beginning with squads and working up through the company and battalion level."

The eighth had a good mix of people, thoroughly American. As Vanfleet noted, it had been historically a southern regiment made up of country boys from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. He called them his squirrel shooters. They could find their way through the woods at night without being afraid and knew how to shoot a rifle. When the drafties began coming in, many of them were from New York and other eastern cities. They knew nothing about weapons or woods, but they had skills the southern boys lacked, such as motors and communications. The marriage of North and South was a happy one, Van Fleet commented. In training the eighth for an assault, Vanfleet emphasized coordination and firepower. If two men were attacking a pillbox, one would put continuous fire on the embraasure while the other crept up on it from the other side. When the advancing man drew fire, he went to the ground and began firing back while his partner crept closer to the objective. Eventually, one crept close enough to toss a grenade into the pillbox. "This sort of attack requires bravery, confidence in your partner, and patience," Vanfleet observed. We enacted this scenario countless hundreds of times from 1941 through 1943, often with live ammunition. Two years was a long time to be training. Men got impatient. One of Van Fleet's most aggressive lieutenants, George L. Mabberry, wanted to get into the real war. He applied for a transfer to the Army Air Force. Van Fleet called him in for a chat. Knowing his commander would be upset, Mabri was shaking like a leaf when he reported. "You are applying for the Air Force?" Benfleet asked. "Yes, sir. Have you ever been up in an airplane?" "No, sir." "Well, you better get over and withdraw that application. You might get sick in an airplane." "Yes, sir." Mabri stayed with Van Fleet. He became one of the best officers in the fourth division.

The 29th Division sailed for England in September 1942 aboard the Queen Mary converted from luxury liner to troop transport. The Queen Mary sailed alone depending on her speed to avoid submarines. At 500 m out from the continent and thus within range of the Luftvafa, an escort of British warships appeared. A cruiser HMS Kurasau cut across the bow of the 83,000 ton Queen Mary. The queen knifed into the 4,290 ton cruiser and cut her in half, killing 332 members of her crew. It was not an auspicious beginning to the Great Allied invasion. The division took over Tidworth barracks near Salisbury. These were the best barracks in England, but woefully short of what GIs had become accustomed to in the training camps in the states. For men who had trained in the American South, the English weather was miserable. Private John R. Slaughter of Company D 116th Regiment recalled, "Morale was not good during those first few months in the British Isles. Homesickness, dreary weather, long weeks of training without pause caused many of us to grumble. It didn't help that the 29th necessarily became an experimental outfit. It was the only large American combat unit in the United Kingdom. It had no specific mission for the first year it was there. Instead, it carried out training exercises that were in effect experiments in the development of doctrine, procedures, and techniques in amphibious assaults. In short, the men saw themselves as guinea pigs. Making things worse, the food was awful. Britain had been at war for more than 2 years. There were no fresh eggs, little fresh meat, too many Brussels sprouts." Lieutenant Robert Walker of Headquarters Company, 116th Regiment, remembered that on field problems we were issued sack lunches. These consisted of two sandwiches made of dry brown bread. One had a glob of jelly in the middle, the other a slice of pork lunchon meat. We called them spam and jam lunches. Any American tourist who has ever purchased one of those sandwiches at a London shop knows just how bad they are.

Weekend passes to Salisbury or even better to London were hard to come by and highly prized. As the Yanks were paid more than double what the Tommy received and had much better-l lookinging uniforms, they attracted the girls. This caused considerable resentment. There was also friction between black gis, mainly in the services of supply, SOS, and the white soldiers. When they mixed in a pub, there was almost sure to be a fight, too often culminating in a shooting. The army took to segregating the pubs, one night for blacks, another for whites. Overall, however, considering that by D-Day there were some two million Yanks on an island only slightly larger than the state of Colorado, the American occupation of Britain was carried out with remarkable success. It helped beyond measure that everyone had the same ultimate objective. It helped too that the Americans tightened their standard of discipline.

Colonel Charles Cannam commanded the 116th Regiment. Canam was a West Pointer class of 1926. Private Felix Brham characterized him as a fiery old guy who spit fire and brimstone. The colonel was so tough that we used to call ourselves Colonel Canam's concentration camp. If a man was a few minutes late from a pass, he was fined $30 and confined to camp for 30 days. One day, Brham overheard a conversation between Canam and the COO of the 29th Division, Major General Charles Ghart. Ghart told Cany too hard on the men. "God damn it, Charles," Can shot back. "This is my regiment, and I am the one commanding it." "You know," Ghart replied. "The men don't mind that $30, but they hate that 30 days." Can eased up, but only a bit. "I tell you, we trained," Brandham declared. "We started out on various types of landing craft. We got on LSTs, LCVPs, we got on LCIS, on LCMS, we landed from British ships. We landed from American ships. You name it, our training was there. We threw various types of hand grenades. We learned to use enemy weapons."

Ghart was a West Pointer, an old cavalry man and polo player, flamboyant in his dress, gung-ho in his attitude. He did everything by the book and insisted that his men dress just right, always appear clean shaven, even keep their jeeps spotless. He also wanted enthusiasm. One way he got it was to have the men chant their battle cry as they marched over the dunes. "29, let's go!" When an old-timer from the first division, a combat veteran of North Africa and Sicily, heard that, he yelled back, "Go ahead, 29. We'll be right behind you." The 29th marched all over southwestern England. The men spent nights in the field, sleeping in foxholes. They learned the basic lesson infantry men must learn to love the ground, how to use it to their advantage, how it dictates a plan of battle, above all, how to live in it for days at a time without impairment of physical efficiency. They were taught to see folds in the terrain that no civilian would notice. They attacked towns, hills, woods. They dug countless foxholes. They had fire problems, attacking with artillery, mortars, machine guns, crashing into their objectives. They concentrated single-mindedly on offensive tactics. A member of the 29th Division recalled, "Loading and unloading landing craft, exiting, peeling off, quickly, moving forward, crawling under barbed wire with live machine gun fire just inches overhead, and live explosions strategically placed detonated all around. We were schooled in the use of explosives. Satchel charges and Bangalore torpedoes were excellent for blowing holes and barbed wire and neutralizing fortified bunkers. Bayonets were used to probe for hidden mines. Poison gas drills, first aid, airplane and tank identification, use and detection of booby traps, and more gave us the confidence that we were ready. I believe our division was as competent to fight as any green outfit in history."

They spent countless hours on the firing range. Sergeant Weldon Kratzer, Company C 116th, remembered the day Eisenhower, accompanied by Montgomery and other big shots, came by to watch. After a bit, Eisenhower called torturer. "Sergeant, I was observing your firing," he said, "and I must compliment you. He went on, I used to be a good shot. Do you mind if I use your rifle?" "It would be an honor, sir." Eisenhower took the prone position, adjusted the sling, aimed, tried to pull the trigger, and nothing happened. "Sir, your rifle is on safety," Kratzer said. "I don't blame you for taking precautions," Eisenhower replied, blushing and taking off the safety. He blasted away at a target 600 m off. He wasn't bad, Cretzer reported. Most of his shots were 4 or 5:00. When Eisenhower had a total miss, and Maggie's drawers went up, he called out, "And the same to you, old girl." After Eisenhower had fired a full clip, Kratzer offered to reload for him. Eisenhower said, "No thanks. You fellows need the practice more than I do." As he was leaving, Eisenhower told Cratzer, "Sergeant, I'm impressed with your marksmanship. You sure know your Kentucky windage." "General Eisenhower," Cratzer replied. "I'm from Virginia. I use Virginia windage." "I'll be damned," said the general. "I think we'd all be better off if we used Virginia windage."

Eisenhower spent a great deal of his time in the field, inspecting, watching training exercises. He wanted to see as many men as possible and let them see him. He managed to talk to hundreds personally. In the four months from February 1 to June 1, he visited 26 divisions, 24 airfields, five ships of war, and countless depots, shops, hospitals, and other installations. To the graduating class at Sandhurst in the spring of 1944, Eisenhower delivered an impromptu address in which he spoke of the great issues involved. He made each graduate aware that his own chances for a happy, decent life were directly tied up in the success of Overlord. He reminded them of the great traditions of Sandhurst. He told the newly commissioned officers that they must be like fathers to their men even when the men were twice their age, that they must keep the men out of trouble and stand up for them when they committed a transgression. Their companies must be like a big family, and they must be the head of the family, ensuring that the unit was cohesive, tough, well-trained, well equipped, ready to go. The response of the Sandhurst graduates, according to Thor Smith, a public relations officer at SHA, was electric. They just loved him.

Beyond weapons training, physical conditioning, and getting familiar with the various landing craft, the men went through assault exercises. Everything possible was done to make them realistic. From climbing down the rope nets into the Higgins boats in a high sea to the buildings and terrain on the shore. Sergeant Tom Plum of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles Third Canadian Division discovered when he hit the shore on D-Day near Bernier Sur Juno Beach that it was identical to the beach we had been training on in Inesse, Scotland, right down to the exact locations of pillboxes. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Thompson commanded the US assault training center at Willome. He established training areas at suitable beaches of which the most extensive was Slapton Sands in Devonshshire on the south coast. Nearly 3,000 residents were moved out of their homes in the villages and farms in the area. At Slapton Sands, the geography was a n replica of the Kotantan coastline. The beach of coarse gravel led inland to shallow lagoons. Thompson, a 1929 graduate of West Point, was an outstanding engineer, an imaginative creator of realistic training exercises, and dedicated to his job, which was to develop doctrines and techniques to assault a heavily defended shore. His initial task was to train demonstration troops and put them through practice exercises for various high-ranking observers. Once his superiors approved his ideas, he became responsible for training all assault troops for the invasion. In August 1943, Thompson went to work at Slapton Sands and eight other locations. He oversaw the erection of a hedgehog area for battalion training, an assault range for company training, a beach range for firing artillery and mortars against a hostile shore from the landing craft, an artillery range, a wire cutting range for training in the use of Bangalore torpedoes and other devices for breaching wire. an infantry demolition range for training and using satchel charges against pillboxes and the breaching of underwater and land obstacles, an obstacle course area, and a multiplepurpose range for practice in the use of flamethrowers, rockets, and grenades. Thompson also set up a training facility for engineers.

After many experiments, Thompson and his people concluded that the first waves, which would go ashore in Higgins boats with the capacity of 30 men to a boat, should be broken down into rifle assault platoon consisting of a five-man rifle team, a four-man Bangalore and wire cutting team, a four-man rocket launcher team, a twoman flamethrower team, a four-man bar team, a four-man 60mm mortar team, a five-man demolition team, and two officers. officers. Thompson broke the training down into four phases. First, individual training on the obstacle course. Second, team training for the wire cutters and demolition men. Third, company exercises. Fourth, battalion exercises. Umpires were present to judge, criticize, and suggest. The training was hard and realistic. Live ammunition was often used, and accidents happened. In mid December, a short artillery round killed four men and injured six. A couple of days later, three landing craft capsized and 14 men drowned. The 29th Division was the first to go through the school. General Ghart praised the superb training facilities, which he said made his division capable of a successful landing on the shore of Fortress Europe. In the winter and spring of 1944, thousands of troops went through exercises every week. As they did so, observers noted what worked and what didn't and made adjustments in the plans as required. For example, the exercises indicated that the use of smoke for cover tended to confuse the assault troops as badly as it did the defenders, that smoke could not be sufficiently controlled, and that it interfered with observed fire from the warships. So smoke was out. Experiment further convinced the planners that the best use of tanks was not as an armored force but as close support artillery. Giving up armors characteristics of shock and mobility, the planners decided that instead of using tanks to lead the drive through the fortifications, they would instead fire from hull down in the water, giving support from behind rather than breaking through at the front.

None of these lessons, somewhat surprisingly, came from previous American experience in the Pacific. There was some correspondence between the first engineer special brigade in Europe and the second brigade in the Pacific, and a few officers were brought from the Pacific to the United Kingdom, but for the most part, there was no interchange. After North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, the commanders in Europe did not feel a need to ask their counterparts in the Pacific about their experiences. In April and early May, assault exercises that amounted to dress rehearsals took place all over England. They included marshalling, imbarcation, and sailing. Approach and assault, setting up the beach organization. The rehearsals brought together the units that would go to France as a team. Assault forces O for Omaha, GD, U, Juno, and S Sword. The army got to know the navy and vice versa. The air forces were also involved. As Lee Mallalerie's headquarters put it, it is important that the pilots of all aircraft should see a large concentration of assault forces at sea. Conversely, it is of importance that personnel in assault forces should obtain an idea of the degree of air cover and support which they might expect.

32-year-old Lieutenant Dean Rockwell was in charge of the training for the LCT cruise. He had been a professional wrestler and high school coach in Detroit before the war. Although he had never been on saltwater, he joined the Navy after hearing a recruiting pitch from former heavyweight champion Gene Tunny. The Navy made him an instructor in physical education, but Rockwell did not approve of the Navy's PE program and said so. He voiced his criticism so often and so loudly that he got a reputation as a bullshy. As a punishment, he was posted to landing craft, which his senior officers regarded as a suicide squad. Regular Navy officers thought that landing craft were ugly and unseammanlike. Rockwell loved them, and he became exceptionally clever at handling them and understanding their often strange behavior. He began with LCVPs and LCMS, got promoted to petty officer, and went to England. He was so good at his job that he got a spot promotion to Lieutenant JG, then to full lieutenant, and in March 1944, was put in command of the training program for LCTs.

Lieutenant Eugene Bernstein, US Navy Reserve, commanding an LCTR, remembered the training exercises as quote, "very realistic. We would rendevous all ships in specific convoys, load troops, tanks, ammo, and supplies of all sorts, and head out. At around midnight, we would open a set of orders to find that we were to go to Slapped Sands or wherever, and go through the entire landing procedure. We would turn 180°, make for Slapton Sands, fire our rockets on designated targets. If the LCTR was moving ahead at flank speed of 10 knots when all 1,60 rockets were fired, the recoil was such that the craft was thrust backward at three knots. We'd unload attack transports into small boats and assault the beach. These were full scale operations with aircraft cover, major ship bombardment, the works. Then we would go home. Soon we would be at it again. We and the British did this practice operation 11 times. So passed the spring of 1944. When it came time for the real thing, Bernstein added, "We weighed anchor and calmly got underway as though it were another practice exercise."

Major R. Younger, who commanded an assault squadron of British tanks and the Royal Engineers, recalled that, quote, "Most of the early exercises were pretty catastrophic. All sorts of things went wrong, but we were learning. Vehicles broke down. Coming off a landing craft in a tank when the sea is rough isn't particularly easy. And sometimes we'd get a vehicle broken down on the ramp of the LCT and it had to be towed off and so on. We certainly needed training. Wireless, for example. You can't talk to any of your subordinate tanks without wireless, and we've never used that. And we were very verbose initially in our use of the wireless, but as we got more confident in it, we got far quicker. people recognize your voice and you cut everything down so that in the end conversations are just click click click and you know exactly what the men meant. The trouble with being verbose on the air is that somebody else has got something much more important to say and he can't get on the air because it's blocked by those long- winded statements."

The joint exercises revealed flaws. In the rehearsal for the Seventh Corps at Utah, Operation Tiger, held on the night of April 27th and 28th at Slapped Sands, there were some missed schedules resulting in traffic jams and some naval craft arriving late at imbarcation points. Much worse, German eboats slipped through the British destroyer screen and sank two LSTs and damaged six others. Over 749 men were killed and 300 wounded in the explosions or drowned afterward. Lessons were learned that saved lives on D-Day. There had been no rescue craft in the Tiger formation. Naval commanders realized that they would be needed. The men had not been taught how to use their life preservers. After Tiger, they were. It turned out that the British were operating on different radio wavelengths than the Americans, which contributed to the disaster. That was fixed. What could not be so easily fixed was the weather. Visibility had been poor on April 27th and 28th, and the American fighter airplanes had not shown up.

Operation Tiger was not the only training maneuver to produce casualties. The use of live ammunition led to many wounds and some deaths, as did the night jumps for the paratroopers. Major David Thomas was regimental surgeon of the 5008th Parachute Infantry. On one training jump, a trooper shoot failed to open. "It took us 3 days to find him," Thomas recalled. "And when we did, I took his gloves and laundered them carefully three or four times to get the sweet odor of death out of them." "I'm not superstitious, but I figured that those gloves couldn't be unlucky twice." He wore them on D-Day. No one had yet told the GIs and Tommies where or when they were going to attack, but the exercises made it clear to the men in such divisions as the 29th and fourth that they would be leading the way, wherever it was. Confidence was high, but there was no doubt that casualties would be taken. Rifle companies were being reinforced to the point that they were over strength, especially in junior officers and non-coms. Private Harry Parley joined company E 116th in early 1944. He never forgot the moment of his arrival. The CO walked in, said his name was Captain Lawrence Medil, that our company was to be first wave in the invasion, that 30% casualties were expected, and that we were them. Parley commented, "It saddened me to think of what would happen to some of my fellow GIs."

The US first, Fourth, and 29th Infantry Divisions, the British 50th and third infantry divisions, and the Canadian Third Infantry Division would make the assault, supported on the flanks by the British 6th Airborne and the US 82nd and 101st. The First and 82nd had been in combat in the Mediterranean. For the others, D-Day would be the baptism of fire, as also for the many replacements who joined the first division in England. As Jeffrey Perro writes, "Overlord was the supreme task for which the wartime army had been created. If the division-making machine really worked, it should be possible to take untried divisions such as the 4th, the 29th, and 101st Airborne, put them into a battle against experienced German troops, and see them emerge victorious." The infantry divisions were composed overwhelmingly of conscripts. The airborne divisions were all volunteer except for the glider units and thus by definition elite. The paratroopers motivation, in the words of Private Robert Rder of the 56th Regiment 101st Airborne, was a desire to be better than the other guy. The $50 a month extra jump pay was also an attraction. They thought of themselves as special and they were right. But they discovered in the campaign in northwest Europe in 1944 and 45 that the glider troops and outfits like the 1st, 4th and 29th were almost as good as they were, a tribute to the training of the conscripts. Still, it was true that the airborne troops underwent even tougher training than the infantry. Back in Georgia in late 1942, for example, the 56th had made a three-day forced march carrying full equipment of 136 miles. When the regiment got to England in September 1943, training intensified. There were numerous 3-day field exercises beginning with the jump. The regimental scrapbook described the march back to barracks. Glancing down the line, you were of the opinion that everyone had that combat expression, an unshaven face showing extreme weariness and disgust, caked mud from head to foot, and every jumpsuit looking as though it had come out second best in the ordeal of the fences. You finally dragged your weary body those last few torturous kilometers, and throwing yourself across the bunk, you said, "Comat can't be that rough." The objective of all the training, whether infantry or armored or engineers or airborne, was to make the men believe that combat could not possibly be worse than what they were undergoing, so that they would look forward to their release from training and their commitment to battle. But of course, Sergeant D. Zayn Schlimmer of the 58th Parachute Infantry Regiment commented, "You never get enough training. I found once you get into combat, you've never had enough training for combat. It is a total impossibility."

Some units had highly specialized training. Major Howard of D Company of the Ox and Bucks asked the topographical people to search the map of Britain and find him someplace where a river and a canal ran closely together and were crossed by bridges on the same road as on the Orways. They found such a spot outside Exit. Howard moved his company down there and for six days by day and by night attacked those exit bridges, practicing every conceivable condition. If only one of his six gliders, each carrying a platoon, made it to the objective, that platoon knew what to do to complete the mission alone. To make as certain as possible that the gliders did land near the bridges, the pilots, all sergeants, all members of the glider pilot regiment, there were 16 of them, two for each of the six gliders scheduled to go on D-Day, plus four reserves, went through Operation Deadstick. Colonel George Chatterton, commander of the GPR, made the exercise hellishly difficult. He had the pilots land beside a small L-shaped wood, three gliders going up the L and three on the blind side. In daylight, on a straight-in run, it was relatively easy. But then, Chatterton started having them release from their tug planes at 7,000 ft and fly by times and courses using a stopwatch, making two or three full turns before coming over the wood. That was not too bad either because as Jim Wallark, pilot of number one glider, explained in broad daylight you can always cheat a little. Next, Chatterton put colored glasses in their flying goggles to turn day into night and warned his pilots it is silly of you to cheat on this because you've got to do it right when the time comes. Walwark would nevertheless whip the goggles off if he thought he was overshooting. But we began to play it fairly square, he says. By early May, they were flying by moonlight, casting off at 6,000 ft, 8 m from the wood. They flew regardless of weather. They twisted and turned around the sky, all by stopwatch. They did 43 training flights in deadstick altogether, more than half of them at night. They got ready.

The US Second and Fifth Ranger battalions were composed of volunteers. Others referred to them as suicide squads, but Lieutenant James Iikner of the Second Rangers disagreed. He said, "We were simply spirited young people who took the view that if you're going to be a combat soldier, you may as well be one of the very best. Also, we were anxious to get on with the war so as to bring things to a close and get home to our loved ones as soon as possible." Naturally, such fine troops had a special mission to capture the battery at Pontu Hook. As this would require scaling the cliff, the Rangers got into superb physical condition. In March, they went to the Highlands of Scotland, where Lord Loveat's number four commando put them through grueling speed marches, averaging 25 m a day, culminating in a 37m march across what was reputedly the toughest obstacle course in the world. They climbed mountains, scaled cliffs, practiced unarmed combat. They learned stealth, how to conduct quick-hitting strikes. In 10 days of such training, one private's weight dropped from 205 lb to 170 lb. Next, they practiced amphibious landing operations on the Scottish coast, hitting beaches specially prepared with barbed wire, beach obstacles, and every type of anti-assault landing device that Raml had waiting for them. In April, the Rangers went to the assault training center. In early May, it was off to Swanage for special training in cliff scaling with ropes using grappling hooks trailing ropes propelled to the top of the cliff by rockets and with extension ladders donated by the London Fire Department and carried in DUKWS. Lieutenant Walter Sidlowski, an engineer, marveled at the Rangers. "My guys always felt we were in good shape physically," he remembered. "But watching the Rangers using most of their time double timing with and without arms and equipment, push-ups, and various other physical exercise whenever they were not doing something else was caused for wonder." "I can assure you," Lieutenant Iikner of the Second Ranger Battalion commented, "that when we went into battle after all this training, there was no shaking of the knees or weeping or praying. We knew what we were getting into. We knew every one of us had volunteered for extra hazardous duty. We went into battle confident. Of course, we were tense when under fire, but we were intent on getting the job done. We were actually looking forward to accomplishing our mission."

The combat engineers had the most complex job. They were organized into three brigades of three battalions each. The Sixth Engineer Special Brigade, ESB, was attached to the 116th Regiment on the right flank at Omaha. The fifth ESB was scheduled to go in with the 16th regiment on the left at Omaha. The first ESB joined the fourth division at Utah. Almost one quarter of the American troops going in on the morning of D-Day would be engineers. Their tasks, more or less in this order, were to demolish beach obstacles, blow up mines on the beach, erect signs to guide incoming landing craft through cleared channels, set up panels to bring in the troops and equipment. The color of the panel told the ships offshore which supplies to send in, clear access roads from the beach, blow gaps in the anti-tank wall, establish supply dumps, and act as beach masters, traffic cops. There were all sorts of units attached to the ESBs. Naval beach battalions had semaphors and helioraphs in addition to radios in order to communicate between the beach and the fleet. A chemical battalion was ready to decontaminate anything hit by poison gas and to deal with radioactive materials. There was a fear that the Germans were far enough along in their atomic research to use such poisons. There were medical battalions, ordinance battalions, grave registration companies, MPs to handle prisoners, DUKW battalions, signal companies to lay telephone wire, 16 specialized units in all, organized into special companies and battalions. As Lieutenant Colonel Thompson, who took command of the sixth ESB after the work of the assault training center was completed, remarked, "Was there ever a unit so meticulously put together, so precisely engineered for a specific mission as this?"

The ESBs went through the assault training center at Slapton Sands. Sergeant Barnett Hoffner of the sixth ESB participated in Operation Tiger, the April 27 and 28 exercise in which the LSTs were lost. He said, "I was on the beach at the time with my squad. We were practicing taking up mines when we saw the bodies come floating in. I had never seen dead men before. We started down to the water's edge to get the bodies when I heard a voice yell, 'Sergeant, get your men out of there.' I looked up and saw two stars on the shoulders and recognized that it was Major General Huner. I got my squad out of there fast. You don't question anything a general says." The point was that everyone had a job. General Huner wanted Sergeant Hoffner to concentrate on his. There were grave registration crews to take care of the dead. On D-Day, the basic principle was that no one should stop to help the wounded, much less bury the dead. Leave those tasks to the medics and grave registration crews, and get on with your task.

There were many other special units, including underwater demolition teams, submarine crews to guide the incoming landing craft, tiny one-man airplanes with folded wings that could be brought in on Rhino fairies, 42x 176 ft flat bottomed pontoon barges with the capacity of 40 vehicles towed across the channel by LSTs powered for the run into the beach by large outboard motors. The one-man planes were put into operation on the beach and used for naval gunfire spotting. The 743rd Tank Battalion, like the other DD tankers, spent months learning how to maneuver their tanks in the channel. The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, Colored, practiced setting up their balloons on the beach. The Cherokee Code Talkers, 40 in all, 20 for Utah, 20 for Omaha, worked on their radios. They could speak in their own language, confident the Germans would never be able to translate.

All the commando units were special, but some a bit more so than others. The first and eighth troops of number 10 commandos were French. Private Robert Pioge was a member of the first troop. Pioge was born in Wistrram at the mouth of the Orin River in 1920. His father already dead as a result of a World War I wound. He joined the French army in 1939 over his mother's tearful protests and managed to get to England in June 1940 where he rallied to de Gaul's call to arms. He joined the French commandos which were part of the French Navy but equipped, trained, and attached to the British commandos. That the French were eager to get back was obvious. Pioge especially so after he learned he would be landing at Wistramm where his mother still lived. The number 10 commandos came from all over Europe. The various troops in number 10 were Polish, Dutch, Norwegian and Belgian. Like the French commandos, they were eager to get going. Like all commandos, US Rangers, airborne troops, and the other specialists, they trained to the absolute limit. The men in three troop number 10 commando needed no motivating. They were young European Jews who had somehow managed to make it to England. From the moment they arrived, whether from Germany or Austria or Czechoslovakia or Hungary, they pleaded for a chance to fight. Admiral Lord Lewis Mountbatten, commander of combined operations, sent them to the commandos where they were organized into three troop with the thought that they would go through regular commando training, then be made into specialists in patrolling and intelligence matters. The key was their language ability. If challenged on a patrol, they could answer in good German. They could also conduct instant interrogation of prisoners. They were trained in all matters pertaining to the Vermacht, organization, documents, weapons, and methodology.

Corporal Peter Masters was a member of three troop. Born in Vienna in 1922, he was there when the Germans marched into Austria on March 12th, 1938. "So I lived under the Nazis for 6 months, which was quite sufficient to turn me from a kid that had been brought up as a pacifist to a volunteer eager to get into the action." In August 1938, he managed to get to London. Soon he joined the commandos. "Can you shoot?" he was asked by the recruiting officer. "Can you handle a boat? What do you know about radio?" Master said he had once shot a BB gun, that he had rode a boat, but never sailed, and that he knew nothing about radios. He was so enthusiastic that the commandos took him anyway. Told to take a new name so as to avoid German retribution if captured, but only given a couple of minutes to think about it, he chose Masters. He got a dog tag with Peter Masters on it, plus Church of England. He and all the others in three troop had to invent stories to explain why they spoke English with an accent. Master's story was that his parents traveled extensively, and he had been raised by a German-speaking nanny who didn't have much English.

Harry Nandberg was also a member of three troop. "I was born in Germany," he related. "And at the age of 15 was sent by my parents to England to escape Nazi persecution. I left Berlin on May 21, 1939. It happened to be a Sunday, Mother's Day. I never saw my parents again. At the age of 18, I joined the British Army and in early 1943 volunteered for the Commandos. Together with my green beret, I was also given a brand new name." He chose Harry Drew, but went back to Nandberg after the war. Masters retained his English name.

There was a former member of the Hitler Youth among the American paratroopers. Fred Pathiger was born in December 1919 in Rashtat, Germany. As a teenager, he joined the Hitler Youth. His aunt wanted to get married. A Nazi party investigation revealed that his great-grandfather had been Jewish. He was kicked out of the Hitler youth. His mother contacted relatives in Chicago. In April 1938, Pathiger immigrated to the United States. His parents, aunt, and other relatives died in the concentration camps. When he attempted to enlist in 1940, he was classified not acceptable enemy alien. He wrote Jay. Edgar Hoover of the FBI to protest, saying he wanted to fight Nazis, not Germans. Shortly thereafter, he was classified acceptable and joined up. He became a corporal in the 101st Airborne. The men of three troop were broken up for D-Day into fiveman groups, each assigned to a different commando brigade. Masters went with a bicycle troop. They had cheap collapsible bicycles with baskets on the fronts to carry their rucks sacks. The bikes had no mud guards, no pedals, just stems, and masters found them damnable. But he soldiered on, overjoyed to be of service. The Nazis, who lived by hate, had built up a lot of hatred in Europe in the past 5 years. From Pioge, Masters, Nandberg, Pythiger, and other young refugees. The Nazis were about to get some of their own back.

Racism was at the heart of the Nazi philosophy. Racism was also present in the American army. In 1937, senior officers at the US Army War College had done a study to assess the strengths and weaknesses of black soldiers. Their conclusion was that quote, "As an individual, the Negro is docel, tractable, light-hearted, carefree, and good-natured. If unjustly treated, he is likely to become sirly and stubborn, though this is usually a temporary phase. He is careless, shiftless, irresponsible, and secretive. He resents censure and is best handled with praise and by ridicule. He is unmoral, untruthful, and his sense of righting is relatively inferior." End quote. As to strengths, quote, "The Negro is cheerful, loyal, and usually uncomplaining if reasonably well-fed. He has a musical nature and a marked sense of rhythm. His art is primitive. He is religious. With proper direction in mass, Negroes are industrious. They are emotional and can be stirred to a high state of enthusiasm." End quote.

In World War I, two black US divisions had fought in France. One serving with the French army did well. It won many medals and a request from the French for more black troops. The other serving with the American army with white southerners as officers and woefully inadequate training and equipment did poorly. The war college officers in 1937 concentrated on the failure and ignored the success which led them to conclude that blacks were not capable of combat service. Consequently, although three black infantry divisions were organized for World War II, only one, the 92nd Infantry, saw combat. By March 1944, there were about 150,000 black American soldiers in the United Kingdom. Most of them were in services of supply, mainly working at the ports, unloading ships or driving trucks. They were strictly segregated. In the mythology of the time, this did not mean they were objects of discrimination. Separate but equal was the law of the land back home and in Britain.

General Eisenhower issued a circular letter to senior American commanders that ordered discrimination against negro troops must be sedulously avoided. But he acknowledged in London and other cities where both negro and white soldiers will come on pass and furlow, it will be a practical impossibility to arrange for segregation so far as welfare and recreation facilities are concerned. When the Red Cross could not provide separate clubs for blacks, Eisenhower insisted that the blacks be given equal access to all Red Cross clubs. But he went on to tell local commanders to use quote their own best judgment in avoiding discrimination due to race at the same time minimizing causes of friction through rotation of past privileges end quote. In other words, where there was only one Red Cross club in an area or only a few pubs, the black soldiers would have passes one night, the whites on another. The Red Cross built 27 separate clubs for black troops, but they were not enough. There was some mixing of races in white clubs and even more in the pubs. Some ugly scenes resulted. Fist fights almost always broke out when black and white GIS were drinking in the same pub. There were some shootings, most by whites against blacks. Major General Ira Eker, commander of the 8th Air Force, declared that white troops were responsible for 90% of the trouble and a few killings, all covered up by the army. Eisenhower sent out another circular letter. He told his senior officers that in the interests of military efficiency, quote, "The spreading of derogatory statements concerning the character of any group of US

Troops, either white or colored, must be considered as conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline, and offenders must be promptly punished. It is my desire that this be brought to the attention of every officer in this theater. To that end, I suggest that you personally talk this over with your next senior commander and instruct them to follow up the subject through command channels.

Lieutenant General JCH Lee, commanding Services of Supply, and thus the man with the most at stake, ordered every one of his officers to read Eisenhower's letter to their immediate subordinates and warned that General Eisenhower means exactly what he says. The order had little effect. The racial incidents continued.

Eisenhower ordered a survey done on soldiers male. Officers censoring the enlisted men's letters reported that most white troops commented with varying degrees of amazement on the absence of segregation in Britain. They were indignant about the association of British women with black soldiers. They expressed fears about what effect the experience American blacks had in Britain would lead to back home after the war. Black soldiers, meanwhile, expressed pleasure with the English and delight at the absence of a color line. One officer, after analyzing censorship reports for several weeks, reported toward the end of May 1944 that the predominant note is that if the invasion doesn't occur soon, trouble will. End quote.

The best way to avoid trouble was to keep the troops of whatever color hard at work. Eisenhower ordered that troops must train together, work together, and live together in order to attain successful teamwork in the coming campaign. End quote. As the white infantry men practiced going ashore from their Higgins boats, the black soldiers loaded and unloaded LSTs and other vessels, the training was intense and seemed never to end.

The Germans in France hardly trained at all. Instead, they put more poles in the ground, more obstacles on the beach, working through April and May as construction battalions rather than going through field maneuvers. An exception was the 21st Panzer Division. Colonel Luke, commanding the 125th Regiment, put his tankers through regular night exercises. He emphasized assembly points, various routes to the coast or to the bridges over the Orne River and canal, fire and movement, speed and dash. On May 30, Raml inspected the division. He was enthusiastic about a demonstration with live ammunition of the so-called Stalin organ, a rocket launcher with 48 barrels. That evening, Raml told the officers of the 21st to be extremely vigilant. He closed with these words. You shouldn't count on the enemy coming in fine weather and by day.

Staying vigilant was not easy. As Luke records, for a Panzer division, which in the campaigns so far had been accustomed to a war of movement, the inactivity was wear and dangerous. Vigilance was easily relaxed, especially after the enjoyment of calvados and cider, both typical drinks of the region. There was, in addition, the uncertainty as to whether the landing would take place at all in our sector. In other words, even the elite of the Wehrmacht in Normandy had grown soft, enjoying the cushy life of occupiers in the land of fat cattle and fine apples. For the ordinary Wehrmacht soldier, whether a teenager from Berlin or a 40-year-old Pole or Russian in an battalion, life consisted of boring work during the day, enjoyment at night, waiting and praying that the invasion would come elsewhere, anything but getting ready for the fight of their lives.

The long occupation of France made for special problems. There was an increasing incidence of German soldiers divorcing their German wives in order to marry French women. Further, there was a danger that individuals and even units might surrender wholesale at the first opportunity. Obviously, this was so with the battalions, but it also existed with German-born troops who, according to a December 1943 secret high command report, had quote the illusion of a confrontation with an adversary who acts humanely. As Dr. Detle Vogel of the Military History Research Office put it, as a result, hardly anyone was too much afraid of becoming a POW of the Allies. This was not exactly a favorable condition for endurance and steadfastness as constantly demanded by the military commanders. Dr. Gerbles put his propaganda machine to work to convince the German soldiers in the west that they faced a quote life and death struggle, an all-out conflict. Shortly before the landing, General Jodl tried to bolster spirits by arguing, "We shall see who fights better and who dies more easily." the German soldier faced with the destruction of his homeland or the Americans and British who don't even know what they are fighting for in Europe.

Raml could not count on it. As Dr. Vogal writes, "On the eve of the invasion, it remained quite doubtful whether the German troops in the west would resist in the same death-defying manner as they were frequently doing against the Red Army, for the often assumed motive of the German soldier defending his homeland certainly did not have the same significance to the soldiers in the west as to their brothers in arms on the Eastern front." To counter such defeatism, the commanders lied to their troops. Peter Masters discovered in his interrogations of POWs on D-Day and after that the men had been told, "We will easily push them back into the sea. Stukas will dive bomb them. U-boats will surface behind their fleet and shell and torpedo them. Bombers will sink their landing craft. Panzers will route them on the beaches." How many, if any, believed such fantasies is open to question. The truth is that the Wehrmacht was full of doubts which were best expressed by Raml's insistence that more concrete be poured, more poles stuck in the ground rather than training for quick movement and lightning strikes.

On the other side of the channel, meanwhile, the men of the Allied Expeditionary Force were putting in nearly all their time getting ready.

Chapter 8. Marshalling and Briefing.

Starting in the first week of May, the soldiers and sailors of the Allied Expeditionary Force began descending on southern England. They came by sea in a never-ending stream of transports and LSTs. The ships came out of the Firth of Clyde and Belfast down the Irish Sea past the Isle of Man from Liverpool and Swansea and Bristol. They got into formation, 20 ships, 40 ships, 100 ships to sail out into the Atlantic and then past Land's End to turn left for their designated ports, Plymouth, Torquay, Weymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Eastbourne, and others. They came by land, by train, bus, truck, or on foot. Men and equipment from Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Midlands, and Wales. They formed up by the hundreds in companies and battalions, by the thousands in regiments to march down narrow English roads headed south. When they arrived in their marshalling areas, they formed up by divisions, corps, and armies in the hundreds of thousands. Altogether, almost 2 million men, nearly a half million vehicles. It took 54,000 men to provide necessary services for the force, including more than 4,500 newly trained army cooks. It was the greatest mass movement of armed forces in the history of the British and American armies. It culminated with a concentration of military men and weaponry in southernmost England, such as the world had never seen or would again.

The 175th Regiment of the 29th Division marched to its assembly area called a sausage near Falmouth. Sausages got their name from their shape. On the map, the long, narrow, fenced-in areas, usually beside a road, looked exactly like sausages. There, the regiment was sealed in. The men moved into tents. Gravel paths had been constructed and orders were issued to stick to those paths so that German reconnaissance planes would not get photographs showing new paths beaten down by walking through the fields. Vehicles were parked close against hedges. Everything was camouflaged under wire netting. The sausages were surrounded by MPs. No one was allowed out. No fires were allowed, even though the nights in May in England were still cold with frost on the ground in the mornings.

Lieutenant Eugene Bernstein took the LCTR he commanded through the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man, where he took on provisions, mostly steaks, he remembered, which we ate three times a day, and proceeded to Falmouth, where he was told he was in the wrong place. After much confusion and many exchanges of messages, he was ordered to Dartmouth on the Dart River. On arrival, he was told to sail up the river and drop anchor across from Greenway House, Agatha Christie's home. It was, he recalled, a beautiful stone mansion with greenhouses and flowers dominating the view and a winding gravel river road running alongside. Mrs. Christie had turned it over to the US Navy, which set up a headquarters there.

The airborne troopers went into camps near the airfields of southern England. For the 56th PIR, that meant a pottery. For the gliderborne troops of the Ox and Bucks, it was Tarrant Rushton. The engineers had their own marshalling areas. The Sixth ECB was outside Portsmouth. The sausages were packed with equipment. Sergeant John Robert Slaughter of the 116th Regiment, 29th Division recalled, "Every field and vacant lot was piled high with material for an impending great battle. Tanks and other tracked vehicles, trucks, jeeps and weapons carriers, spotter Piper Cub airplanes, artillery pieces of all sizes, gasoline, water, food, jerry cans, boxes, drums, you name it, and it was there in abundance."

The vehicles had to be waterproofed. Every moving part was protected by cosmoline, a greasy substance that would keep out water and protect the metal from the corrosive action of saltwater. Pipes emerged from the carburetors of the jeeps, tanks, and trucks for air intake. The drivers and gunners who toiled under the camouflage nets were not careless. Lieutenant Ralph Estridge of the 115th Regiment, 29th Division observed. Carelessness here would mean a stalled vehicle at the crucial minute that it drove down the landing ramp and headed for the beach. The gunners painstakingly covered the breaches of their weapons with rubber cloth and sealed the edges with rubber cement. The radio operators sealed the delicate radios with rubber bags.

Condoms were issued by the millions. Some were blown up into balloons or filled with water and tossed around, but most were put to more practical, if unintended use. The infantry men put them over the muzzles of their M1 rifles. The rubbers would keep out sand and water and would not have to be removed before the weapons were fired. Hundreds of men put their watches in condoms and tied them off. Unfortunately, the condoms were not large enough to hold wallets.

Men were given escape aids in case of capture. These were very boy-scoutish things, Major Howard remarked. They included a metal file to be sewn into the uniform blouse, a brass pants button that had been magnetized so that when balanced on a pin head, it became a tiny compass, a silk scarf with a map of France on it, water purifying tablets, and French francs printed by the US and UK governments over to De Gaulle's loud protest about $10 worth to a man. This sort of thing absolutely thrilled the troops to bits, Howard said. I have never seen such enthusiasm about such simple things.

Every soldier got a brand new weapon. The rifles and machine guns had to be test-fired and zeroed in on the firing range. Slaughter remembered unlimited amounts of ammo were given to each of us for practice firing. Bayonets and combat knives were honed to a keen edge. Every man was given a new set of clothing impregnated with a chemical that would ward off poison gas. They hated those uniforms. Private Edward Jeziorski of the 57th PIR spoke for all the men of D-Day when he declared, "They were the lousiest, the coldest, the clammiest, the stiffest, the stinkiest articles of clothing that were ever dreamed up to be worn by individuals. Surely the guy that was responsible for the idea on this screw-up received a Distinguished Service Medal from the devil himself." The men wore these uniforms through the Normandy campaign, in some cases longer. The chemical prevented the cloth from breathing, so the men froze them at night, sweated up a storm by day, and stank always.

By contrast, the food was wonderful. Steak and pork chops with all the trimmings, Slaughter recalled, topped with lemon meringue pie were items on a typical menu, and it was all you can eat. Fresh eggs, the first most of the men had enjoyed since arriving in England, plus ice cream, white bread, and other previously unavailable luxuries, were devoured with relish, accompanied by the inevitable crack that they're fattening us up for the kill.

Theaters were set up inside wall tents, where first-run movies just over from Hollywood were run non-stop with free popcorn and candy. Most soldiers can remember the names of those movies, if not the plots. Favorites included Mr. Lucky with Cary Grant and Lorraine Day, Going My Way with Barry Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby, and The Song of Bernadette.

Training was over. Until the briefings began, aside from firing weapons and sharpening knives or watching movies, there was little to do. Corporal Peter Masters remembered it as a time without end. After the intense activity of the previous months, the superbly conditioned men quickly grew bored. According to Masters, total war begins in the concentration area because when people are fully charged with ammunition, somebody will get their finger on the trigger by mistake. Occasionally, there were casualties. One heard a burst and a shout, "Medics!" At Company A, 116th Regiment, a joker threw a clip of M130 caliber bullets into a burning barrel. The guys in the area laughed and cursed and ran away.

As the days went by, tension mounted, tempers grew shorter. "It didn't take much of a difference of opinion to bring out the sporting instinct," Private Jeziorski recalled. "Fist fights were common. Lieutenant Richard Winters of the 56th got into a scrap with Lieutenant Raymond Schmidz and cracked two of Schmidz's vertebrae, which sent him to the hospital." As always in an army camp, especially so in this one, rumors of every imaginable kind raced through the sausages.

Sports was one way to burn off some of the pent-up energy. At first, footballs were handed out, but most company commanders put a stop to that when the games got too rough and some bones were broken. Softball was better. There were barrels full of gloves and balls and constant games of catch. A number of men recalled that these were the last games of catch they ever played because of wounds received or arms lost during the ensuing campaign.

The sausages included libraries composed of paperback books. The paperback revolution in publishing had begun in 1939 when Pocket Books brought out 10 titles at 25 cents each. Avon Books came along in 1941, quickly followed by Popular Library and Dell. There were special reduced-size free Armed Services Editions. 22 million copies were printed for American servicemen. One of the most popular was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But somewhat surprisingly, the top was The Pocket Book of Verse. For morale purposes, it contained none of the bitter poems from the English veterans of World War I.

Gambling was the favorite boredom killer. There were virtually non-stop poker and crap games. Large amounts of money changed hands. Private Arthur "Dutch" Schultz of the 5005th PIR won $2,500 in a crap game. "I know because I stopped and took the time to count it," he remembered. "I had broken everyone in the game except for a staff sergeant whom I disliked intensely and who had $50 left. I was bound and determined to take all of his money. My luck changed, and I lost my $2,500."

There was no liquor available. A few men managed to sneak out of their sausages and go to local pubs to quench their thirst, but quick arrests by MPs brought that to an end. Major David Thomas, the 5008th PI's surgeon, recalled that the medics were each given a canteen of alcohol to use for sterilization purposes when they got to Normandy. He dryly remarked, "I doubt that a drop of it ever got out of England."

Company commanders marched their men on the roads. This gave them some exercise and helped relieve the boredom or ease the tension. It also gave them some sense of the scope of the enterprise and a sense of confidence that a fighting force of such immensity could not be denied. Marching through the countryside and small villages, they saw unbelievable amounts of equipment, uncountable numbers of aircraft, and they saw the might of the free world gathered to destroy the Nazis. Men in the uniforms of New Zealand, Norway, Poland, France, Australia, Canada, Britain, Holland, Belgium, and the United States. As Sergeant Slaughter recalled, "Soldiers from every Allied nation from all around the world seemed to be everywhere."

Some of the resentment felt by the Tommies toward the Yanks came out. Corporal Masters remembered marching with his troop past an American unit, also out marching. A couple of Yanks had stopped to chat with the mother and her three-year-old daughter. All communication with civilians was strictly forbidden, but done anyway. Almost surely the little girl was asking the question all children in Britain had long since learned to ask of the GIs. "Got any gum, chum?" But as we marched past, Masters said, a disgusted voice at the back of our lot growled at the Americans. "At least you could let them grow up."

Among the millions of men gathered in southern England to participate in the invasion of France, only a handful knew the secrets of Overlord, where the assault would go ashore and when. Those few had a super-security designation above top secret called "bigot." They were said to be bigoted. Slowly the circle of those in the know widened. SHAEF and 21st Army Group staff officers briefed Army and Corps staffs who in turn briefed division and regimental commanders right on down to company and platoon officers who passed the information on to their non-coms and privates. At the lower levels, the place names were not revealed until the men were actually sailing for France. Otherwise, the briefings were extraordinarily detailed and accurate with regard to terrain features, fairly realistic about the numbers and quality of the German defenders, and wildly optimistic about what the naval and air bombardments were going to do to those defenders.

The briefings were done on sand tables or, in the case of the 12th Regiment, Fourth Division, on a huge sponge rubber replica of the Cotentin Peninsula made to scale both horizontally and vertically, complete in minute detail with roads, bridges, buildings, power lines, hedgerows, fortifications, and obstacles. One member of the 12th recalled, "It was as though the men had been suddenly transported by plane and were looking down on the very beaches they would soon land on and the very ground over which they would have to fight."

Officers were briefed at regimental level. Lieutenant Ralph Eastridge of the 115th Regiment, 29th Division, wrote an account of the briefing he attended. The briefing officer, the regimental S2, began with a map of Omaha Beach. He explained that the 1st Division and the 29th Division would land side by side. The 115th would follow the 116th. He described the beach obstacles and fixed fortifications at Omaha, the terrain including the distance from the seawall to the foot of the bluff about 200 m, the height of the bluff 30 m average, and other details. He said, "You can see that the defenses are heaviest at these points where the little valleys lead inland. These breaks or draws in the bluff are our beach exits. And the key to success in the initial assault will be the securing of these exits. The defenses include minefields, barbed wire, anti-tank ditches, and interlocking bands of automatic fire concentrated at the exits. Each of these positions is manned by an estimated battalion with another battalion strung along the bluff between. They are part of the 916th Division, a static division so-called because it is designed to fight in place from fixed positions. This particular static division is made up of about 40% Germans, many of them partially disabled. But remember, a one-armed soldier is just as capable of pulling the trigger of a fixed machine gun in a pillbox as a two-armed soldier. The remaining 60% of the division is made up of mercenaries, largely Russian, with some Poles, Yugoslavs, and other Balkans. They are rough, simple, ignorant men, and have little concern for the value of life. They come from a part of the world where fighting has been the main occupation for generations. Their officers and non-coms are German. They will fight to the death. Behind this static division are mobile divisions, first-line troops. Personnel is largely German. Most have seen combat on the Russian or Italian fronts. Their weakness is a lack of transport. Now for the plan in detail. The 16th and 116th will hit the beach in assault craft at about 0630. The boats will ground out around the first of the underwater obstacles on a rising tide. The immediate objective will be to secure the high ground above the beaches, denying the Germans direct fire and observation of the beach. Our regiment will land at H + 90 minutes, move immediately to this village, indicating St. Laurent-sur-Mer on the map, but unnamed, and go into position on the right. Now, this first part is a comparatively easy job. The tough job will be done by the 116th before we land. If the 116th goes in right, we should have a pushover."

"Sir," one officer asked, "What happens if the 116th doesn't clean up the beach on schedule?"

"Then we take over their mission."

"How many divisions in the first wave?" another officer asked.

"It'll be a big show," the S2 answered with a smile. "Believe me, but we need only concern ourselves with our little sector. When is D-Day?"

"Don't know yet. About the 3rd or 4th of June would be a guess."

The officers of the 115th liked that "pushover" talk, but did not believe it. Lieutenant commented, "The prospects looked grim. The diagrams of the beach defenses indicated that the Germans had been fantastically thorough. The 116th had a rugged job ahead." Indeed, Private Felix Brham of the 116th heard his briefer tell his platoon that if the men got the excess equipment they would be carrying to the beach—mortar rounds, landmines, ammo boxes, radios, and batteries, and much more—they would be making a contribution. The 115th coming in behind would not be as heavily laden, and their men, in his words, would come in and pick up what we had carried ashore, and they would do the job, even though they had to walk over our dead bodies. Such bloodthirsty realism was uncommon. Most of the officers were upbeat and reassuring when they briefed their companies and platoons. 40 years and more later, veterans of Omaha still recalled with some bitterness what they were told.

The briefer explained that it would be no problem at all because the Air Force was coming over in great numbers. The Navy bombardment would be tremendous. The rocket ships would fire thousands of rockets. It was going to be a walkover. Nothing to worry about. Our worries would come 2 or 3 days later when the Panzer counterattacks began. 149th Combat Engineers. We were told that many thousands of tons of bombs would be dropped on our beach by the 9th Air Force just prior to the invasion. My concern was that we would have trouble getting our trucks across the beach because the bomb craters would be so close and so deep. Sixth ESB. Our briefing officer gave us a pep talk. More than a thousand bombers would do their work beforehand. The battleships would blow everything off the map. Pillboxes, artillery, mortars, and the barbed wire entanglements. Everything would be blasted to smithereens. A pushover. 26th Regiment. We were briefed to believe that there would be no living things on the beach, no life of any kind. It would be a piece of cake. Fifth ESB.

Almost every unit scheduled to invade had a similar experience. To drive home the point, junior officers, non-coms, privates were encouraged to study the sand tables or replicas whenever they wished, and thousands of them spent countless hours looking, discussing, familiarizing themselves with their objectives. They also got photographs, some only a few hours old, that revealed the most recent progress in the building of the Atlantic Wall. With that much accurate intelligence, how could the Germans stand a chance?

There was tough-guy talk. The briefer for the 91st Troop Carrier Squadron, glider-tugging pilots, gave out a warning. "Pilots will release when the C-47 leading the formation starts a gradual turn to the left to return to the coast. If any C-47 pilot cuts his glider off too soon, he'd better keep on going because if he comes back here, I'll be waiting for him." One of the glider pilots had a question. In an entirely innocent manner, he asked, "Sir, what do we do after we land our gliders?" The briefer was taken aback. After a silence, he confessed, "I don't know. I guess we really never thought of that, really." There was nervous laughter when the glider pilot sitting next to Sergeant Charles Skidmore gave his own answer. "Run like hell."

The army being the army, inevitably there were some jackasses around. Sergeant Alan Anderson of the 116th Regiment remembered being called into a tent where some colonel from public relations quote got up and made an impassioned and patriotic speech about what a privilege it was for us to have this opportunity to be in this great invasion which would change the history of the world. And then at the end of his speech he made the remarkable announcement that he was sorry he couldn't go with us. My buddy Arkham poked me and said, "Well, he can have my place if he really wants to go." The PR colonel went on to say that the army was ready to take nearly 100% casualties in the first 24 hours. Anderson remembered, "We all turned around and looked at each other and said, 'Well, it's tough that you have to go.'"

Once briefed, the troops were sealed in tight. MPs roamed the grounds and perimeter. No one allowed in without proper identification. No one allowed out without proper orders. Captain Sirill Henry, a British tanker, recalled that his father died on June 1st and was buried on June 3rd. And in his words, "I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral. I just wasn't allowed. But my brother in the army, who was stationed in Damascus, was allowed to fly home for the funeral."

Bravado comes easy to young men who think of themselves as indestructible. But the briefings and the detailed study of the beach defenses had a sobering effect on even the most light-hearted, unreflective soldiers. For all that they told each other nothing could be worse than the training regimen, they had some sense of what bullets and shrapnel can do to a human body. For the most part, they had not been in combat, but they had been reading or seeing war news ever since September 1939 in their hometown newspapers or at the newsreels at the movie theaters. They had followed the sweep of the Wehrmacht across Europe, watched it defeat the best the Poles, Norwegians, Belgians, British, French, Yugoslavs, Greeks, and Russians could put against it. The men of the AEF realized that the Wehrmacht was a thoroughly combat-experienced army that had once been unstoppable and might now be impregnable.

As a consequence of these realizations, after the briefings, the chaplain did a big business. After losing his $2,500, Dutch Schultz went to confession. The priest, a British chaplain, quote, "Really chewed me out about some of the sins I confessed to him involving the sixth commandment." Schultz went to mass every chance he had and he says, "I should mention that it was a very inspiring sight to me to see Captain Steph, Major Kellum, and Major McGinty, and other battalion officers serving as altar boys."

Major Thomas of the 58th didn't pay much attention at his briefing. He recalled, "I had been in the airborne long enough to know that night jumps never went off as planned." Afterward, he got into a poker game. He was losing. So he thought, "I better go and listen to the chaplain so as to touch all the bases." About the time I was sitting down on a cot in the last row, the only seat left in the house, Chaplain Elder says, "Now the Lord is not particularly interested in those who only turn to him in times of need." I thought, "Gee, he must have seen me come in." So I got up and left.

When John Barnes learned that his outfit, Company A of the 116th Infantry, would lead the way, he went to mass, thinking, "This might be my last time." He had been brought up by a devout mother, whose heartfelt prayer had been that he would become a priest. When he graduated from high school, he had to tell her he wasn't cut out for a religious life. But as he prayed at mass, he recalled, "I decided I would make a bargain with God. If my life was spared, I'd become a priest. Then I thought that was a bad bargain either for him or me. So I decided I'd take my chances."

There were some who decided not to take any chances. Dutch Schultz remembered a paratrooper who accidentally shot himself in the foot. A First Division sergeant, Joseph Dragato, watched with astonishment as a man from another company calmly put a generous portion of pipe tobacco between two pieces of bread and ate the sandwich. That got him into the hospital, and out of the invasion. Dragato also saw a man lift his rifle and start firing it into the pup tents. As the MPs descended on him, Dragato wondered why he was doing such a crazy thing. And then I realized he didn't want to go to war.

Other men dealt with their fears by making their appearance even more fearsome than it already was. In the 115th Regiment, the men of one squad got a hot idea and began cutting hair, shearing it right down to the scalp. The idea quickly spread. Soon the company, then nearly the whole regiment, took on the appearance of a convict colony. The paratroopers picked up on the craze, except that they left a band of hair down the middle of the scalp so that they looked like Indians. Mohawks, the style was called. Colonel Robert Sink, commanding the 56th PIR, saw the haircut cutting going on and said, "I forgot to tell you. Some weeks ago, we were officially notified that the Germans are telling French civilians that the Allied invasion forces would be led by American paratroopers, all of them convicted felons and psychopaths, easily recognized by the fact that they shave their heads, or nearly so."

Junior officers and non-coms worried, were they equal to the leadership task the army had assigned them? Sergeant Alan Anderson talked to one of his privates, George Mouser, about his fears. Mouser responded, "Well, Sarge, the only way this war is ever going to end, we're going to have to cross the channel and we're going to have to end it. The quicker we get at it, the better. And of all the men that I have trained with, I would rather go with you into combat than anyone." In the 56th PI, Sergeants Carwood Lipton and Elmer Murray spent long hours discussing different combat situations that might occur and how they would handle them.

There were nearly 175,000 men in the sausages waiting to cross the channel on D-Day, and it is obviously impossible to generalize about their mood. Some were apprehensive, some eager, some determined, some afraid. In part, attitude depended on age. Charles J. Ro was 17 years old. He regarded his 22 and 23-year-old buddies as old men. He thought their feeling was, "Gee, let's get this thing over so we can get home." His own attitude was, "Let's go to France so we can have some fun." To venture one generalization, there was more anticipation among the Americans than the British. For the Yanks, the way home led east into Germany. For the Tommies, they already were home.

Captain Alistair Bannerman, a platoon commander in Sussex in southeastern England, wrote a long letter stretching over his time in his sausage to his wife. The letter captures his mood and that of at least some of his fellow Tommies. "We don't feel majestic at all at the moment," he wrote on May 28th. "There are too many little pinpricks in this life. The eternal drill, the being pushed around, hobnailed boots and sweaty socks, and now the caged existence, too. I have tried explaining to my own platoon that we're about to make history, and that one day their children will read of our deeds in the history books, but all I get are faint smiles. The soldiers, Churchill's radio rhetoric sounds a bit embarrassing. They have no great faith in the new world. They have no belief in any great liberating mission. They know it's going to be a charnel house. All they want is to put an end to it all and get back to Civvy Street, to their homes, their private lives, their wives and loved ones."

On May 31st, Bannerman wrote, "What a gigantic effort each man now has to make to face up to something like this. Men who may have had only little of life. Men with little education and little knowledge and with no philosophical supports. Men with ailing, estranged or poor or needy families. Men who have never been loved. Men who have never had high ambitions or wanted a new world order. Yet were all here were all going as ordered willingly into battle."

In the first couple of days in June, the AEF began to load up and form up and move out for the journey across the channel. The men left behind their duffel bags, taking with them only what they could carry, mainly weapons and ammunition, gas masks, photos of their loved ones, and a change of clothing. They were issued their cartons of cigarettes and K-rations when they boarded. Lieutenant Colonel Thompson spoke for all the men when he remarked, "Anyone who was there remembers with nostalgia the weeks spent in the concentration and marshalling areas."

It is one of the great mysteries of World War II that although the Germans saw the buildup in southern England, they could hardly have missed it. They completely failed to draw the right conclusions from the concentration. There were nightly bombing raids over the sausages. No big deal. Seldom more than a half dozen bombers and regular flights over the harbors with bombers dropping mines. German reconnaissance planes occasionally managed to sneak in, take some photographs and roar away to the east. The situation cried out for a superhuman effort from the Luftwaffe to bomb the harbors and marshalling areas, but it never happened. Of course, the Luftwaffe was but a shadow of its 1940 Battle of Britain strength, and of course, the dummy landing craft in eastern England, supporting the Fortitude deception operation, confused the Germans. But still, to have missed the opportunity to hit the harbors and sausages with whatever they had, was inexcusable and inexplicable. "It just seems a miracle," Seaman Richard Frerieded of the merchant marine commented.

Another mystery. After the great success in late April against Tiger, when E-boats sank two LSTs and damaged six others with no German loss, why did not the German Navy make an all-out effort to use the E-boats in force against the Allied buildup? In fact, the E-boats made no effort at all. The German submarines, what was left of them, were meanwhile out in the North Atlantic. In the first week of June, U-boats sank two American destroyers in the Mid-Atlantic, but they carried out neither reconnaissance missions nor torpedo attacks against the Overlord Armada.

That the Germans failed to conclude from what they knew of the buildup that Lower Normandy was the target is not so surprising. The fact that the AEF had gathered in southern England was not a giveaway as to the site of the invasion. Portsmouth is closer to the Pas-de-Calais than it is to Caen. Control of the sea meant that the fleet moving out into the channel could head straight east to Calais or straight south to Calvados and the Cotentin or southwest to Brittany. The AEF had a mobility unprecedented in the history of war. As John Keegan rightly notes, thanks to the specialized landing craft, the creation of the airborne divisions, and the utilization of command of the air to isolate the landing zone, it was precisely where the Allies felt themselves to be at their most vulnerable in their second front strategy that their greatest strength lay in their reliance on the sea for the movement of their forces.

The Allies carried out many miniature Fortitude operations in the weeks before D-Day, sending landing craft covered by cruisers and destroyers to simulate assaults against various beaches in France. These dummy assaults kept the Germans jumpy and sometimes revealed radar sites and local Luftwaffe capacity. Much more exact information on the Germans came from Ultra intercepts, the continuous and massive air reconnaissance, and the French Resistance.

On June 3, the Joint Intelligence Subcommittee reported on German appreciation of Allied intentions regarding Overlord. It was a most heartening document. It opened, quote, "There has been no intelligence during the last week to suggest that the enemy has accurately assessed the area in which our main assault is to be made. He appears to expect several landings between the Pas-de-Calais and Cherbourg." It noted that the Germans continued to overestimate the size of the Allied forces likely to be employed and to expect landings in Norway.

In Weekly Intelligence Summary Number 11, also issued on June 3, SHAEF G2 assessed German strength. It noted the movement of various German divisions into France and closer to the coast. Later, much was made of the shift of some formations into the Cotentin and at Omaha Beach, as if this indicated that Hitler, Rundstedt, and Raml had finally penetrated the secret. In fact, many German units were on the move, reinforcing the Atlantic Wall from the northeast to southwest. The 67th Corps, for example, was moved on the first day of June into the Seine estuary with headquarters at Rouen. Total German strength in France had increased almost 20% from 50 to 60 divisions, 10 armored. Inevitably, some of those reinforcements went to the invasion site, but not the Panzers. Altogether, the intelligence gathered by the Allies was generally accurate, detailed, and helpful. Just the opposite of the intelligence gathered by the Abwehr. The Allies knew what they were up against. The Germans could only guess.

At Verssteinkampf-Nest 62 (WN62), a fortification overlooking the Vierville draw at Omaha Beach, 18-year-old Private Franz Gacel was involved in a debate with his comrades. Half the members of his platoon argued that the Allies would come here in the next week or two. The other half argued that the defenses at Vierville were too strong. The Allies wouldn't dare come here. WN62 guarded an artillery observation post that spotted for a field battery about 5 km inland. In front of the position, there were 105 mm cannon zeroed in on pre-planned targets. WN62 consisted of two casemates holding 75mm guns, a 50mm anti-tank gun, two light and two heavy machine guns, and 20 men. All except for the Oberfeldwebel and the two NCOs under 19 years of age. The bunkers had 2-meter-thick concrete ceilings and were connected by trenches. Private Gaul had never seen saltwater before he was posted to Calvados in early 1944 with the 352nd Division. He sat behind his twin-mounted machine gun night after night through April, May, on into June, watching, waiting, wondering. During the day, he dug. As one of his comrades put it, on the afternoon of June 3, "If there will be any possibility at all of surviving an attack, it will only be with the help of this trench. Dig." That evening, Galile remembered, nothing moved on the calm surface of the water. Only the slow swells made their way to the beach. The fishing boats from Grandcamp and Port-en-Bessin remained in harbor until May. They had routinely made their excursions along the coast, but now the sea was empty.

Chapter Nine. Loading.

Eisenhower had set D-Day for June 5. Loading for the assault began on May 31, running from west to east. From Falmouth and Fowey for the US 29th Division, from Dartmouth, Torquay, and Exmouth for the US 4th Division, from Weymouth and Portland for the US First Division, from Southampton for the British 50th and Canadian Third Divisions, from Portsmouth and Newhaven for the British Third Division. Those coming from a distance rode to the quay by bus or truck. Those whose sausages were close to the harbors formed up into their squads, platoons, and companies and marched. Everything was on the move. Jeeps, trucks, big artillery pieces, tanks, halftracks, motorcycles, and bicycles. Crowds gathered on the streets to watch the apparently never-ending procession. The adults were giving the V for victory sign. But as one company of the First Division marched through a village, a boy of 11 or 12 called out to a sergeant, "You won't come back." The boy's mother gave a gasp, picked him up, and ran to the front of the column. As the sergeant passed, the boy sobbed through his tears, "You will come back. You will."

Death was on the mind of many of the men. As Private Clare Galdonic remembered his bus ride to Dartmouth, few words were spoken among us. No joking or pranks or stunts. We felt closer to each other now than ever before. Motor machinist Charles J. Ro of the Coast Guard was on LCI 94 watching the gathering on the quay at Weymouth. The troops were just flooding the docks, he recalled. People everywhere. Priests were in their heyday. I even saw Jews go and take communion. Everybody scared to death.

In most cases, anticipation overrode fear. The men were eager to get going. The excitement in the air was nearly overwhelming. The Allied High Command had deliberately brought men to the highest level of readiness mentally and physically. Training had been going on in most cases for 2 years or more. Although there had been transfers and replacements, a majority of the men were in squads and platoons that had been together since boot camp. They had shared the drudgery and the physical and mental demands of training, hated or loved their COs together, eaten their meals together, slept in the same foxhole on maneuvers together, gotten drunk together. They had formed a bond, become a family. They knew each other intimately, knew what to expect from the guy on their left or right, what he liked to eat, what he smelled like. Not many of them were there by choice. Only a few of them had a patriotic passion that they would speak about, but nearly all of them would rather have died than let down their buddies or look the coward in front of their bunkmates. Of all the things that the long training period accomplished, this sense of group solidarity was the most important.

Some commanders gathered their men together for one last talk before they boarded their transport vessels. The commander of the 115th Regiment, Colonel Eugene Slapp, all the shaved heads in his outfit, took off his helmet, scratched his own bald head, and declared, "You men have a good idea there, lots cleaner. But I never realized that I'd been getting ready for an invasion for a long time." After the laughter, he grew serious, talking to his men like a father to his sons. "There isn't much us old fellows can do now. The success of this invasion is up to you men. We have done a lot of planning. I wish you could know the amount of preparation that has gone into this thing. It's the greatest military effort that the world has seen. And all of you know the stakes. The course of history depends on our success. It's a great satisfaction to know that no unit was ever better prepared to go into combat. That's why we got the job. Slapp concluded. I'll see you in France." As Lieutenant Eastridge walked away, he was struck by the thought, "It will be a sad day for this regiment if we ever lose that old man."

General Bradley gathered nearly a thousand officers in a vast aircraft hangar, the general officers on the platform, the colonels on the front row benches, the lieutenants at the rear. Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of the late president, was assistant division commander of the Fourth Division. Because of his age, 56, and his physical condition, he had a bad heart. Roosevelt had been forced to obtain a stack of dispensations and special orders, then plead for permission to go ashore on Utah with one of the first waves. He had finally got what he wanted. He sat on the platform, grinning. Bradley opened, "Gentlemen, this is going to be the greatest show on earth. You are honored by having grandstand seats." Roosevelt frowned, shook his head, and in a deep whisper said, "Hell, goddamn. We're not in the grandstand. We're down on the gridiron." The acoustics of the hangar were such that everyone heard him. There was an eruption of laughter and an easing of tension. Bradley grinned and continued his pep talk.

The Coast Guard and Navy crews were waiting for the men. Charles J. Ro remembered that on LCI 94 there were four officers and 26 men. The officers were 90-day wonders, graduates of officer training school in their early 20s. But the skipper was an old man of 32. He had 10 years in the merchant marine and the rules were his, not the Navy's. He did not like the Navy. Two days before LCI 94 picked up its soldiers, he told J. Ro, "There's nobody going to leave this ship. So, you go out and get the liquor you want, and we're going to have a party." It started at 0700. And boy, at the end of the day, everybody was just crapped out, but it sure relieved the tension. After a night's sleep, we sobered up and started taking troops on board.

Familiarity with the loading process helped immensely to ease tension. The men of the AEF had been through the drill many times. By early June 1944, the continuous stream of mounting, marshalling, embarkation, and landing had become monotonous and routine. Many of those involved commented later that they could have done it in their sleep. Others said that until the definitive announcement came over the ship's loudspeaker, they half believed that this was just another exercise. Those were exactly the attitudes their commanders wanted them to have.

The troops indulged themselves in the age-old tendency of fighting men going into battle to carry too much stuff with them. The assault training center exercises had led planners to recommend that the men in the assault waves should not carry more than 44 lb of equipment. But most were taking on more than double that extra weight, some even more. Partly this was the fault of

The regimental commanders who wanted the first waves to carry in landmines, satchel charges, extra ammunition, spare radios, mortars, and the like. Partly this was the men's own fault, as there was always something extra to carry, a French phrase book or a Bible, an unauthorized knife or pistol, most of all cigarettes.

The cigarettes were handed out at the quaz along with rations. Private Robert Patterson of the 474th Anti-aircraft Battalion told the quartermaster to never mind the cigarettes because I don't smoke. You might as well take them, the quartermaster replied, "Because by the time you get where you're going, you will." 40 years later, Patterson commented, "He was right. On that ship, I learned to smoke and did so for a lot of years thereafter."

One soldier in the fourth division was addicted to camels. He went into a panic over the thought of running out, so he bought, borrowed, or traded for every pack he could. He went on board carrying 10 cartons. Most men carried two cartons, and depended on the army to get more up to them when needed.

Vehicles were also grossly overloaded with ammunition, jerry cans, picks and shovels, cantens, field rations, weapons, and more. Nevertheless, the loading proceeded smoothly and according to the elaborate schedule. It seemed impossible that each of the thousands of ships and landing craft could find its own specific place or that the passengers could locate the right vessels, but they did.

Tanks, artillery, trucks, and jeeps backed into their LCTs. Last on first off, they used specially constructed hards, cement aprons extending into the harbor at the right slope to accommodate the LCTs. Men moved on to their LSTs and LCIS or other transports in an astonishingly short time.

According to Lieutenant Eastridge, almost at once, both decks of LST 459 were loaded with vehicles and guns chained to the deck. The ship was overcrowded with only one bunk for every three men, so they would rotate sleeping hours, eight to a man.

There was insufficient space at the docks and hards for all the transports and LSTs. So many of the infantry companies were fed out to vessels anchored in the bays on Higgins boats. LST 459 moved away from the quay, sailed slowly to the center of the river in Plymouth Harbor, and tied up to another LST.

We were side by side with so many crafts, Eastridge said that a man could have jumped from one deck to another for a half mile or more toward the sea. We could see destroyers and larger ships at anchor. The harbor was just jammed with boats.

Altogether, there were 2,727 ships ranging from battleships to transports and landing craft that would cross on their own bottoms. They came from 12 nations. The United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Greece, and Holland.

They were divided into the Western Naval Task Force, 931 ships headed for Omaha and Utah, and the Eastern Naval Task Force, 1,796 ships headed for Gold, Juno, and Sword. On the decks of the LSTs were the Higgins boats and other craft too small to cross the channel on their own. There were 2,66 of them.

Thus, the total armada amounted to 5,333 ships and craft of all types, more vessels, as Admiral Morrison pointed out, than there were in all the world when Elizabeth I was queen of England.

The first to move out were the mine sweepers. Their job was to sweep along the English coast in case the Luftvafa and Eboats had dropped mines in the area, then proceed to clear five channels for the separate assault forces O, U, G, J, and S, marking them with lighted dan buoys spaced at one mile intervals along the 400 m wide channels, and finally clear the area in which the transports would anchor off the beaches. There were 245 vessels involved in this mammoth sweeping job. They began their work on the night of May 31 through June 1.

On June 3, the gunfire support and bombardment ships of the Western Naval Task Force set sail from Belfast headed south through the Irish Sea. They included the battleships Nevada, veteran of the Pearl Harbor attack, Texas, the oldest in the US fleet, and Arkansas, along with seven cruisers, and 21 destroyers. They would lead the way.

After they rounded Land's End and passed the isle of white, the LSTs, LCTs, LCMS, and the transports would follow. They were to get underway in the pre-dawn hours of June 4, rendevous, and form up in convoys.

As the troops filed onto their transports and landing craft, they were handed an order of the day from General Eisenhower. It began, "Soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force. You are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of libertyloving people everywhere march with you. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well equipped, and battleh hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."

Sergeant Slaughter had his buddies sign his copy. He wrapped it in plastic, put it in his wallet, and carried it through Normandy all the way to the Elba River in Eastern Germany. I still have that document framed hanging over my writing desk. Slaughter said, "It is my most treasured souvenir of the war. Thousands of those who received Eisenhower's order of the day saved it. I cannot count the number of times I've gone into the den of a veteran of D-Day to do an interview and seen it framed and hanging in a prominent place. I have one on my office wall."

Private Felix Brham of the 116th Infantry got everyone on his ship to sign a 500 Frank note he had won in a poker game. One guy asked why, and I said, "Fellows, some of us are never getting out of this alive. We may never see each other again. We may be crippled or whatever. So sign this. I have that hanging on my wall in a frame. I wouldn't take anything for it."

Officers considerably junior to Eisenhower were tempted to try their hand at inspiration. After his LST530 took on its cargo of Churchill tanks, jeeps, trucks, six Higgins boats, and 600 British soldiers destined for Gold Beach. Lieutenant Tony Duke of the US Navy thought he would give a speech over the ship's loudspeaker. Thoughts of Shakespeare and Henry V ran through his mind, but a British Army colonel came up to the bridge. Put his hand on my shoulder. I'll never forget it. And said, "Careful, young fellow. Most of my men have seen the worst of desert warfare, and a good many of them were in France and evacuated through Dunkirk. So, I'd advise you to go easy, go quick, and don't get dramatic or emotional." My own emotions were thumping, straining inside of me, but I took his lead and made a very simple announcement. I realized later that I would have made a real ass out of myself if I'd let go with exactly how I did feel.

The first thing most crews did was to feed the soldiers. "The Navy chow was wonderful," Eastridge recalled. "Our men were talking about transferring to the Navy for the next war."

On board the transport, Samuel Chase, Captain Oscar Rich, an artillery observer for the fifth field artillery battalion of the first division, whose tiny L5 aircraft had been disassembled with the wings folded back and the propeller put inside the plane, which was swung on board by winch, went below to study the foam rubber map of the Calvados coastline. It was the most detailed thing I had ever seen in my life. The trees were there, the trails, the roads, the houses, the beach obstacles, everything was there, and I spent hours examining it. I could see my first airirstrip in an apple orchard just off the draw, going up from Easy Red, Omaha Beach. Everything was to scale. It was actually like being in an airplane about 500 ft above the beach and looking at the beach and seeing the whole thing in true perspective. It was uncanny how they had built this thing.

Finally, he broke away from the map and joined a poker game. The players included Robert Kappa, the famous Life magazine photographer, and correspondent Don Whitehead.

Once on board, for most of the troops, there was little to do except gamble, read, or spread rumors. Private Clare Galdonic found a softball and two gloves. He started playing catch with a buddy, but made a bad throw, and the ball went over the side.

On his LCT, Walter Sidlowski of the fifth ESB discovered that the skipper had put the toilet off limits for army personnel so as not to put a strain on the facilities. Sidlowski and some buddies put their engineering skills to work and constructed hanging toilet seats which gave some comic relief when all the seats were occupied just as an admiral's barge passed by.

Men listened to the radio. They groaned when Axis Sally told them to come on over. We are waiting for you. They cheered when the fall of Rome was announced. They read books. Lieutenant Frank Beetle of the 16th Regiment First Division recalled reading, believe it or not, about Plato in a paperback edition of Will Durant's Story of Philosophy.

Some of the companies of the Second Ranger Battalion went on board the New Amsterdam, a small passenger boat for the journey across the channel. It was a British ship with a British crew and British food, meaning kidney stew, which caused much complaint. The Rangers, being Rangers, there was no sitting around waiting. They continued their training and conditioning by stringing ropes up to the mast to practice rope climbing. They did push-ups, sit-ups, and even close order drill.

There were some screw-ups. Captain Robert Walker of the 116th Regiment had done practice exercises on LCVPs, LCTs, ducks, and LCMS. The only type of landing craft he had never been on was an LCI. For the invasion, naturally, he was assigned to LCI 91 and designated as billeting officer. The ship's capacity was 180 men, but he had 200 badly overloaded men on his roster. In addition, LCI 91 was already carrying large rolls of telephone wire, Bangalore torpedoes, satchel charges, grap nails, extra flamethrowers, and much, much more.

Nevertheless, Walker managed to crowd everyone in, then talked to the skipper, a Coast Guard lieutenant from Boston. The skipper said he had entered the Coast Guard anticipating spending the war guarding the Atlantic coast near Boston, but now was about to embark on his third invasion.

Lieutenant Charles Ryan of the 18th Regiment First Division had been on an LCI in an exercise, so he knew what to expect when his craft moved out into the open channel. He described the LCI as quote a metal box designed by a satist to move soldiers across water while creating in them such a sense of physical discomfort, seasickness, and physical degradation and anger as to induce them to land in such an angry condition as to bring destruction, devastation, and death upon any person or thing in sight or hearing. It combined the movements of roller coaster, bucking bronco, and a camel.

Around the airfields, glider troops and paratroopers checked out their equipment for about the 1,000th time. Tried to think of some place to carry an extra pack of cigarettes or an extra grenade. Visited the models of the Kotantan or the Or and De's rivers one last time, and then once more. They were tightly sealed in, ready at a moment's notice to march out to the airfield and get into the Britishbuilt Horsa gliders or Americanbuilt C-47s to get the invasion underway.

At another airfield, Fairford Ford in Glchester, a less well-known unit prepared for the flight over the channel. It was a special air service operation. SAS was a British Army unit formed to operate behind Axis lines. It consisted of three regiments, one to work in France, plus two French battalions and a Belgian company.

Captain Michael RD Foot was a brigade intelligence officer in SAS. Since August 1942, he had been studying the German occupiers of France and their defenses. He had gone on a commando raid. Now he was preparing to send off some special teams to take advantage of what he knew about the Germans in Normandy. Because Foot was bigoted, he was not allowed to go behind enemy lines.

Foot had experienced a difficult time in getting his teams for the operation cenamed Titanic. Foot had picked Titanic from a list. Trusting that would sound large to a German, he had approached his regimental commander, who was preparing his squads for behind the lines bridge destruction and other acts of sabotage, to ask for four small parties of SAS troops.

"To do what?" the CO asked roughly. "To provide a bit of deception to assist in the landing." "No," the CO responded. "Colonel," said Foot. "This is an order." "Not to me," said the colonel. "Put it in writing if you like, and I will reply in writing why I won't do it. But why should we waste paper? I will tell you why I won't do it." He softened a bit and explained, "In the early days of the regiment, we were all briefed to raid an Italian airfield. Intelligence canled it at the last minute. We went on leave in Cairo, came back nursing our hangovers, and were told, 'Right, chaps. It's on tonight. Off you go.' Very few of us came back, and I swore then I was going to have no further dealings with any intelligence authority. Get out."

Foot went to see Colonel Franks, commander of one of the other regiments in SAS, quote, "with whom I had made my very first parachute jump, his first jump, too. We were reasonable friends, and he rather grudgingly agreed to Titanic, but only if it was cut down from four parties to two." Foot agreed. He went down to Fairford, which was jammed with SAS teams preparing to go into France to fight. And there he gave his two teams, each consisting of an officer, an NCO, and two privates, the special equipment he had helped dream up and their mission.

The equipment consisted of about 500 dummy parachutists, a record player, and a mass of very pistols and ammunition. Foot explained to the two teams that the idea was to drop the dummies, which would self-destruct on landing with a small explosion and a flash, then jumped themselves carrying the equipment. On landing, they were to turn on the gramophone. The record would play snatches of soldiers conversation interspersed with small arms fire. Then they should move around the area shooting off Viri pistols. One party would go in about midway between Ruen and Laav. the other near.

The French SAS battalion had its own special missions, including one for an advanced party to seize a landing place in Britany in order to bring the whole battalion into Britany. The leader was a big game hunter named Burgoyne, who had lost an arm, but taught himself how to parachute with a single arm. The Frenchmen in the party were scheduled to be the first Allied soldiers to land in France.

All across England, from fourman squads of the SAS to the overstrength divisions of the 6th, 82nd, and 101st Airborne, the men going into France by air were ready. By the evening of June 3, the assault waves of the AEF were loaded up. Force O carrying the 29th Division for the right flank at Omaha, coming out of Falmouth, had the longest distance to sail, so it sied forth first during the night.

To General Eisenhower, the smell of victory was in the air. On the far shore, all was quiet. Raml spent June 2nd hunting for stags. On June 3rd, he drove to Paris to buy shoes for Lucy's birthday, which would come on June 6th. In Paris, he conferred with Runstead, who agreed with him that there is still no sign that the invasion is imminent. The tides in the straight of Dover would not be suitable for an invasion until mid June.

Raml checked the weather report. It indicated increasing cloudiness, high winds, and rain. He decided to go to Herlingan for Lucy's birthday, then on to Bereskaden to see Hitler to beg for reinforcements. He wanted two additional Panzer divisions and control of all the tanks. He wrote in his diary, "The most urgent problem is to win the furer over by personal conversation."

Although Raml had half or less of what he calculated he required in men, guns, mines, Raml's asparagus, beach obstacles, and fixed imp placements, he exuded confidence. He had brought to his task outward enthusiasm and confidence. Morale was apparently high all along the Atlantic wall. Or so the German leaders told themselves. A secret Gestapo morale report claimed that the troops were actually looking forward to the invasion. People see it as our last chance to turn the tide. It said, "There is virtually no fear of the invasion discernable."

Raml had managed to persuade some of his officers and a few of his troops that not only did they have a chance, they would prevail. Most German soldiers on the coast hoped the invasion would come far from them. But if it did hit them, many were prepared to stand and fight. Solcommen was Gobble's sneer. Let them come. And why not? Even the battalions had landing obstacles, barbed wire, and mines in front of their trenches and fortified pillboxes. To the rear, mortars and artillery pieces had zeroed in on every feature of the beach. At their sides were casemates holding 88mm cannon, prepared to fire crisscross across their front. Behind them stood German sergeants, pistols ready.

Those allied briefers who told their men that the troops they would face on D-Day were inferior and could be expected to run away had got it wrong. Those briefers who reminded their men that the battalions were made up of rough, simple, ignorant men with German non-coms and officers to ensure that they fought had got it right. But for the German high command, there was the nagging problem of surrender. They feared that many of their men would take the first opportunity to turn themselves into PSWs, and they too had got it right.

At Omaha Beach, Major General Dietrich Chry commanded the 352nd Division, which had moved up from Slow to Calvados in May. Christ was a veteran of the Eastern Front, where he had distinguished himself, but his disposition of his forces in Calvados left much to be desired. On the Eastern Front, the German practice was to let the Red Army attack, then counterattack with reserves held back from the front line. That was not Raml's idea at all in Normandy, of course, but in accord with German doctrine, Raml left tactical dispositions up to his subordinates. Thus, at Omaha, the only place in Christ's sector of the coast stretching from the mouth of the Vir River to Aromash, where an amphibious assault could come ashore, he had in place but one artillery battalion and two infantry battalions from the 716th Infantry Regiment. Christ had his reserve 10 infantry battalions and four artillery battalions strong as much as 12 mi back from the coast.

There was one advantage to the Germans in this arrangement. Allied intelligence had failed to see the move of part of the 352nd strength to the coast. Briefers told the 29th division that Omaha would be defended only by second rate troops from the 716th division.

Like Rammo, Colonel General Dolman, commanding the Seventh Army in Normandy, was convinced that the deteriorating weather precluded an invasion. He ordered a map exercise to be conducted in Ren on June 6th. All divisional commanders plus two regimenal commanders per division were ordered to attend. Admiral Kanka canled Ebo sea patrols because of the foul weather. Only the one-legged General Eric Marx in command of the 84th Corps on the western sector of the Calvados coast and in the Kotantan was uneasy. He was especially concerned about the 716th and 352nd divisions in Calvados. Each division had a 50 km line to defend. "It's the weakest sector of my whole core," he complained. On June 1, he went to Aromash. Looking out to sea, he told an army captain at his side, "If I know the British, they'll go to church next Sunday for one last time and sail Monday, June 5." Army Group B says they're not going to come yet, and that when they do, it'll be at Cala. So, I think we'll be welcoming them on Monday right here."

Chapter 10. Decision to Go.

At the end of May, as the loading began, Air Vice Marshal Trafford Lee Mallerie, who had doubted from the first the wisdom of dropping the two American airborne divisions into the Gatanten, came to Eisenhower at his headquarters in Southwick House, Admiral Ramsay's HQ, taken over by Sha for its command post for the invasion just north of Portsmouth to protest once again. Intelligence had discovered that the Germans had put their 91st division into the central Katan, exactly where the 82nd Airborne was scheduled to drop. The 82nd had moved its drop zone to the west to avoid the Germans, but Lee Mallerie felt not far enough. He told Eisenhower, "We must not carry out this airborne operation." He predicted 70% losses in glider strength and at least 50% in paratroop strength even before the paratroopers hit the ground. He warned of a feudal slaughter of two fine divisions. Futal because the divisions would not be able to make any contribution to the battle. To send them into the Katan was just plain sacrifice in his words.

Eisenhower went to his trailer about a mile from Southwick House and in his words, "And thought it over again, I had no need for experts at this late time." He later described this as his most worrisome moment in the war, and he wrote in his memoirs, "It would be difficult to conceive of a more soul-wracking problem." He reviewed the entire operation in his mind, then concentrated on the American airborne. He knew that if he disregarded Lee Mallerie's warning, and it proved accurate, then I would carry to my grave the unbearable burden of a conscience justly accusing me of the stupid blind sacrifice of thousands of the flower of our youth. End quote.

But he felt that if he canceled the airborne mission, he would have to cancel the landing at Utah Beach. If the paratroopers were not there to seize the causeway exits, the entire fourth division would be endangered. But cancellation of Utah would so badly disarrange the elaborate plan as to endanger the whole overlord operation. Further, Lee Mallerie was only making a prediction, and the experience with airborne actions in Sicily and Italy, where Lee Mallalerie had not been present, Overlord was his first involvement with a paratroop operation. Even though the airborne performance in 1943 had been flawed in many ways, by no means justified Lee Mallerie's extreme pessimism. So I felt we had to put those two airborne divisions in, Eisenhower related, and they had to take Sare Eglles and capture the causeway exits and protect our flank.

He called Lee Mallalerie to tell him of his decision and followed the call up with a letter. He wrote Lee Mallalerie, "There is nothing for it but to go." And ordered him to see to it that his own doubts and pessimism not be spread among the troops.

While Raml was going to see Hitler to beg for more tanks and a tighter command structure, Eisenhower was visited by Churchill, who was coming to the Supreme Commander to beg a favor. He wanted to go along on the invasion on HMS Belfast. Of course, no one likes to be shot at. Eisenhower later remarked. But I must say that more people wanted in than wanted out on this one.

As Eisenhower related the story, I told him he couldn't do it. I was in command of this operation and I wasn't going to risk losing him. He was worth too much to the Allied cause. He thought a moment and said, "You have the operational command of all forces, but you are not responsible administratively for the makeup of the crews." And I said, "Yes, that's right." He said, "Well, then I can sign on as a member of the crew of one of his majesty's ships, and there's nothing you can do about it." I said, "That's correct, but prime minister, you will make my burden a lot heavier if you do it." Churchill said he was going to do it anyway.

Eisenhower had his chief of staff, General Smith, call King George V 6th, to explain the problem. The king told Smith, "You boys leave Winston to me." He called Churchill to say, "Well, as long as you feel that it is desirable to go along, I think it is my duty to go along with you." Churchill gave up.

With De Gaul, it was Eisenhower asking the favor. On June 3, Churchill brought Deal to Southwick House, where Eisenhower gave him a briefing on Overlord. This was the first de Gaulle knew of the plan, and he subjected Eisenhower to an hour-long lecture on what he was doing wrong. Eisenhower replied that he wished he had benefited from De Gaul's general ship earlier, but now it was too late.

Then Eisenhower showed him a copy of a speech he would be making to the French people on D-Day, urging Frenchmen to carry out my orders. He asked the Gaul to make a follow-up broadcast, urging his countrymen to accept the shaep printed Franks. De Gaul said, "No, the French people should obey him, not Sha. Only the French government, of which he was president, had the right to issue currency." Eisenhower pleaded with him to no avail. The whole thing was, in Eisenhower's words, a rather sorry mess.

When Churchill and De Gaul left, Eisenhower wrote a memorandum for his diary which he entitled Worries of a Commander. At the top of the list was De Gaul, and he wrote three paragraphs on the difficulties of dealing with the French. Next came weather. He was about to go to a weather conference. My tentative thought, he wrote, is that the desiraability for getting started on the next favorable tide is so great, and the uncertainty of the weather is such that we could never anticipate really perfect weather coincident with proper tidal conditions, that we must go, unless there is a real and very serious deterioration in the weather.

Eisenhower, his principal subordinates, and all the officers and men of the AEF had spent months training, planning, preparing for this moment. The mighty host, in Eisenhower's words, was tense as a coiled spring, ready for the moment when its energy should be released, and it would vault the English Channel. He was determined to go, if at all possible.

On the morning of June 3, the LCTs in the Dart River started moving out. Hundreds of British citizens lined the shore, waving goodbye and good luck. Enson Edwin Gail on LCT 853, a part of flotilla 17, was 20 years old, a 90-day wonder. His skipper turned to Gail and said, "Edwin, you know, we may not do anything as worthwhile as this again in our lives. It is a fine thing to be here."

Lieutenant Dean Rockwell, the former high school football coach, commanded a flotilla of 16 LCTs. Each LCT was carrying four DD tanks scheduled to hit the beach in front of the first wave of infantry, so he was one of the first to move out into the channel. His LCTs began departing Weimoth late on June 3. It was soon, in his words, pitch black, no lights, no nothing. And to say pandemonium rained is an understatement because we not only had LCTs but pickboats and escort craft and all kinds of ships trying to sort themselves out. Radio silence prevailed. The ships could not use blinker lights. We could not do anything but curse and swear until the whole thing got sorted out.

Around the landing ships and craft. The warships circled to form up their own convoys. Storekeeper secondass Homer Kerry on LCT505 remembered the sight of two British cruisers quote in the soft twilight racing past us headed south for the coast of France. Their shapely boughs cut the water and passed us as if we were standing still. Beautiful like two greyhounds. It was a comfort to know that they were on our side.

The second battalion of the 116th regiment was on the transport Thomas Jefferson. The men knew the ship well, having made two practice landings from her. Private Harry Parley noted that this time, however, humor was infrequent and forced. My thoughts were of home and family, and of course, what we were getting into. It saddened me to think of what would happen to some of my fellow GIs, whom I had grown to love. His heart went out especially to Lieutenant Ferguson, who had initiated a discussion about philosophies of death with Parley. I did not envy him his position, Parley said. He had come to know the men quite intimately as a result of having had to read and censor our outgoing male. The loss of any of his men would be a two-fold tragedy for him.

Private Parley carried an 84-lb flamethrower, plus a pistol, shovel, life belt, raincoat, canteen, a block of dynamite, rations, and three cartons of cigarettes. He was worried about keeping up with his assault team on the dash across the beach. He scared the hell out of his buddies by using a trick he had just learned. He could set off a small flame at the mouth of his flamethrower, which would produce the same hissing sound as when the weapon was actually being fired without triggering the propelling mechanism. Standing on the deck of the Thomas Jefferson, he calmly used the flamethrower to light a cigarette, sending a score or more of the men scurrying in every direction.

Private George Roach of Company A 116th was saying his rosary. He was worried about casualties, too. quote, "Because we were going to be in the first wave, and we figured the chances of our survival were very slim." More than half the men in his company came from the same town, Bedford, Virginia. Most of the regiment came from southwestern Virginia.

"Sergeant Joe Pilk of the 16th Regiment, First Division, was on the transport Samuel P. Chase. While we were riding around in the channel, he recalled, we were glad that this was the real thing. Not that we wanted to do it, but we knew it had to be done. So, we wanted to get it over with."

The weather, which had been beautiful, clear skies, little wind for the first 3 days of June, began to deteriorate. Clouds formed and began to lower. The wind came up. There was a smell of rain in the air. On his LCT, Corporal Robert Miller was miserable. It started to drizzle. It was cold. He was on the open deck without shelter. The waves kicked up and started rocking his LCT. The steel deck was too slippery to lie down on, so he tried to catch some sleep on the canvas covering a top the trucks, but the wind and rain and rocking increased, so he gave it up.

Private Henry Gerald of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles was also on an LCT. At daylight June 4, as the craft moved out into the channel, he joined his mates in the cruise quarters for a briefing from his platoon leader. The LCT, quote, "would go up about 20 ft and then drop out from underneath us. Those who looked green yesterday were ghastly this morning. The deck was a wash in vomit." Gerald was congratulating himself on not getting seasick when, quote, "A chap across from me began to heave up into his puke bag. He had an upper plate that came out and disappeared into the bag as he was being sick. That wasn't so bad until he reached into the bag, retrieved the plate, and popped it back into his mouth. At that sight, Gerald lost his breakfast."

In the channel, the drizzle began to turn into a cold, penetrating rain. Most of the men on the LCIS and LCTs had no shelter. The decks were slippery, the craft rocking in the choppy water. Everyone was wet and miserable. Eisenhower smelled victory in the air. But to the men of the AEF, whose transports and landing craft had left the harbor, the smell in the air was vomit.

During the first days of June, Eisenhower and his principal subordinates had held twice daily meetings with the SHA meteorological committee at 0930 and 1600. Group Captain JM Stag, 28 years old, and described by Eisenhower as a dow but canny Scott, made the weather predictions, then answered questions. Eisenhower had been privately meeting with Stag for a month to hear his predictions, so he could have some sense of the basis on which Stag made them and how good he was, knowing that, as he said, the weather in this country is practically unpredictable.

The final weather conference was scheduled for 0400 June 4. Even as more ships sailed out of their harbors and those already at sea began to form up into convoys, Stag had bad news. A high pressure system was moving out, a low coming in. The weather on June 5 would be overcast and stormy with a cloud base of 500 ft to zero and force five winds. Worse, the situation was deteriorating so rapidly that forecasting more than 24 hours in advance was highly undependable.

Eisenhower asked his subordinates for their views. Montgomery wanted to go. Tedar and Lee Mallalerie wanted a postponement. Ramsay said the Navy could do its part, but warned that the accuracy of the naval bombardment would be badly reduced by poor visibility and high seas, and that the Higgins boats would be hard to control. Eisenhower remarked that Overlord was being launched with ground forces that were not overwhelmingly powerful. The operation was feasible only because of Allied air superiority. Without that advantage, the invasion was too risky. He asked if anyone present disagreed. No one did.

Eisenhower decided to postpone for at least one day, hoping for better conditions on June 6th. At 0600 hours, he gave his order to put everything on hold. At just about that moment, Raml began his long journey east away from the coast to see his wife and his furer. As he departed in a light drizzle, he remarked, "There's not going to be an invasion, and if there is, then they won't even get off the beaches."

The order to postpone went out to the Allied convoys, which were under strict radio silence in a variety of ways. Lieutenant Benjamin France, US Navy, was gunnery officer on the destroyer Baldwin. The Baldwin was still in Portland when the word came down. She set sail at flank speed to catch up with the leading convoys. When she did, the executive officer called over a bullhorn to the skippers of the transports and landing craft. The operation has been postponed, returned to base. Baldwin, caught up to the mind sweeper in the van when it was within 50 km of the French coast.

Lieutenant Rockwell was headed toward his rendevous point when a picketbo came alongside LCT 535 and handed him a message post Mike 1. That meant turn around and go back to harbor. He said, "So we all turn around. Hundreds and hundreds of ships of various sizes." About midday he got back to Weaimoth. For Rockwell the postponement was a blessing in disguise. There had been some collisions during the night. Delicate landing and launching gear was damaged. Engines needed replacing or servicing. Rockwell's own LCT 535 needed a new engine. He managed to get it in place before nightfall.

Enson Sam Grundfast commanded LCT 607. He got the order to abort by flag signal. he recalled. Imagine the confusion, those hundreds of landing craft trying to get into Portsmouth Harbor. We were jammed in. You could walk across that vast harbor going from boat to boat, making the site even more vivid. Every craft and ship had a barrage balloon waving in the wind overhead. The balloons were connected to the vessels by steel cables. Their purpose was to keep the Luftvafa from making low-level passes at the fleet.

For the troops, June 4 was a terrible day. The men of the fourth infantry division spent it at sea. There was not time to go all the way back to Devonshshire if Eisenhower decided on a June 6th landing. The transports and landing craft circled off the aisle of white. Waves broke over the sides. Rain came down. The men were combat dressed with nowhere to go. No one wanted to play crafts or poker or read a book or listen to another briefing. It was just misery.

In the harbors or up the rivers where the ships and craft could drop anchor or tie up to one another, the men were not allowed off their vessels. They sat, cursed, waited. We bitched up a storm, Private Brham of the 116th Regiment recalled. Because we wanted to go. We wanted to go. This sounds crazy, but we had come this far. We'd been sitting in England so long. We wanted to get this thing over with and get the hell home. The waiting for history to be made was most difficult.

Private Clare Galdonic recalled, "I spent much time in prayer. Being cooped up made it worse. Like everyone else, I was seasick, and the stench of vomit permeated our craft."

The airborne troops had their feet on solid ground and were undercover from the rain, but they too were unhappy. They had got ready, made their last weapons check, packed their equipment when word came down that the mission was off. Major Howard wrote in his diary, "The weather's broken. What cruel luck! I'm more downhearted than I dare show. Wind and rain. How long will it last? The longer it goes on, the more prepared the Huns will be, the greater the chance of obstacles in the landing zone. Please God, it'll clear up tomorrow."

Some of the enlisted men in Howard's company went to the movies. They saw stormy weather with Lena Horn and Fats Waller. The officers gathered in Lieutenant David Wood's room and polished off two bottles of whiskey. Twice Lieutenant Den Brotheridge commanding the first platoon of deco company fell into a depressed mood. Wood could hear him reciting a poem that began, "If I should die."

Private Edward Jeziorski of the 57th PIR 82nd Airborne checked and rechecked his equipment. He said, "Then I remember vividly I took my girlfriend's picture out of my wallet and taped it inside of my helmet, thinking it would be much safer there." When word of the cancellation came down, some guys were relieved a little bit, but for most of us it was just a true misery to be held over. We were all anxious to make a move.

Sergeant Jerry Eids of the 62nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion on an LCT got back to Weaimoth late on June 4. Of course, we didn't know what was going on, but everybody was just cussing and raising Cain about another dry run. Here they had wasted another day. Sergeant Eids was regular army. He knew the army had its ways, that hurry up and wait was the lot of the soldier. So he told one of his privates, "What the hell? We have a lot of days to waste."

Lieutenant James Edward of the 115th Regiment got back to port in Plymouth that afternoon. He recalled this presented the site not to be forgotten. Just wallto-wall ships tied up together for lack of space. What a target. If only the Germans had known. Actually, there was one German raid that night. A squadron of four German bombers braved the storm and flew over Pool, also jammed with ships and craft. Lieutenant Eugene Bernstein, commanding an LCTR, recalled that these improbable strays, quote, "were greeted by a bombardment from the ships that must have amazed them. The sky was ablaze with anti-aircraft fire."

Raml spent the day on the road. He arrived in Herlingan in time to go for a walk in the twilight with Lucy. She was trying out her new shoes, her husband's birthday present. General Salmouth of the 15th Army was hunting in the Ardan. General Dolman of the 7th Army was on the road to Ren to get ready for the map exercise scheduled for June 6th. General Foyinger of the 21st Panzer Division, accompanied by his operations officer, was on his way to Paris to visit his girlfriend.

The Germans had penetrated some of the resistance groups in France, and were picking up a few of the coded phrases being broadcast to the resistance, telling the groups to prepare to go into action. But there had been so many false alarms in May. The tides in the straight of Dover were not right, and the weather was closing in so fast that they gave the messages no great credence. As one of Runstead's intelligence officers put it, "It would be absurd for the Allies to announce their invasion in advance over the BBC." Before leaving for Ren, General Dolman canled a planned alert for the night, feeling that the weather precluded an invasion. On many previous nights in May, his troops had been on full alert.

A part of the second Ranger battalion was on board an old channel steamer, the Prince Charles. The ship had carried Rangers into the Anzio Beach head in Italy in January. It spent the day circling off the aisle of White. The British skipper told Lieutenant Kchner, "They're going to have to run this thing shortly or we'll have to go back. We're running out of food and fuel." According to Kchner, the British food wasn't all that good, so that didn't worry us too much, but the fuel did. It worried Admiral Ramsay even more. When Eisenhower had decided to postpone, the admiral had warned the Supreme Commander that no second postponement could be made to the 7th because the fleet would have to refuel. That meant Overlord had to go on June 6th, or Eisenhower would have to accept a fortnight's postponement for the next favorable tide on June 19.

That evening, June 4, Eisenhower met in the mess room at Southwick House with Montgomery, Tedar, Smith, Ramsay, Lee, Mallerie, Bradley, General Kenneth Strong, Schaef G2, and various other high-ranking staff officers. The wind and rain rattled the window panes in the French doors in staccato sounds. The mess room was large with a heavy table at one end and easy chairs at the other. Coffee was served and there was desolatory conversation.

At 21:30, Stag came in with the latest weather report. He had good news. He said he anticipated a break in the storm. General Strong recalled that at Stag's prediction, quote, "A cheer went up. You never heard middle-aged men cheer like that. The rain that was then pouring down, Stag continued, would stop before daybreak. There would be 36 hours of more or less clear weather. Winds would moderate. The bombers and fighters ought to be able to operate on Monday night, June 5 and 6, although they would be hampered by scattered clouds."

When he heard that, Lee Mallerie lost his enthusiasm. He urged postponement to June 19. Eisenhower began pacing the room, head down, chin on his chest, hands clasped behind his back. Suddenly, he shot his chin out at Smith. "What do you think?" "It's a hell of a gamble, but it's the best possible gamble," Smith replied. Eisenhower nodded, paced some more, stopped, looked at Tedar, and asked his opinion. Tedar thought it chancy and wanted to postpone. Again, Eisenhower nodded, paced, stopped, turned to Montgomery, and asked, "Do you see any reason for not going Tuesday?" Montgomery looked Eisenhower in the eye and replied, "I would say go."

The high command of the AEF was split. Only Eisenhower could decide. Smith was struck by the loneliness and isolation of a commander at a time when such a momentous decision was to be taken by him with full knowledge that failure or success rests on his individual decision. Eisenhower paced, chin tucked on his chest. He stopped and remarked, "The question is just how long can you hang this operation on the end of a limb and let it hang there?" No one spoke up to answer that question. Eisenhower resumed pacing. The only sounds in the room were the rattling of the French doors and the rain. It hardly seemed possible that an amphibious attack could be launched in such weather.

At 2145 hours, Eisenhower gave his decision. "I am quite positive that the order must be given." Ramsay rushed out to give the order to the fleet. Eisenhower drove back to his trailer to catch some sleep. By 2300 hours, every vessel in the fleet had received its order to resume sailing. D-Day would be June 6th, 1944.

By midnight, June 4 and 5, the convoys began forming up. Admiral Ramseay issued an order of the day to every officer and man in his fleet. It is our privilege to take part in the greatest amphibious operation in history. The hopes and prayers of the free world and of the enslaved people of Europe will be with us and we cannot fail them. I count on every man to do his utmost to ensure the success of this great enterprise. Good luck to you all and Godspeed.

Eisenhower woke at 0330 hours June 5. The wind was shaking his trailer. The rain seemed to be traveling in horizontal streaks. According to Stag, the rain should have been letting up. He dressed and gloomily drove through a mile of mud to Southwick House for the last weather meeting. It was still not too late to call off the operation, to have the fleet return to Safe Harbor and try again on June 19, and if the storm continued, that would have to be done.

In the mess room, steaming hot coffee helped shake the gray mood and unsteady feeling. But as Eisenhower recalled, the weather was terrible. Southwick House was shaking. Oh, it was really storming. Stag came in, and to Eisenhower's delight. He had a little grin on his face. He never laughed very much. He was a fine man, and he said, "Well, I'll give you some good news." He was even more certain than he had been 5 hours earlier that the storm would break before dawn. But the bad news was that good weather was only likely through Tuesday. Wednesday could be rough again. That raised the danger that the first waves would get ashore, but the follow-up units would not.

Eisenhower asked for opinions again, pacing, shooting out his chin. Montgomery still wanted to go, as did Smith. Ramsay was concerned about proper spotting for naval gunfire, but thought the risk worth taking. Tedar was reluctant. Lee Mallerie still thought air conditions were below the acceptable minimum. The ships were sailing into the channel. If they were to

be called back. It had to be done now.

The Supreme Commander was the only man who could do it. He resumed pacing. Some of those in the room thought he paced for as long as 5 minutes. Eisenhower thought it was about 45 seconds. "I'm sure it wasn't 5 minutes," he later said. "5 minutes under such conditions would seem like a year."

He reviewed in his mind the alternatives. If Stag was wrong, at best the AEF would be landing seasick men without air cover or an accurate naval bombardment. But to postpone again would be agonizing and dangerous. The men had been briefed. They could not be held on their transports and landing craft for 2 weeks. The risk that the Germans would penetrate the secret of Overlord would be very high.

Typically, Eisenhower's concern was with the men. "Don't forget," he said in an interview 20 years later, "some hundreds of thousands of men were down here around Portsmouth, and many of them had already been loaded for some time, particularly those who were going to make the initial assault. Those people in the ships and ready to go were in cages, you might say. You couldn't call them anything else. They were fenced in. They were crowded up, and everybody was unhappy."

Eisenhower went on, "Goodness knows those fellows meant a lot to me, but these are the decisions that have to be made when you're in a war. You say to yourself, 'I'm going to do something that will be to my country's advantage for the least cost. You can't say without any cost. You know, you're going to lose some of them, and it's very, very difficult.'"

He stopped pacing, faced his subordinates, then said quietly but clearly, "Okay, let's go." And again, cheers rang through Southwick House. Then the commanders rushed from their chairs and dashed outside to get to their command posts. Within 30 seconds, the mess room was empty, except for Eisenhower.

His isolation was symbolic, for having given the order, he was now powerless. "As he put it, that's the most terrible time for a senior commander. He has done all that he can do, all the planning and so on. There's nothing more that he can do."

Eisenhower fortified himself with coffee and breakfast, then went down to Portsmouth to watch the ships starting out and the loading process for the follow-up units. He walked up and down the wharves. Shortly after daylight, the rain stopped. The wind began to die down. At midday, he returned to his trailer where he played a game of checkers on a cracker box with his naval aid, Captain Harry Butcher. Butcher was winning two kings to one when Eisenhower jumped one of his kings and got a draw. He thought that was a good omen.

After lunch, Eisenhower sat at his portable table and scrolled by hand a press release on a pad of paper to be used if necessary. "Our landings have failed," he began, "and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone."

Raml spent a quiet June 5 with Lucy. He gathered wild flowers for a birthday bouquet. His chief of staff, General Hans Spidel, prepared for a party at the chateau in Lar Roong that evening. He called various friends to invite them, saying in one case, "The old man's gone away." General Dolman was in Ren, ready for the map exercise to begin early on Tuesday morning. General Futtinger was in Paris where he intended to spend the night with his girlfriend before driving to Ren the next day. Other division and regiment commanders of 7th Army had farther to travel and began setting out in the afternoon for Ren.

On June 5, General Marx called Colonel Friedri Vandonder height to his headquarters. He said he was too worried to leave his troops that night. He would set out for Ren at first light and wanted Height to join him.

Just outside Khan, Colonel Luke of 21st Panzer Division gave out orders for a night exercise for one of his companies. "Quote, 'In accordance with the plan of training every company in turn for night action over in the Cotentin, other companies were also preparing for night exercises. The rifles would be loaded with wooden bullets.'" GIS, who later picked up clips of this ammunition, were furious with the Germans. The GIS believed that the wooden bullets were designed to inflict horrible wounds and were a monstrous violation of the laws of warfare. Actually, the wood was soft balsa that would not penetrate a body, but would indicate where the bullet hit.

In Beres Garden, Hitler had a routine day. As General Walter Varlamont, Deputy Chief of Staff to General Jodl, later wrote, "On 5 June 1944, German Supreme Headquarters had not the slightest idea that the decisive event of the war was upon them."

On the afternoon of June 5, the Allied Airborne troopers began dressing for battle. Each rifleman carried his M1, either broken down in a padded case called a Griswald container or already assembled, 160 rounds of ammunition, two fragmentation hand grenades, a white phosphorous and orange colored smoke grenade, and a gammon grenade, 2 lbs of plastic explosive powerful enough to damage a tank. Most carried a pistol. The paratroopers' greatest fear was getting shot out of the sky. Next was being caught on the ground at the moment of landing before they could put their rifles into operation, plus a knife and a bayonet. An unwelcome surprise was in order to carry a Mark V anti-tank mine weighing about 10 lb. The only place to fit it was in the musette bag, which led to considerable bitching and rearrangement of loads. Machine gunners carried their weapons broken down and extra belts of ammunition. Mortars, bazookas, and radios were rolled into A5 equipment bundles with cargo shoots attached. Every man carried three days' worth of field rations and of course two or three cartons of cigarettes. One sergeant carried along a baseball. He wrote on it, "To hell with you, Hitler," and said he intended to drop it when his plane got over France. He did. There were gas masks, an ideal place to carry an extra carton of cigarettes. Captain Sam Gibbons of the 5001st PIR stuck two cans of Schlitz beer in his. The men had first aid kits with bandages, sulfa tablets, and two morphine curettes, one for pain and two for eternity. They were also handed a child's toy cricket with the instructions that it could be used in lieu of the normal challenge and password. One click, click was to be answered with two click clicks.

Pathfinders would go first to mark the drop zone with a gadget called the Eureka Rebecca radar beacon system, which could send a signal up to the lead C-47 in each flight. Corporal Frank Brum, a Pathfinder with the 58th PIR, had not only the 65-lb Eureka to carry, but two containers with carrier pigeons. After he set up his Eureka, he was supposed to make a note to that effect and put it in the capsule on the first pigeon's leg, then turn it loose. He was told to release the second pigeon at 0630 with information on how things were going. But when he got to the marshalling area, he discovered he had no way to feed or water the pigeons, so he let them go. Stripped, Broom weighed 137 lb. With all his equipment, including his main and reserve shoots, he weighed 315 pounds.

Around 200 hours, Axis Sally, the of Berlin, came on the radio. "Good evening, 82nd Airborne Division," she said. "Tomorrow morning, the blood from your guts will grease the bogey wheels on our tanks." It bothered some of the men, others reassured them. She had been saying something similar for the previous 10 days. Still, it made men think.

Private John Delur of the 58th PI talked to his friend Frank Tremble about their chances of coming through alive. He thought he'd get a slight wound and survive. "I thought I was going to be killed. That was the last time I saw him."

Private Tom Porcella, also of the 5008th, was torturing himself with thoughts of killing other human beings. This was common. The chaplain worked overtime, assuring soldiers that to kill for their country was not a sin. "Kill or be killed," Porcella said to himself. "Here I am brought up as a good Christian. Obey this and do that. The Ten Commandments say, 'Thou shalt not kill.' There's something wrong with the Ten Commandments or there's something wrong with the rules of the world today. They teach us the Ten Commandments and then they send us out to war. It just doesn't make sense."

When every man was ready, the regiments gathered around their commanders for a last word. Most COs stuck to basics. "Assemble quickly" was the main point, but one or two added a pep talk. The most famous was delivered by Colonel Howard "Jumpy" Johnson, in command of the 5001st PI. Every man in the regiment remembered it vividly and could quote word for word his conclusion. As Lieutenant Carl Cartilage described Johnson's talk, he gave a great battle speech saying, "Victory and liberation and death to the enemy, and some of us would die, and peace cost a price," and so on. Then he said, "I want to shake the hand of each one of you tonight, so line up." And with that, he reached down, pulled his knife from his boot, and raised it high above his head, promising us in a battle cry, "Before the dawn of another day, I'll sink this knife into the heart of the foulest bastard in Nazi land." A resounding yell burst forth from all 2,000 of us as we raised our knives in response.

After the regimental meetings, the companies grouped around their COs and platoon leaders for a final word. The officers gave out the challenge, password, and response: flash, thunder, and welcome. Welcome was chosen because the Germans would pronounce it "welcome." When Captain Charles Shettle of the 56th PI gave out the signals, Dr. Samuel Filer, the regimental dental officer who had volunteered to accompany the assault echelon, approached him. Filer was a German Jew who had escaped Berlin in 1938. "Captain Shettle," Filer asked, "What do I do, Doc?" Shuttle replied, "When you land, don't open your mouth. Take along some extra crickets, and if challenged, snap twice." Later, as Shuttle was inspecting each plane load prior to takeoff, he found Filer with crickets strapped to both arms, both legs, and an extra supply in his pockets.

At about 1900 hours, General Eisenhower paid a visit to the 101st Airborne Division at Greenham Common. He circulated among the men ostensibly to boost their morale, but as Lieutenant Wallace Strobble of the 5002nd PI noted, "I honestly think it was his morale that was improved by being with us." Eisenhower told Captain L. Legs Johnson, "I have done all I can. Now it is up to you." He told a group of enlisted men not to worry, that they had the best equipment and leaders in the world with a vast force coming in behind them. A sergeant from Texas piped up, "Hell, we ain't worried, General. It's the crowds that ought to be worrying now."

With one group, Eisenhower asked, "Is there anyone here from Kansas?" Private Sherman Oiler of Topeka replied, "I'm from Kansas, sir." "What's your name, son?" Oiler was so stricken by being addressed directly by the Supreme Commander that he froze up and forgot his name. After an embarrassing pause, his buddies shouted, "Tell him your name, Oiler." Eisenhower gave him a thumbs up and said, "Go get him, Kansas."

The Supreme Commander turned to Lieutenant Strobble, who had a sign hanging around his neck with a number 23 on it, indicating that he was jump for plane number 23, and asked his name and where he was from. "Strobble, sir. Michigan. Oh, yes, Michigan. Great fishing there. I like it." Eisenhower then asked Strobble if he was ready. Strobble replied that they had all been well prepared, well briefed, and were ready. He added that he thought it wouldn't be too much of a problem. Someone called out, "Now quit worrying, General. We'll take care of this thing for you."

At approximately 2200 hours, as the daylight began to fade, the order rang out. "Shoot up." Each man began the tedious task of buckling on his parachutes and trying to find an empty place to hang or tie on the small mountain of equipment he was carrying into combat. With everything strapped into place, many men found it impossible to take a last minute pee. They marched to their planes and got their first look at the C-47's war paint: three bands of white painted around the fuselage and wings. Every Allied plane involved in D-Day had been thus painted in the previous two days, using up all the white paint in England. The purpose was recognition. In Sicily, Allied ships and troops had fired on their own planes.

Private John Richards of the 5008th looked at his C-47 and noted that it had a picture of a devil holding a girl in a bathing suit sitting on a tray with an inscription saying, "Heaven can wait." He thought to himself, "Let's hope so."

Dutch Schulz of the 5005th, who had managed to gamble away his $2,500 in winnings, still had Jerry Colomby's watch, which he had taken in collateral for a $25 loan. It was Colomby's high school graduation present with an inscription on the back from his parents. Coli was in another stick. Schultz went over to him to hand back the watch, saying, "Here's your watch back, Jerry. You owe me some money, and don't you forget to pay me."

The 55th was at Spanho airfield. As Schultz was lining up to be helped into his C-47, the men were too heavily loaded to make it into the plane on their own. He heard an explosion. A gammon grenade carried by one of the men of headquarters company, First Battalion, had gone off. It set fire to the plane and killed three men, wounding 10 others. Two unheard survivors were assigned to another plane. They both died in combat before dawn. A bit shaken, Schultz found his place on the plane, and the first thing I did was reach for my rosary. Having been raised a Catholic boy, I had great faith in the efficacy of prayers to the blessed mother, and I proceeded to say one rosary after another, promising the blessed mother that I would never, never violate the sixth commandment again.

As the twilight turned to darkness, the last men got on board their planes. Eisenhower was out on the runway calling out, "Good luck." He noticed a short private, in Eisenhower's words, "More equipment than soldier," who snapped him a salute. Eisenhower returned it. Then the private turned to the east and called out, "Look out, Hitler. Here we come."

The pilots started their engines. A great cacophony of sound engulfed the airfield as each C-47 in its turn lurched into line on the taxi strip. At the head of the runway, the pilots locked the brakes and ran up the engines until they screamed. Then, at 10-second intervals, they released the brakes and started down the runway, slowly at first, gathering speed, so overloaded that they barely made it into the sky. When the last plane roared off, Eisenhower turned to his driver, K. Hummersby. She saw tears in his eyes. He began to walk slowly toward his car. "Well," he said quietly, "it's on."

Before going to bed, Admiral Ramsay made a final entry in his handwritten diary. "Monday, June 5, 1944. Thus has been made the vital and crucial decision to stage the great enterprise which shall, I hope, be the immediate means of bringing about the downfall of Germany's fighting power and Nazi oppression and an early cessation of hostilities. I am not under any delusions as to the risks involved in this most difficult of all operations. Success will be in the balance. We must trust in our invisible assets to tip the balance in our favor. We shall require all the help that God can give us, and I cannot believe that this will not be forthcoming." Tired as he must have been, Ramsay caught the spirit and soul of the great undertaking perfectly, especially in his hope for what the results would be for occupied Europe and the world, his recognition that the enterprise was fraught with peril, and his confidence that God was blessing this cause.

Chapter 11. Cracking the Atlantic Wall, the airborne into Normandy.

The Pathfinders went in first. They preceded the main body of troops by an hour or so. Their mission was to mark the drop zones with automatic direction finder radios, Eureka sets, and hallophane lights formed into TE's on the ground. But a cloud bank forced pilots to either climb above it or get below it. So, the Pathfinders jumped from too high or too low an altitude. Further, anti-aircraft fire coming from the ground caused pilots to take evasive action, throwing them off course. As a consequence, of the 18 American Pathfinder teams, only one landed where it was supposed to. One team landed in the channel.

Sergeant Elmo Jones of the 5005th PI jumped at 300 ft or so. Just before exiting the C-47, he said a brief prayer. "Lord, thy will be done. But if I'm to die, please help me die like a man." His chute popped open. He looked up to check the canopy, and just that quick, his feet hit the ground. It was a soft landing, one advantage of a night jump. The men could not see the ground, so they did not tense up just before hitting it. His chute settled over his head, and the first thing that I thought without even trying to get out of my parachute was, "Damn, I just cracked the Atlantic Wall." Jones assembled his team, got the seven men with the lights in place for their tea, told them not to turn on until they could hear the planes coming in, set up his radio, and began sending out his ADF signal. He was one of the few Pathfinders in the right place.

Major John Howard's D-company was the first to go into action as a unit. Glider pilot Sergeant Jim Wallwork put his horse a glider down exactly where Howard wanted it to land beside the Orne canal bridge. Lieutenant Brotheridge led first platoon over the bridge. The horses carrying second and third platoon landed right behind Wallwork. Within minutes, the men secured the area around the bridge, routing about 50 German defenders in the process. Two other platoons landed near the Orne River Bridge and secured it. By 0021 June 6th, 5 minutes after landing, D Company had taken its objectives. It was a brilliant feat of arms.

As the Pathfinders were setting up and Howard's men were carrying out their coup operation, the 13,400 American and nearly 7,000 British paratroopers were coming on. The Americans were following a precise route marked at 10-mi intervals with Eureka sets and at 30 m intervals with aerial beacons over England. 30 m over the channel, a British patrol boat gallop marked the path. It was 30 additional miles to checkpoint Hoboken, marked by a light from a British submarine. At that point, the aircraft made a sharp turn to the southeast, crossed between the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, occupied by the Germans, who were sending up some flak, and headed toward their drop zones in the Cotentin. All planes were maintaining radio silence, so none of the pilots were forewarned by the Pathfinder groups about the cloud bank over the Cotentin.

In the Dakotas, the men prepared themselves for the jump in which "your troubles begin after you hit the ground." This was the $10,000 jump. The GIs were required to buy a $10,000 life insurance policy. The flight over England and out over the channel was a period, 2 hours, and more that came between the end of training, preparation, and briefing, and the beginning of combat. Major General Matthew Ridgeway, commanding the 82nd Airborne, noted that the men sat quietly, deep in their own thoughts.

Lieutenant Eugene Briier of division headquarters was an aid to Major General Maxwell Taylor commanding the 101st Airborne. This would be Taylor's qualifying jump. Five jumps were required to qualify for paratrooper wings, but he wasn't in the least excited. He had brought some pillows along and lay them on the floor of the plane. Briier helped him get out of his chute. Taylor stretched out on the pillows and got in a solid hour's sleep. When Brriier awoke him, it took 5 minutes to get the chute back on.

Private Dwayne Burns of the 58th PI recalled, "Here we sat, each man alone in the dark. These men around me were the best friends I will ever know. I wondered how many would die before the sun came up. Lord, I pray, please let me do everything right. Don't let me get anybody killed, and don't let me get killed either. I really think I'm too young for this."

Private Ken Russell of the 5005th had just made it onto his C-47. Two weeks earlier, he had been running a high fever, a result of his vaccinations, and was sent to a hospital. On June 4, he still had a high fever, but he said, "Like everyone else, I had been looking forward to D-Day since 1940 when I was still in grammar school. Now I was so afraid I would miss it." He begged his way out of the hospital and managed to rejoin his company on June 5.

Flying over the channel, he was struck by the thought that his high school class back in Tennessee was graduating that night. Like many of the Catholic troopers, Dutch Schultz was totally engrossed in my rosaries. Clayton Stor was sitting next to George Dixon, who was going around that rosary giving a lot of Hail Marys. After about 10 minutes, it seemed like it was helping him. So I said, "George, when you're through with that, would you loan it to a buddy?"

It was a time of prayer, Private Harry Ryen Lighter of the 58th PI recalled. "And I guess we all made some rash promises to God." He said that so far as he could tell, everyone was afraid. Fear of being injured yourself, fear of having to inflict injury on other people to survive, and the most powerful feeling of all, fear of being afraid.

The pilots were afraid. For most of the pilots of troop carrier command, this was their first combat mission. They had not been trained for night flying or for flak or bad weather. Their C-47s were designed to carry cargo or passengers. They were neither armed nor armored. Their gas tanks were neither protected nor self-sealing. The possibility of a mid-air collision was on every pilot's mind.

The pilots were part of a gigantic air armada. It took 432 C-47s to carry the 101st Airborne to Normandy. About the same number for the 82nd. They were flying in a V of formation stretched out across the sky, 300 m long, nine planes wide without radio communication. Only the lead pilot in each serial of 45 had a Eureka set with a show of lights from the Plexiglass Astrodome for guidance for the following planes. The planes were 100 ft from wing tip to wing tip in their groups of nine, 1,000 ft from one group to another with no lights except little blue dots on the tail of the plane ahead. That was a tight formation for night flying in planes that were 65 ft long and 95 ft from wing tip to wing tip.

They crossed the channel at 500 ft or less to escape German radar detection, then climbed to 1,500 ft to escape anti-aircraft batteries on the Channel Islands, which did fire on them without effect except to wake sleeping troopers. The airsickness pills the medics had handed out at the airfields had caused many men, including Ken Russell, to doze off. As they approached the Cotentin coast, they descended to 600 ft or so, the designated jump altitude designed to reduce the time the trooper was helplessly descending. When they crossed the coastline, they hit the cloud bank and lost their visibility altogether. The pilots instinctively separated, some descending, some rising, all peeling off to the right or left to avoid a mid-air collision. When they emerged from the clouds, within seconds, or at the most minutes, they were hopelessly separated. Lieutenant Harold Young of the 326th Parachute Engineers recalled that as his plane came out of the clouds, "we were all alone. I remember my amazement. Where had all those C-47s gone?"

Simultaneously, to use the words of many of the pilots, "all hell broke loose." Searchlights, tracers, and explosions filled the sky. Pilot Sydney Ulan of the 99th Troop Carrier Squadron was chewing gum, and the saliva in my mouth completely dried up from the fright. "It seemed almost impossible to fly through that wall of fire without getting shot down, but I had no choice. There was no turning back." They could speed up, which most of them did. They were supposed to throttle back to 90 mph or less to reduce the opening shock for the paratroopers, but 90 mph at 600 ft made them easy targets for the Germans on the ground. So, they pushed the throttle forward and sped up to 150 mph, meanwhile, either descending to 300 ft or climbing to 2,000 ft and more. They twisted and turned, spilling their passengers and cargo. They got hit by machine gun fire, 20 mm shells, and the heavier 88 mm shells. They saw planes going down to their right and left, above and below them. They saw planes explode. They had no idea where they were except that they were over the Cotentin.

The pilots had turned on the red lights over the doors when they crossed the Channel Islands. That was the signal to the jump masters to order their men to stand up and hook up. The pilots turned on the green light when they guessed that they were somewhere near the drop zone. That was the signal to go. Many troopers saw planes below them as they jumped. At least one plane was hit by an equipment bundle. It tore off almost 3 ft of wing tip. Virtually every plane got hit by something. One pilot broke radio silence to call out in desperation, "I've got a paratrooper hung up on my wing." Another pilot came on the air with advice. "Slow down and he'll slide off."

In this frightful madness of gunfire and sky mixed with parachuting men and screaming planes, pilot Chuck Ratliff remembered, "We found we had missed the drop zone and were now back out over the water. We were dumbfounded. What to do?" Ratliff turned that sucker around and circled back. He dropped to 600 ft. The jump master pressed his way into the cockpit to help locate the drop zone. He saw what he thought was it. "We pulled back throttles to a semi stall," Ratliff said, "Hit the green light and the troopers jumped out into the black knight. We dove that plane to 100 ft off the ground and took off for England full boore like a scalded dog."

Sergeant Charles Forsfield of the 100th troop carrier squadron was standing near the jump door, wearing a headset for the intercom radio, passing on information to the jump master. As the green light went on, he was hit by shrapnel. As he fell from four wounds in his arm and hand, he broke his leg. One trooper asked him just before jumping, "Are you hit?" "I think so," Forsfield replied. "Me too," the trooper called over his shoulder as he leaped into the night.

In the body of the planes, the troopers were terrified. Not at what was ahead of them, but because of the hopeless feeling of getting shot at and tumbled around and being unable to do anything about it. As the planes twisted and turned, climbed or dove, many sticks, one plane load of paratroopers were thrown to the floor in a hopeless mess of arms, legs, and equipment. Meanwhile, bullets were ripping through the wings and fuselage. To Private John Fitzgerald of the 5002nd PIR, they made a sound like corn popping as they passed through. Lieutenant Carl Cartage likened the sound to rocks in a tin can. Out the open doors, the men could see tracers sweeping by in graceful slow motion arcs. They were orange, red, blue, yellow. They were frightening, mesmerizing, beautiful. Most troopers who tried to describe the tracers used some variation of "the greatest Fourth of July fireworks display I ever saw." They add that when they remembered that only one in six of the bullets coming up at them were tracers, they couldn't see how they could possibly survive the jump. For Private William TR of the 56th, it was unbelievable that there were people down there shooting at me, trying to kill Bill TR. Lieutenant Parker Alford, an artillery officer assigned to the 5001st, was watching the tracers. "I looked around the airplane and saw some kid across the aisle who grinned. I tried to grin back, but my face was frozen."

Private Porcella's heart was pounding. "I was so scared that my knees were shaking and just to relieve the tension, I had to say something. So I shouted, 'What time is it?' Someone called back, '01:30.'"

The pilots turned on the red light and the jump masters shouted the order, "Stand up and hook up." The men hooked the lines attached to the backpack covers of their main shoots to the anchor line running down the middle of the top of the fuselage. "Sound off for equipment check." From the rear of the plane would come the call, "16 okay," then "15 okay," and so on. The men in the rear began pressing forward. They knew the Germans were waiting for them but never in their lives had they been so eager to jump out of an airplane. "Let's go. Let's go," they shouted, but the jump masters held them back waiting for the green light.

"My plane was bouncing like something gone wild," Private Dwayne Burns of the 5008th remembered. "I could hear the machine gun rounds walking across the wings. It was hard to stand up and troopers were falling down and getting up. Some were throwing up. Of all the training we had, there was not anything that had prepared us for this." In training, the troopers could anticipate the green light. Before the pilot turned it on, he would throttle back and raise the tail of the plane. Not this night. Most pilots throttled forward and began to dive. Dutch Schultz and every man in his stick fell to the floor. They regained their feet and resumed shouting, "Let's go."

Sergeant Dan Furlong's plane got hit by three 88 mm shells. The first struck the left wing, taking about 3 ft off the tip. The second hit alongside the door and knocked out the light panel. The third came through the floor. It blew a hole about 2 ft across, hit the ceiling, and exploded, creating a hole 4 ft around, killing three men and wounding four others. Furlow recalled, "Basically, the shells just about cut that plane in half. I was in the back, assistant jump, I was screaming, 'Let's go.'" The troopers, including three of the four wounded men, dove head first out of the plane. The pilot was able to get control of the plane and head back for the nearest base in England for an emergency landing. Those Dakotas could take a terrific punishment and still keep flying. The fourth wounded man had been knocked unconscious. When he came to over the channel, he was delirious. He tried to jump out. The crew chief had to sit on him until they landed.

On planes still flying more or less on the level, when the green light went on, the troopers set a record for exiting. Still many of them remembered all their lives their thoughts as they got to the door and leaped out. Eager as they were to go, the sky full of tracers gave them pause. Four men in the 5005th, two in the 508th, and one each in the 506th and 507th refused. They preferred, in John Keegan's words, "to face the savage disciplinary consequences and total social ignominy of remaining with the aeroplane to stepping into the darkness of the Normandy night." Every other able-bodied man jumped.

Private John Fitzgerald of the 5002nd had taken a cold shower every morning for two years to prepare himself for this moment. Private Arthur de Philippo of the 5005th could see the tracers coming straight at him, and "all I did was pray to God that he would get me down safely, and then I would take care of myself." Private John Taylor of the 58th was appalled when he got to the door. His plane was so low that his thought was, "We don't need a parachute for this. All we need is a stepladder." Private Oiler, the Kansas boy who had forgotten his name when General Eisenhower spoke to him, remembered his hometown as he got to the door. His thought was, "I wish the gang at Wellington High could see me now at Wellington High." When Private Len Griffing of the 500 got to the door, "I looked out into what looked like a solid wall of tracer bullets. I remember this as clearly as if it happened this morning. It's engraved in the cells of my brain. I said to myself, 'Lynn, you're in as much trouble now as you're ever going to be. If you get out of this, nobody can ever do anything to you that you ever have to worry about.'" At that instant, an 88 mm shell hit the left wing, and the plane went into a sharp roll. Griffin was thrown to the floor, then managed to pull himself up and leap into the night.

Most of the sticks jumped much too low from planes going much too fast. The opening shock was intense. In hundreds, if not thousands of cases, the troopers swung once, then hit the ground. Others jumped from too high up. For them, it seemed an eternity before they hit the ground. Because of the way his plane rolled, Private Griffin's stick was badly separated. The man who went before him was a half mile back. The man who jumped after Griffing was a half mile forward. "My chute popped open and I was the only parachute in the sky. It took me 100 years to get down." Below him, a German flak wagon with four 20 mm guns was pumping out shells, and I was the only thing they had to shoot at. Tracers went under me, and I couldn't help but pull my legs up. The flak wagon kept shooting at him even after he hit the ground. "I would have been hit through sheer Teutonic perseverance if the next flight of planes hadn't arrived, and they gave up shooting at me to shoot at them."

Private Fitzgerald looked up to check my canopy and watched in detached amazement as bullets ripped through my chute. "I was mesmerized by the scene around me. Every color of the rainbow was flashing through the sky. Equipment bundles attached to shoots that did not fully open came hurtling past me. Helmets that had been ripped off by the opening shock. Troopers floated past. Below me, figures were running in all directions. I thought, 'Christ, I'm going to land right in the middle of a bunch of Germans.'" My chute floated into the branches of an apple tree and dumped me to the ground with a thud. The trees were in full bloom and added the strange sweet scent to this improbable scene. To Fitzgerald's relief, the Germans turned out to be cows running for cover. "I felt a strange surge of elation. I was alive."

The 56th was supposed to land 10 km or so southwest of St. Mary Glee, but a couple of sticks from the regiment came down in the town. It was 0115. A small hay barn on the south side of the church square was on fire, evidently caused by a tracer. Mayor Alexandra Renault had called out the residents to form a bucket brigade to get water from the town pump to the fire. The German garrison sent out a squad to oversee the infraction of the curfew. Sergeant Ray Abisher was the first to hit. He landed in the church square behind the fire brigade line and unnoticed by the German guards. The great brass bell in the church tower was ringing to rouse the citizens, drowning out the noise of his landing. He cut himself loose, then began moving slowly toward the church door, hoping to find sanctuary. The door was locked. He crawled around the church to the rear, then along a high cement wall. The Germans began firing, not at him, but at his buddies coming down. He saw one man whose chute had caught in a tree get riddled by a machine pistol. Altogether, four men were killed by German fire. Private Don Davis landed in the church square. He played dead, got rolled over by a suspicious German, and got away with it. Abisher, meanwhile, took advantage of the confusion to make his escape. Within a few minutes, it was quiet again over St. Merl. On the ground, the firefighting effort resumed, but the German guards were now alert for any further paratroop drops.

Sergeant Carwood Lipton and Lieutenant Dick Winters of Company E, 5006th, landed on the outskirts of the town. Lipton figured out where they were by reading the signpost in the moonlight, one letter at a time. Winters gathered together a group of squads size or less and began hiking for his company's objective, St. Marie Deong. Winters did not know it, but his CO was dead. Lieutenant Thomas Mian and Headquarters Company had been flying in the lead plane in stick 66. It was hit with bullets going through it and out the top, throwing sparks. The plane maintained course and speed for a moment or two, then did a slow wing over to the right. Pilot Frank DeFlita just behind remembered that the plane's landing lights came on and it appeared they were going to make it when the plane hit a hedge row and exploded. There were no survivors.

Sergeant Macllum, one of the pathfinders for the 56th, was on the ground about 10 km from St. Mar. The Germans had anticipated that the field he was in might be used as a drop zone, so they had machine guns and mortars around three sides of it. On the fourth side they had soaked a barn with kerosene. When the planes carrying Captain Charles Shettle and his company came overhead and the men started jumping out, the Germans set a torch to the barn. It lit up the whole area. As the troopers came down, the Germans commenced firing. Sergeant Macllum said, "I'll never forget the sadness in my heart as I saw my fellow troopers descend into this death trap." Captain Shettle got down safely despite mortar shells exploding and tracer bullets criss-crossing the field. Shuttle was battalion S3. The company he had jumped with was supposed to assemble at the barn, but that was obviously impossible. Shuttle moved quickly to the alternate assembly point and began blowing his whistle. In a half hour he had 50 men around him, but only 15 were from the 56th. The others were members of the 5001st. That kind of confusion and mixing of units was going on all over the Cotentin. A single company E of the 56th had men scattered from Carentan to Ravenoville, a distance of 20 km. Men of the 82nd were in the 101st drop zone and vice versa.

Standard drill for the paratroopers practiced countless times was to assemble by rolling up the stick. The first men out would follow the line of flight of the airplane. The men in the middle would stay put. The last men out would move in the opposite direction from the airplane's route. In practice maneuvers, it worked well. In combat that night, it worked only for a fortunate few.

Captain Sam Gibbons of the 500, later long-term congressman from Florida, was alone for his first hour in France. Finally, he saw a figure, clicked his cricket, got a two-click answer, and suddenly I felt a thousand years younger. Both of us moved forward so we could touch each other. I whispered my name, and he whispered his. To my surprise, he was not from my plane. In fact, he was not even from my division.

Lieutenant Guy Remington fell into the flooded area near the Douve River. He was pulling up the bank when he heard a noise. He froze, pulled his Tommy gun, then clicked his cricket. No response. He prepared to fire when he heard a voice saying, "Friend." He parted some bushes and there was an embarrassed Colonel Johnson, his CO, who explained, "I lost my damn cricket."

Some men were alone all night. Dutch Schultz was one of them. When Schultz used his cricket in desperation, hoping to find someone, "I got a machine gun burst. I brought my M1 up and pointed it toward the Germans, only to discover that I had failed to load my rifle." He crept off thinking, "I'm totally unprepared for this."

Private Griffing recalled, "There were so many clicks and counter clicks that night that nobody could tell who was clicking at whom." Private Stor landed in a ditch. After cutting himself loose, he crawled to the top and heard a click. Not from a cricket. It was the distinctive sound of someone taking the safety off an M1. Stor pulled out his cricket and "I just clicked the living hell out of that cricket and finally this guy told me to come out with my hands up. I recognized his voice. It was Harold Conway from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I said, 'I don't have any idea where we are or what we're doing here or nothing.'" They set out to find friends.

In contrast to almost every other battalion, the second of the 5005th had an excellent drop. Its Pathfinders had landed in the right spot and set up their Eurekas and lights. The lead pilot in a Dakota carrying the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Vandervort, saw the lighted TE exactly where he expected it. At 0145 hours, 27 of the 36 sticks of the battalion either hit the drop zone or landed within a mile of it. Vandervort broke his ankle when he landed. He laced his boot tighter, used his rifle as a crutch, verified his location, and began sending up green flares as a signal for his battalion to assemble on him. Within half an hour, he had 600 men around him. No other unit of similar size had so complete an assembly so quickly. The second battalion's mission was to secure Neuville just north of St. Mary Glee. It was a long hike. Vandervort was much too big a man to be carried. He spotted two sergeants pulling a collapsible ammunition cart. Vandervort asked if they would mind giving him a lift. One of the sergeants replied that they hadn't come all the way to Normandy to pull any damn colonel around. Vandervort noted later, "I persuaded them otherwise."

General Taylor was not as fortunate as Vandervort. The commander of the 101st landed alone outside St. Marie Deuong. For 20 minutes he wandered around trying to find his assembly point. He finally encountered his first trooper, a private from the 500 established identity with his clicker and hugged the man. A few minutes later, Taylor's aid, Lieutenant Briier, came up. The three-man group wandered around until Taylor in the dark physically collided with his artillery commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliff. He didn't know where they were either. Brier pulled out a flashlight. The generals pulled out a map. The three men ducked into a hedge row, studied the map, and came to three different conclusions as to where they were. Lieutenant Parker Alfred and his radio operator, without his radio lost on the drop, a typical experience, joined Taylor's group. By this time, it consisted of two generals, a full colonel, three lieutenant colonels, four lieutenants, several NCO radio operators, and a dozen or so privates. Taylor looked around, grinned, and said, "Never in the annals of warfare have so few been commanded by so many." He decided to set off in a direction that he hoped would take him to his primary objective, the village of Poupeville, the foot of Causeway 1.

Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Mendees, commanding the third battalion of the 58th, was even worse off than Taylor. He jumped at 2100 ft, which was too much of a ride. "I landed about 0230 and didn't see anybody for 5 days. In that time, he may have killed more of the enemy than any other lieutenant colonel in the war. I got three Hein with three shots from my pistol, two Heines with a carbine, and one He with a hand grenade." He estimated that he walked 90 m across the western Cotentin looking for another American without success.

At Lamadane in his block house, Lieutenant Arthur Yankee was confused. The airplanes overhead did not particularly worry him, even though the numbers of planes flying through the night were greater than usual. But what was the meaning of the bursts of automatic and machine gun fire he was hearing to his rear? Yankee alerted his men, doubled the guards, and ordered a patrol to go out and reconnoiter. Simultaneously, Private Lewis Mlano of the 101st, second man in his stick, landed on the dunes a few meters away from Yankee's position. Horrified, he heard the cries of 11 of his comrades as they fell into the channel and drowned. Half an hour later, the German patrol returned to La Madelane with 19 American paratroopers, including Molano, picked up on the beach. Delighted with his catch, Yankee tried to telephone his battalion commander, but just as he began to report, the line went dead. A paratrooper somewhere inland had cut the line. Yankee locked his prisoners into a pill box and placed a guard in front of it. At 0400, the guard came to inform him that the prisoners were nervous and kept insisting that they be transferred to the rear. Yankee could not understand. There would be a low tide at dawn, and Raml had told him the allies would only come on a high tide. What were the captured men afraid of?

In St. Mer Glee, the fire was raging out of control. The men of the 56th who had landed in and near the town had scattered. At 0145, the second platoon of F Company 5005th had the bad luck to jump right over the town where the German garrison was fully alerted. Ken Russell was in that stick. Coming down, he recalled. "I looked to my right and I saw this guy and instantaneously he was blown away. There was just an empty parachute coming down. Evidently a shell had hit his gammon grenades." Horrified, Russell looked to his left. He saw another member of his stick, Private Charles Blankenship, being drawn into the fire.

The fire was sucking in oxygen and drawing the parachutists toward it. I heard him scream once, then again before he hit the fire, and he didn't scream anymore. The Germans filled the sky with tracers. Russell was trying to hide behind my reserve shoot because we were all sitting ducks. He got hit in the hand. He saw Lieutenant Harold Kadish and privates HT Bryant and Lattis Lapa land on telephone poles around the church square. The Germans shot them before they could cut themselves loose. Russell said it was like they were crucified there. Private Penrose Sheerer landed in a tree opposite the church and was killed while hanging there. Private John Blanchard, also hung up in a tree, managed to get his trench knife out and cut his risers. In the process, he cut one of his fingers off and didn't even know it until later. Russell jerked on his risers to avoid the fire and came down on the slate roof of the church, he said. I hit and a couple of my suspension lines went around the church steeple and I slid off the roof. He was hanging off the edge and Steel, Private John Steel, whom you've heard a lot about in the book and movie The Longest Day, he came down and his shoot covered the steeple. Steel was hit in the foot. Sergeant John Ray landed in the church square just past Russell and Steel. A German soldier came around the corner. "I'll never forget him," Russell related. He was red-haired, and as he came around, he shot Sergeant Ray in the stomach. Then he turned toward Russell and Steel and brought his machine pistol up to shoot them. And Sergeant Ray, while he was dying in agony, he got his .45 out and he shot the German soldier in the back of the head and killed him. Through all this, the church bell was constantly ringing. Russell could not remember hearing the bell. Steel, who is hanging right outside the Belelfrey, was deaf for some weeks thereafter because of it. He was hauled in by a German observer in the Belelfrey, made prisoner, but escaped a few days later. Russell, scared to death, in his words, managed to reach his trench knife and cut himself loose. He fell to the ground and dashed across the street, and the machine gun fire was knocking up pieces of earth all around me. I ran over into a grove of trees on the edge of town and I was the loneliest man in the world. Strange country and just a boy. I should have been graduating from high school rather than in a strange country. There was a flack wagon in the grove shooting at passing Dakotas. Russell said, "I got my gammon grenade out and I threw it on the gun and the gun stopped." He moved away from town. A German soldier on a bicycle came down the road. Russell shot him. Then he found an American from the 101st, probably a trooper from the 56th, who had landed in Salt. Mary Gleas a half hour earlier. Russell asked, "Do you know where you are?" "No," the trooper replied. They set out to find someone who did know.

Private James Eids of the 82nd landed in an enormous manure pile typical of Normandy. At least it was a soft landing. Three German soldiers came out of the farmhouse and ran toward him. "Oh, hell," Eid said to himself. "Out of the frying pan, into a latrine. Now this." His rifle was still strapped to his chest. He couldn't get out of his harness. The British Airborne had a quick release device, but the Americans had to unbuckle their straps, a difficult proposition in the best of circumstances. Eids pulled his 45, thumb backed the hammer, and started firing. The first two men fell. The third kept coming. Eids had one bullet left. He dropped the last man right at his feet. Still stuck in his harness in the manure. Eids was trying to cut himself loose when a German machine gun opened up on him. "Damn," he said aloud. "Is the whole crowd army after me? Just one scared red-headed trooper." Bullets ripped into his musette bag. He tried to bury himself in the manure. He heard an explosion and the firing stopped. He cut himself loose and began moving. He heard a noise behind him, decided to take a chance and snapped his cricket. Two answering clicks came back at once. "I could have kissed him," Eids recalled. His first words were, "I got those over anxious crut machine gunners with a grenade, but it blew off my helmet and I can't find it." Then he took a breath and exclaimed, "Holy cow, you stink."

For many of the men of the 82nd Airborne, whose drop zones were to the west of Sme Glee, a stride the Murderay River, there was a special hell. Raml had ordered the locks near the mouth of the river down by Karantan, opened at high tide, closed at low tide, so as to flood the valley. Because the grass had grown above the flooded area, Allied Air Reconnaissance photographs failed to reveal the trap. The water generally was not more than a meter deep, but that was deep enough to drown an overloaded paratrooper who couldn't get up or cut himself out of his harness. Private Porcela was especially unlucky. He landed in the river itself in water over his head. He had to jump up to take a breath. "My heart was beating so rapidly that I thought it would burst. I pleaded, 'Oh God, please don't let me drown in this damn water.'" He bent over to remove his leg straps, but the buckle wouldn't open. He jumped up for more air. Then found that if he stood on his toes, he could get his nose just above the water. Calming down a bit, he decided to cut the straps. He bent below the water and pulled his knife from his right boot. He jumped up, took a deep breath, bent down, and slipped the knife between his leg and the strap, working the knife back and forth in an upward motion. Nothing happened. "I was in panic. I came up for another breath of air and thought my heart was going to burst with fright. I wanted to scream for help, but I knew that would make matters worse. I told myself, 'Think. I must think. Why won't this knife cut the strap? It's razor sharp.'" Porcella jumped up for more air and managed to say a Hail Mary. Then he realized that he had the blade backward. He reversed it and cut himself loose. That helped, but the weight of the museette bag and the landmine he was carrying still held him down. A few more strokes of the knife and they were gone. He moved slowly into somewhat shallower water until it was only chest high. Then he became aware of rifle and machine gun fire going over his head. "All the training I had received had not prepared me for this." Suddenly, there was a huge burst of orange flames in the sky. A C-47 had taken a direct hit and was a ball of flames. "Oh my god, it's coming toward me," Porcella cried out. The plane was making a screaming noise that sounded like a horse about to die. Porcella tried to run away. The plane crashed beside him, he recalled. Suddenly, it was dark again, and it became very quiet. Porcel resumed moving toward the high ground. He heard a voice call out "Flash!" He couldn't believe it. "I thought I was the only fool in the world in this predicament." He recognized the voice. It was his buddy Dale Cable. Porcella reached out his right hand to touch Cable who hollered this time, "Flash!" Simultaneously, Cable flipped the safety off his M1. The muzzle was within inches of Porcela's face. Porcela remembered the response and shouted back, "Thunder." Together, they began to encounter other troopers also sloshing around in the flooded area. After further adventures, they finally made it to high ground.

Lieutenant Ralph Dewise of the 58th landed on his back in 3 ft of water. Before he had a chance to cut himself loose, the wind inflated his canopy and started to drag him. The heavy equipment on his stomach, reserve chute, rifle, mine, and field bag prevented him from turning over. His riser was across his helmet, and his helmet was fastened by the chin strap so he could not get it off. His head was underwater. The chute dragged him several hundred yards. He recalled, "Several times I thought it was no use and decided to open my mouth and drown, but each time the wind would slack up enough for me to put my head out of the water and catch a breath. I must have swallowed a lot of water because I didn't take a drink for 2 days afterward." With his last bit of energy, he pulled out his trench knife and cut the risers. "Bullets were singing over my head from machine guns and rifles, but it didn't bother me because at that point I didn't care." Dwise finally got out, found a couple of his men, and started down a road. He saw two Frenchmen and asked if they had seen any other Americans. They couldn't understand him. He pointed to the American flag on his sleeve. One of the Frenchmen nodded happily, pulled out a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and pointed down the road. Dwise said, "I was one happy fellow to see those lies." Two months later, back in England, Dwise wrote his mother to describe his D-Day experiences. He told her the worst part was that he had no dry cigarettes himself, but felt he couldn't relieve the Frenchmen of those lies. He added that his pockets were full of little fish.

Private David Jones of the 58th was also aquaplaned across the flooded area. He was blown to the edge, his chute wrapped around a tree, and he was able to drag himself out of the water by the suspension lines. When he cut loose and climbed to the high ground, he had another fright. Back in England, during a night exercise, he had gone into a roadside pub and got into a fairly good fist fight with another trooper. After their buddies separated them, that trooper had vowed that once they got into combat, in Jones's words, he was going to get my ass. Now in Normandy, wouldn't you know, the first person I met on the edge of that flood was that same trooper. He had me looking into the barrel of his Tommy gun. Well, after we hugged and slapped each other on the back, telling each other how fortunate we were to have made it through this far, we started off together. Altogether, 36 troopers of the 82nd drowned that night. An afteraction report prepared on July 25, 1944 noted that one complete stick from the 57th is still missing. Another 173 troopers had broken a leg or arm when landing. 63 men had been taken prisoner. Most of the PS were taken before they could cut loose from their harness. Among them was Private Paul Bushro, a Louisiana cinjun. He was taken to a German command post where other PS were being harshly interrogated. The German captain, speaking English, was demanding to know how many Americans had jumped into the area. "Millions and millions of us," one GI replied. The angry captain asked Bushiro the same question. With his strong cinjun accent, Bushiro answered, "just me." Furious, the captain had the Americans clasp their hands over their heads and marched them off under guard. After a few minutes, for no apparent reason, the German sergeant in charge opened fire on his prisoners with his machine pistol. "I can still recall his appearance," Bushiro said. He was short and stocky and mean-l looking. His most striking feature was a scar on the right side of his face. Bush was hit near his left knee. He said it felt like a severe beasting. The German sergeant calmed down and the march resumed. Bushiro tried to keep up despite the squish of blood in his boot with every other step. He fell to the ground. A crowd came over and rolled me on my back. He cocked his rifle and put the business end to my head. I set a speed record for saying the rosary, but instead of pulling the trigger, the German laughed, then bent over and offered me an American cigarette. I suppose I should have been grateful that my life had been spared, but instead I was furious at the physical and mental torture to which I'd been subjected. My mind and heart were filled with hate. I dreamed of the day when I would repay them in full measure for my suffering.

Lieutenant Briand Bodan, a surgeon in the 5008th, had a happier experience as a P. At about 0300, he was tending to wounded men in a farmhouse set up as an aid station when it was attacked by Germans. He stuck his helmet with its red cross on a long pole and pushed it out the door. The Germans stopped firing and took the American wounded to a German aid station where, as Budan recalled, "We medics were treated as friends by the German medical personnel. The doctors worked together through the night and the following days." Although a prisoner for some weeks, Bodan found his stay at the 91st Feld Latzeret to be most interesting. He learned German techniques and taught them American methods. The Germans manning the anti-aircraft batteries had done a credable job against the Allied Air Armada. But the reaction on the ground against the paratroopers was confused and hesitant. Partly this was because all the division and many of the regimental commanders were in Ren for the map exercise. But there were many additional reasons. The most important was the failure of troop carrier command to drop the parachutists in tight drop zones where they were supposed to be. At 0130, headquarters of the German 7th Army had reports of paratroop landings east and northwest of Kha, at Samarov, at Montborg, on both sides of the Vir River, on the east coast of the Kotantan, and elsewhere. There was no discernable pattern to the drops, no concentrated force, just two men here, four there, a half dozen somewhere else. The Germans were further confused by the dummy parachutists dropped by the two SAS teams Captain Foot had organized. One party went in just before midnight between Lahav and Ruin. An hour or so later, the commandant at La Hav sent an agitated telegram to 7th Army headquarters repeated to Berlin saying there had been a major landing upstream of him and he feared he was cut off. The second party dropped its dummies and set up its recordings of firefights southeast of Eini. The German reserve regiment in the area, about 2,000 men strong, spent the small hours of June 6 beating the woods, looking for a major airborne landing that was not there. For the Allies, this was an extraordinarily profitable payoff from a small investment. The Germans could not tell whether this was the invasion or a series of scattered raids or a diversion to proceed landings in the Padal or a supply operation to the resistance. In general, therefore, although they fired at passing airplanes, they failed completely to deal with the real threat. Here and there, local company commanders sent out patrols to investigate reports of paratroopers in the area, but for the most part, the Vermach stayed put in its barracks. Vermacht's doctrine was to counterattack immediately against any offensive movement, but not on this night. Communications was a factor in the German failure. The American paratroopers had been told that if they could not do anything else, they could at least cut communication lines. The Germans in Normandy had been using secure telephone and cable lines for years and consequently had become complacent about their system. But on June 6th, between 0 and dawn, troopers acting alone or in small teams were knocking down telephone poles with their grenades, cutting lines with their knives, isolating the German units scattered in the villages. At around 0130, the signal officer at Colonel Heights 6th parachute regiment HQ picked up a German message that indicated enemy paratroopers were landing in the vicinity of St. Mary Gleas. "I tried to reach General Marks, but the whole telephone network was down," Height recalled. In most cases, the cutting of wires was done on targets of opportunity, but in some instances it was planned. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wolverton, commanding the third battalion of the 56th, had been given the mission of destroying the critical communication link between Carintan and the German forces in the Kotantan. Wolverton assigned the task to Captain Shettle, COO of Company I. Shuttle said he needed to know the exact location. So in late May, the intelligence people had plucked a French resistor out of Carantan and brought him to England. He had pinpointed for Shuttle the place where the Germans had buried communication lines and a concrete casement that could be opened to gain access to it. Within a half hour of his drop, Shuttle had gathered 15 men from Company I. He set out, found the casement, placed the charges, and destroyed it. Years later, an officer from the German Sixth Parachute Regiment deployed in the area told shuttle that the Germans were astounded that the Americans had been able to disrupt their primary source of communication so quickly.

Colonel height commanded the sixth parachute regiment. He was a professional soldier with a worldwide reputation earned in Poland, France, Russia, Cree, and North Africa. Height had his command post at Perriè, his battalion scattered between there and Carantan. At 0030, he put his men on alert, but confusion caused by reports of landings all around the peninsula kept him from giving orders more specific than stay alert. He desperately needed to get in touch with General Markx, but still could not get through. Unknown to height, one platoon of his regiment, billeted in a village near Perier, was having a party. Private Wolfgang Garrettser recalled, "All of a sudden, Okurer ran toward us, shouting, 'Alert! Alert! Enemy paratroops!' We laughed as we told him not to excite himself like that. 'Here, sit down and drink a little calvados with us.' But then the sky was filled with planes. That sobered us up. At one stroke, there were soldiers coming out of all the corners. It was like a swarm of maddened bees." The 3,500 men of the German Sixth Parachute Regiment began to form up. It did not go quickly. They were scattered in villages throughout the area. They had only 70 trucks at their disposal, many of them more museum pieces than working vehicles. Those 70 trucks were of 50 different makes, so it was impossible to provide replacement parts for broken equipment. Heights elite troops would have to walk into the battle, nor would they have much in the way of heavy weapons, just handheld material. When the colonel had requested heavy mortars and anti-tank guns from the general staff, he was told with a smile, "But come now, Height! For paratroopers, a dagger is enough." Nevertheless, the German paratroopers were confident. "Frankly, we weren't afraid," Garrett Lanner recalled. We were so convinced that everything would be settled in a few hours that when we formed up, we didn't even take our personal effects. Only our weapons, ammunition, and some food. Everyone was confident.

To the east, where the British and Canadian glider and paratroops were landing, the Germans were also immobilized, not by what the Allies were doing, but because of their own command structure. Colonel Hans Vanluke's 125th regiment of the 21st Panzer Division was the one Raml counted on to counterattack any invading forces on the east of the Orin Canal and River. At 0130, Luke got his first report of landings. He immediately assembled his regiment, and within the hour his officers and men were standing beside their tanks and vehicles, engines running, ready to go. But although Luke had prepared for exactly this moment, knew where he wanted to go to the Or canal bridge to take it back from Major Howard, over what routes, with what alternatives, he could not give the order to go. Only Hitler could release the panzers, and Hitler was sleeping. So was Runstead. Raml was with his wife. General Dolman was in Ren. General Finger was in Paris. 7th Army headquarters couldn't make out what was happening. At 0240, the acting commander of Runstett's Army Group West contended, "We are not confronted by a major action." His chief of staff replied, "It can be nothing less than that in view of the depth of the penetration." The argument went on without resolution. Luke had no doubts. "My idea," he said 40 years later, "was to counterattack before the British could organize their defenses, before the air force people could come, before the British Navy could hit us. We were quite familiar with the ground, and I think that we could have been able to get through to the bridges." Had he done so, Howard's company had only handheld POT anti-tank rockets to stop him with, and only a couple of those. But Luke could not act on his own initiative. So there he sat, a senior officer in the division Rabble most counted on to drive the allies into the sea if they attacked near Khan. Personally quite certain of what he could accomplish, rendered immobile by the intricacies of the leadership principle in the Third Reich.

Beginning at 0300, the gliders began to come in to reinforce the paratroopers. On the left flank, 69 gliders brought in a regiment and the commander of the sixth airborne division, Major General Richard Gale. They landed near Ronville on fields that had been cleared by paratroopers who had dropped a couple of hours earlier. 49 of the gliders landed safely on the correct landing zone. They brought jeeps and anti-tank guns. On the right flank, 52 American gliders swooped down on Heisville, 6 km from Sme Gle. They were carrying troops, jeeps, anti-tank guns, and a small bulldozer. Brigadier General Don Pratt, Assistant Division Commander of the 101st, was in the lead glider. Lieutenant Robert Butler was the pilot in the second glider. As the gliders approached the landing zone, German anti-aircraft fire caused the tug pilots in their Dakotas to climb. So that when Butler and the others cut loose from their 300yd long nylon tow ropes, they had to circle and circle. Planes and gliders were being shot down. For those who survived the anti-aircraft fire, the problem became the Norman hedge. The fields they enclosed were too small for a decent landing zone. Worse, the trees were much higher than expected. This was one of the great failures of Allied intelligence. As Sergeant Zayn Schmer of the 82nd put it, "No one had informed us of the immense size of the French hedros. We were, of course, told that we would be in hedro country, but we assumed they would be similar to the English hedge, which were like small fences that the fox hunters jumped over. In Normandy, the hedros were 6 ft or more high, virtually impenetrable. The roads between the hedros were sunken, meaning that the Germans had what amounted to a vast field of ready-made trenches. Why intelligence missed this obvious major feature of the battlefield is a mystery." If the glider pilots came in low, they would see trees looming up in front of them, try to pull up to go over, stall out, and crash. If they came in high, they couldn't get the gliders down in the small fields in time to avoid the hedge at the far end. The result, in the words of Sergeant James Elmo Jones of the 82nd, a Pathfinder who was marking a field for the gliders, was tragic. He said, "There's never been a greater slaughter than what took place that night. It was the most horrible thing that a person could see." In front of Lieutenant Butler, Colonel Mike Murphy had the controls of the lead glider. Butler watched it take some hits from a German machine gun. General Pratt was killed, the first general officer on either side to die that day, and Murphy crashed into a hedger row, breaking both his legs. Sergeant Leonard Levenson of the 82nd was in a glider that hit a treetop, bounced off, hit the ground, glanced off the corner of a farmhouse, and finally crashed into another tree. Lebansson remembered, "There were pieces of our glider strewn over the confines of this relatively small field, but miraculously only one guy was hurt." Lieutenant Charles Skidmore, a pilot, landed safely in a flooded area. He managed to get out of the water and immediately came under rifle fire. It came from a bunker holding a dozen conscripted Polish soldiers with one German sergeant in charge. The men Skidmore had brought in joined him and began firing back. There was a lull in the firefight, then a single shot, then shouts and laughter, then the Poles emerged with their hands held high to surrender. They had shot the German sergeant. Private Ryzen lighter of the 5008th was in a field across from where one glider came down. In the dark, with the hedros looming above him, he could hardly tell what was going on. He heard something crashing about on the other side and called out, "Flash!" "Flash! Flash your ass," the answer came back. "They're killing us out here and we're getting the hell out of here." Ryzen lighter let them go. He figured only an American could give such a response to the challenge. Private John Fitzgerald of the 5002nd PIR watched the glider landing. "We could hear the sounds of planes in the distance, then no sounds at all. This was followed by a series of swishing noises. Adding to the swelling crescendo of sounds was the tearing of branches and trees followed by loud crashes and intermittent screams. The gliders were coming in rapidly one after the other from all different directions. Many overshot the field and landed in the surrounding woods while others crashed into nearby farmhouses and stone walls. In a moment, the field was complete chaos. Equipment broke away and catapulted as it hit the ground, plowing up huge mounds of earth. Bodies and bundles were thrown all along the length of the field. Some of the glider troopers were impaled by the splintered wood of the fragile plywood gliders. We immediately tried to aid the injured, but knew we would first have to decide who could be helped and who could not. A makeshift aid station was set up, and we began the grim process of separating the living from the dead. I saw one man with his legs and buttocks sticking out of the canvas fuselage of a glider. I tried to pull him out. He would not budge. When I looked inside the wreckage, I could see his upper torso had been crushed by a jeep." Some of the gliders carried bulldozers to be used to make landing strips for later glider landings. Sergeant Zayn Schlimmer of the 58th PI recalled that the sound of one glider hitting a tree was similar to smashing a thousand matchboxes all at once. "And I could just visualize the poor pilot with that baby bulldozer smashing into him." The glider casualties of the 82nd were heavy. Of the 957 men who went into Normandy that night, 25 were killed, 118 wounded, 14 missing, a 16% casualty rate. 19 of the 111 jeeps were unserviceable, as were four of 17 anti-tank guns. Anytime a unit takes 16% casualties before it even gets into action, somebody had to have made a big mistake. But Lee Mallalerie had feared that the gliderborn troops might take 70% casualties primarily because of Raml's asparagus. In the event, those poles in the ground were inconsequential. It was the hedge that caused the problems, and the jeeps and anti-tank guns that did survive proved to be invaluable.

By 0400, the American paratroopers and glider troops were scattered to hell and gone across the Kotanten. With few exceptions, they were lost. Except for Vandervort's second battalion of the 5005th, they were alone or gathered into groups of 3, 5, 10, at the most 30 men. They had lost the bulk of their equipment bundles. The little blue lights attached to the bundles had mostly failed to work. Most men had lost their leg bags containing extra ammunition, field radios, tripods for the machine guns, and the like. The few radios that they had recovered had either got soaked in the flooded areas or damaged on hitting the ground and did not work. They had taken heavy casualties from the opening shock, from hitting the ground too hard as a result of jumping too low, from German fire, from glider crashes. Lieutenant Carl Cartage of the 5001st landed in a marsh. His company was supposed to assemble on a bugle call, but the bugler drowned. He found Private John Forick and a Private Smith. Smith could not walk. He had broken his back. Others in the stick had drowned. Cartage gathered together 10 men from his platoon. They carried Smith to high ground and covered him with brush. He insisted on retaining the two homing pigeons he had with him. One had a message on its leg saying the battalion was being wiped out. The other said it was accomplishing its mission. Smith had been told to release one or the other at daylight. As the platoon prepared to move out, Smith's last words to Cartage were, "I'll send the right message. Don't make me out a liar." As the platoon left, a German machine gun opened up. The men dove back into the marsh. Cartilage had no radio. He was lost, chest deep in water, taking fire without being able to return it. Private Ford, a tough Pennsylvania coal miner, leaned over to whisper in his ear, "You know, Lieutenant Gartage, I think the Germans are winning this war."

10 weeks later, when the airborne troops were back in England preparing for another jump, possibly at night, the regimental and battalion commanders of the 82nd gathered at Glee Mount House, Lchester, for a debriefing conference. They did an analysis of what went wrong, what went right. They started with the pilots. In the future, the paratroop commanders wanted the pilots trained for combat and bad weather missions. They wanted them forced to slow down. One suggestion was that every pilot of troop carrier command be made to jump from a plane going 150 mph. They wanted the pilots told that evasive action in a sky full of tracers did no good and caused much harm. They did not say so, but it seems clear that radio silence also did more harm than good. The German anti-aircraft crews were fully alerted by the Pathfinder planes anyway. Had the Pathfinder pilots sent back word of the Cloud Bank, the pilots in the main train would have been alerted. Had they been able to talk to each other on the radio, the dispersion of aircraft would not have been so great. Only the battalion commanders of the 5005th, had anything good to say about the lighted tea system. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Krauss, CO of the third battalion, said that when he saw his tea, "I felt that I had found the Holy Grail." None of the others had seen their tees, which in most cases had not been set up because the pathfinders were not sure they were in the right place. No one expressed faith in the Eureka system. There was general agreement that equipment bundles had to be tied together and a better lighting system devised. The commanders wanted every man to carry a mine and put it to immediate use by placing it on a road. The men should be instructed to stay off the roads otherwise. Some way had to be devised to bring in a bazooka with each squad. The gammon grenade was very satisfactory. Each man should be issued a 45 so as to be available immediately upon landing. As to assembly, the commanders thought that flares would be the most effective method, but not too many. One per battalion carried by the co would be sufficient. Whistles, bugles, and the like had been unsatisfactory, partly because of the noise from anti-aircraft fire, partly because in hedro country the sound did not carry. The rolling up the stick method was a failure because of the hedros and the scattered nature of the drops. Better radios, and more of them would be a great help. The men had to be taught how to get out of their shoots faster. The simple solution to that was to get rid of those buckles and adopt the British quick release mechanism, which was done. So the paratroop commanders found much to criticize in the operation. Still, contrary to the fear Private Foric had expressed to Lieutenant Cartage, the Germans were not winning the war. Scattered though they were, the paratroopers and glider troops were about to go into action while the Germans, for the most part, were still holed up, badly confused.

Chapter 12. Let's get those bastards. The airborne night attack. At the Glee Mount House debriefing in August 1944, the 82nd Regimental and Battalion Commanders concluded that the troops should be trained to assemble more quickly and to send out search parties for the equipment bundles. The report read, "It is most important, however, that the hours of darkness be used for the seizure of key points and objectives. The enemy reaction becomes increasingly violent with daylight. Further, prompt aggressive action by each individual is imperative immediately upon landing. An individual or small unit that holds up and does nothing is ultimately isolated and destroyed. An airborne unit has the initiative upon landing. It must retain it. This is the essence of successful reorganization and accomplishment of a mission." Obviously, the commanders were unhappy with some of their troopers. Too many had hunkered down in hedros to await the dawn. A few had even gone to sleep. Private Francis Palis of the 56th saw what was perhaps the worst dereliction of duty. He had gathered a squad near Vierville. Hearing, in his words, "all kinds of noise and singing from a distance." He and his men sneaked up on a farmhouse. In it was a mixed group from both American divisions. The paratroopers had found the Calvados barrel in the cellar. There was one in virtually every Norman cellar and palace remembered they were drunker than a bunch of hillbillies on a Saturday night winging. Unbelievable. The 5005ths historian Alan Langden attempted to explain the actions of these and other men who were not acting aggressively. He wrote, "A parachute jump and in particular a combat jump if you survived it was so exhilarating that first timers were apt to forget the real reason they were there to kill Germans. The feeling was, 'We've made the jump. Now the Germans should roll over and play dead.' In every regiment, it seemed to take one combat jump to instill the idea that jumping was only a means of transportation." Another phenomenon noted was the shock of the quick transition from a peaceful situation to a war zone. Because of it, troopers were of times reluctant to shoot. Private Dwayne Burns was crouched beside a hedge. He heard a noise on the other side. He recalled, "I climbed up and slowly looked over. And as I did, a German on the other side raised up and looked over. In the dark, I could barely see his features. We stood there looking at each other. Then slowly each of us went back down." They moved off in opposite directions. Others had similar experiences. Lieutenant Lynn Tomlinson of the 5008th was moving down a hedge row. He looked across at a low point in the hedge and saw four German soldiers going in the opposite direction. "They were kids," he recalled. "I was within 5 ft of them. The moon had come out and one of these kids saw me and smiled. I decided that if they would stay out of our way, we would stay out of theirs." Private R.J. Needless of the 58th was crouched beside a hedger with a paved road on the other side. His company co had ordered him not to fire. He heard hobnailed boots on the road, then saw a German patrol marching past. He said, "These were young fellows, kids. Well, we were too, and their sharp uniforms impressed me. We didn't fire, and I thought at the time, 'God, I don't know if I could fire point blank at an unsuspecting man.'" Some of the battalion and company commanders had given their men orders not to shoot at night for fear of revealing their positions. A few went so far as to order the men not to load their rifles or machine guns. They should use grenades or even better their knives. The 82nd commanders agreed at their debriefing that those orders had been a big mistake. Sergeant Dan Ferlong of the 58th would not have agreed. He came down alone and sneaked up to a farmhouse. It was full of Germans. He could hear them talking. They must have heard him, too, because a soldier came to check out the farmyard. He came around a corner, Furlong said, and I was standing up against the wall. I hit him in the side of the head with my rifle butt and then gave him the bayonet and took off. Furlong was alone the remainder of the night. So were hundreds of others. Dutch Schultz wandered, trying to move to the sound of firefights. But before he could hook up with fellow Americans, the area would become tranquil. He recalled, "The peace would come and then the noise, the violence, then the peace. It was almost like taking a walk in the country on a Sunday afternoon. Very peaceful. The peace and then again violence." Of course, it was the commander's job in a debriefing to be critical. At the time, August 1944, they were planning for the next mission, which for all they knew could be at night, so they concentrated on the shortcomings and mistakes of the D-Day operation. Rather than congratulating themselves on how well they and their men had done. But although the airborne assault had not been a complete success in the sense of accomplishing all assigned missions, the troopers had done enough that night to justify the operation. The overall missions of the three airborne divisions were to disrupt and confuse the Germans so as to prevent a concentrated counterattack against the seaborn troops coming in at dawn and to protect the flanks at Sword and Utah beaches. For the sixth airborne, that meant destroying the bridges over the Deves River and capturing intact the bridges over the Or canal and river, holding the dividing ridge between the Dev and the Or and destroying the German battery at Meville. The Meville battery, four guns of undetermined size and four casemates, stood just east of the mouth of the Orin River on flat open grazing ground. The assumption by Allied planners was that those guns could cover Sword Beach to disrupt and possibly drive back the third division's landings. So, they had made it a priority target. The battery would be attacked by air, land, and if necessary, by naval gunfire. The air attack by 100 Royal Air Force Lancaster bombers would begin at 0200. It was designed more to create foxholes around the battery and to stun the German defenders than to destroy it. Even a lucky direct hit would not be sufficient to penetrate the thick steel reinforced concrete. Next would come an attack by land. But just as the casemates were welldeended against air bombardment, so were they prepared for a ground attack. There was a wire fence surrounding the area with a minefield inside. Then a barbed wire entanglement, another minefield, an inner belt of barbed wire, finally a trench system for the German infantry reinforced by 10 machine gun pits. There were estimated to be 200 German soldiers defending the battery. So formidable were these defenses, so critical the guns, that the British assigned more than 10% of the total airborne strength of the sixth division to the task. The job went to 29-year-old Lieutenant Colonel TBH Atwway and his 9inth battalion. He planned to execute it by a coup operation somewhat similar to Major Howards at the Or Canal Pegasus Bridge, but on a much larger scale. Howard had six gliders and 180 men. Atwway had 750 men, 60 of them in gliders, the remainder paratroopers. His plan was to assemble his battalion in a wood a couple of kilometers from the battery, move into position, and attack when the gliders crash landed inside the defenses right against the walls of the gun imp placements. If successful, he would then fire a vir pistol as a sign of success. The job had to be completed by 0515. If there was no success signal by then, the British warships off sword would commence firing on Marville. So much for plans. In the event, whereas Howard's glider pilots had put him down exactly where he wanted to be, Lee Mallerie called lead pilot Jim Wallwork's accomplishment that night the finest feat of flying in World War II. Atwway's pilots badly scattered his battalion. They had not hit a cloud bank, but like their American counterparts, they were not accustomed to flack, and thus were unable to judge how dangerous it was. They took excessive evasive action to escape what was essentially light flack. As a consequence, the 9inth battalion had a bad drop. Atwe came down just outside a German headquarters. He made his way to the assembly point in the wood, where his second in command greeted him. "Thank God you've come, sir." "Why?" Atwe asked. "The drops of bloody chaos. There's hardly anyone here." It was nearly 0200. Atwe had fewer than 100 men with him. He needed to get into place around the battery's defenses before the gliders came, but he needed more than 17th of his strength to do the job. He fumed and waited. By 0230, a total of 150 men had come in. Between them, they had but one machine gun. They had no mortars, anti-tank guns, radios, engineers, or mine detectors. The gliders were due in 2 hours. Atwe decided to attack with what he had. At 0250, the company-sized party set out, hoping to meet outside the battery, a small reconnaissance party that had landed earlier with the Pathfinders. On the single file march to Marville, the main group passed a German anti-aircraft battery shooting at incoming British planes and gliders. It was a tempting target of opportunity, and the men wanted to attack it, but Outweigh's task was specific and urgent. He did not want to reveal his position, and in any event, his time was running out. He passed the word back down the file. No shooting. Shortly, the commander of the reconnaissance party metwe. His report was mixed. He had cut the outer wire fence and crossed the first minefield. The barbed wire was not as bad as had been feared, but he had no tape with him to mark the path he had followed, searching for mines with his fingers. Worse, the RAF bombardment had been a bust. Not a single bomb had hit anywhere near the battery. At 0430, precisely on time, the gliders were overhead, flying in circles, watching for the mortar flares from Atwway that were the signal to come on in. Atwe watched helplessly. His men had failed to find the bundles carrying the flares. Without the flares, the pilots of the gliders assumed that something had gone wrong. Otwway saw one glider skim over the battery no more than 100 ft off the ground, then turn away to land in a field to the rear. Atwe had no choice. He gave the order to attack. It would be a frontal assault from one direction only. He did not have sufficient troops to encircle and attack from all four sides. He told the lead groups to ignore the trenches and go straight on into the casemates. Follow-up groups would take on the Germans in the trenches. Men crept forward to blow gaps in the inner wire. When they did, German riflemen and machine gunners in the trench system began firing. Oddwways men dashed forward, ignoring the mines, shouting, shooting. Many fell, but others reached the walls and put fire through the openings. The Germans who had managed to survive the onslaught surrendered. In 20 minutes, it was over. Oddwway sent up the very light to signal success. A spotting aircraft saw it and passed the word on to the Navy 15 minutes before the shelling was due to begin. Oddwway's signals officer pulled a pigeon from his jacket and set it free to take word back to England that the Marville battery had been captured. The Germans had extracted a terrible price. Fully half of Atwway's 150man force had fallen, dead or wounded. The Germans, too, paid a terrible price. Of the 200 defenders, only 22 uninjured men had been taken prisoner. Atwei destroyed the guns by dropping Gammon grenades down the barrels. It turned out that they were old French 75 mm taken out of the Majinino line set up for coastal defense against an attack east of the mouth of the OR. They did not pose a serious threat to Sword Beach. Nevertheless, it was a brilliant feat of arms. The British airborne had gotten off to a smashing start. Before daylight, they had taken control of the bridges over the Or canal and river, and they had taken the Meville battery, in both cases, exactly on schedule. Howard's men had hurled back a sharp local counterattack, led by two old, small French tanks. They had been reinforced by paratroopers from the seventh battalion. Howard's plan at Pegasus Bridge had worked down to the smallest detail. Atwe's plan at the Marvel battery was a shambles before he hit the ground. Hotwe's ability to improvise and inspire and Howard's calm confidence and brilliant plan both showed the British Army of World War II at its absolute best. The Sixth Airborne Division had many other adventures and successes that night. One of the more spectacular was the odyssey of Major AJC Roosevel. A civil engineer before the war, Roosevel was given the task to blow the bridges over the Deved River at Blues and Trrow. For that job, his squad had brought along in equipment bundles a few dozen specially shaped General Wade charges with 30 lb of explosive in each. Roosevel drop zone, wandered around a bit, hooked up with Lieutenant David Breeze and some of his chaps, and did an inventory. The squad consisted of seven men. They had a folding trolley and a container of General Wes. They knew where they were and where they wanted to go to Trrowarn, the larger of the two bridges, 8 km to the southeast. Roosevel had commandeered a bicycle. Even better, a medical jeep and trailer brought in by glider had joined up. As Rose remembered it, the trailer was packed to the gunnels with bottles of blood and bandages and splints and all sorts of fielddressing equipment, instruments, and I told the doctor to follow me. I thought maybe in desperation it would be good to have some transport. Along the way in Herulet, we cut down the telephone wires. It seemed a reasonable thing to do. Sergeant Bill Irving went to do the cutting. I had climbed

Dozens of telephone poles like this in training, he said. I got halfway and that was it. My equipment was too heavy. So, in fact, the wires were not cut. The caravan with the jeep and trailer in the rear carried on.

At a road junction 5 km from Trrowarn, eight troopers from the eighth battalion joined them. Roosevel was greatly relieved. He explained his task to them, said his sappers were ready to blow the bridge once it was secured, and concluded, "Infantry, lead the way."

There were no officers or non-coms in the group. The eight privates looked at each other and shook their heads. The deflated Roosevel regained his composure and made a new plan. He ordered the doctor to unload the trailer. "Did he protest?" Roosevel asked in his interview. He didn't have the rights to any feelings, Roosevel responded. So we loaded all the special charges and detonating equipment into the trailer.

Roosevel sent his sappers to move down to the bridge at Berets, giving them half his general wage to blow it. Roosevel insisted on driving the jeep. "I like to be in command of things," he said, and the remaining seven men piled on while an eighth Sapper Peachy climbed onto the trailer. He had a Bren gun and would act as tail gunner. On the front corners of the hood, Sergeant Irving and Sergeant Joe Henderson sat, sten guns in hand. The men inside the jeep had their weapons at the ready, covering to the flank.

The jeep moved out, straining against the overload, struggling to pick up speed. Fortunately, there were no hills to climb, and the route gradually descended toward the river. Roosevel nursed the jeep along, gradually gaining momentum. "He turned a corner without slowing and we went crashing into a barbed-wire entanglement," Irving recalled. Irving was thrown off the jeep. There was a pile of arms and legs. The axles were entangled by barbed wire.

Roosevel expected a German attack and put his men in positions of immediate defense, then held a torch for Irving as he went to work with his wire cutters. "With the torch on him," Irving said, "I felt just like a pea waiting to be plucked out of the pod. But there were no German troops in the area. The garrison in Trrow seemed to be asleep." Irving finished cutting the wire and everyone mounted up for the journey through Trrowarn.

They crept into Trrowarn. Roosevel stopped short of a crossroads and ordered Irving to go on ahead to see if all was clear. Nothing was moving. Irving signaled the jeep to come forward, and I turned round to check again, and whistling past me was a German soldier on a bicycle, obviously returning from a night out. The men back in the jeep cut down the German with a burst of fire. "That's done it," said Roosevel. He jammed the jeep into gear and drove straight into the main street of Trrowarn, running downhill to the river beyond the village.

Almost immediately the Germans had roused themselves and commenced firing. "And the further we went," Irving said, "the more the fire coming at us and the faster Roosevel drove the jeep and the more we fired back and started to take evasive actions." Irving estimated that 18 to 20 Germans were firing at them. "He had started off the run perched on the left front corner of the jeep, blazing away with my sten gun at anything that moved," he said. "When the jeep reached the end of town, I don't know how it happened, but I was lying flat on the bonnet of the Jeep." Irving added, "We were all so excited that there was no real feeling of being frightened."

Toward the end of the street, a German rushed out of a house with an MG34 and put it down in the middle of the road. He was a second too late. The jeep was nearly on him. But Roosevel remembered he was terribly quick. He grabbed the gun and tripod and ducked into a doorway. As soon as the jeep passed, he set up and suddenly tracers were streaming over our heads. Once again, a second too late.

The jeep was now on the final long gradual slope down to the river. It picked up speed. Roosevel began taking severe zigzags. The machine gunner could not depress his weapon enough to make it effective. The jeep careened. Peachy fell off the trailer. He was injured and captured. And somehow, Irving said, "Joe Henderson, who started out on the front of the jeep with me, finished up sitting back on the trailer. So, in the process, he climbed right over the jeep. Don't ask me how it was done, but he did it."

The squad reached the unguarded bridge. Roosevel stopped, unloaded, gave out orders. He set up guards at each end and told the sappers to place the general wades across the center of the main arch. In a few minutes too, Irving thought five, said Rose. Everything was in place. Irving asked Roosevel if he wanted to light the fuse. "No, you light it. I always thought he wanted to say if the damn thing didn't go off, it had nothing to do with him," Irving said in recalling the exchange. The bridge went up in a great bang. It had a 6-ft gap in the center.

Roosevel drove down river on a dirt road that soon gave out. The party abandoned the jeep to set out on foot for battalion headquarters. They got deeper into a wood. Roosevel called a halt for a rest. "After all that excitement," Irving said, "we were desperately tired. We literally flopped down and went to sleep." The sun was appearing on the eastern horizon. They woke within the hour and got to HQ without event. There Roosevel learned that the sappers sent to do the bridge at Berets had accomplished their mission.

For the Canadian Airborne Battalion, the objective was the downstream bridge over the DE. By 0200, Sergeant John Kemp had his squad gathered, but did not know where he was. His mission was to provide protection for a team of sappers who were to blow up Robbo Bridge. Of all things, in the dark of the night, Kemp heard a bicycle bell ringing. The rider turned out to be a French girl who had probably been out cutting telephone wires, as was being done all over Normandy, adding to the German communication woes. French-speaking Canadians talked to her. She agreed to lead them to the bridge they wanted. Off they set, but she led them to a German headquarters and demanded that they assault it. Kemp refused. His job was to blow the bridge, not rouse the Germans. Reluctantly, she led on.

When they arrived at Robbo Bridge, Kemp checked and found the bridge was unguarded. He posted sentries at each end and sat to wait for sappers to come up with explosives. "The girl was indignant." "Are you going to do nothing?" she asked. She had taken great risks bringing them here. "Are you just going to sit there?" Fortunately, the sappers came up. The bridge was blown, and the girl was satisfied.

The British airborne as a whole had caused to be satisfied with its performance that night. It had blown the bridges it had been told to blow, captured intact the bridges it had been told to capture. It had seized some of the key villages and crossroads scattered throughout the peninsula between the Dev and Orin rivers. It had knocked out the Maraveville battery. It had accomplished its mission. The left flank at Sword Beach, which was the left flank for the entire invasion, was secured by the sixth division before daybreak. But the division was behind enemy lines. It was desperately short of heavy weapons of all kinds. Except over the narrow bridges on the orange waterways, it had no landlines of communication with the rest of the British army, and no one could say how long it would take the commandos to get to Pegasus Bridge.

On the right flank, the Americans were not accomplishing their specific missions as well as their British counterparts. For the 101st Airborne, the primary task was to seize the four inland exits at the western ends of the causeways in the inundated area west of Utah between San Martin de Varaveville and Pupeville. Other missions were to destroy two bridges across the Duv River, the one on the main highway northwest of Karantan and the other railway bridge to the west. In addition, the 101st was to seize and hold the labed lock and establish bridge heads over the doovve downstream from the lock. In some, the 101st's mission was to open the way to the battlefield for the fourth infantry division landing at Utah while sealing off the battlefield from the Germans in Carantan.

The execution of the mission got off to an agonizingly slow start. It took hours until dawn and after, in a few cases never that day, for units to come together in battalion strength, and then another week to sort out the 101st men from the 82nd. Lieutenant Robert Cole, commanding the third battalion, 5002nd PIR, landed near Sult. His objective, the two northern exits from Utah, was 10 km away. It took time to figure out where he was. Time to gather in the men. By 0400, he had less than 50 men gathered together. He set off. In a couple of hours of moving around Salt Mary Glee, the group snowballed to 75 men. It made contact with a small German convoy, killed several of the enemy, and took 10 prisoners. As dawn came up, Cole was still an hour short of his objective.

For Lieutenant Cartage, dawn brought a welcome respit. He had thought he was on the Duv River when he was actually on the Murder. By 0400, he had gathered nine men. His squad was representative of many such units across the Kotantan. Cartage had Lieutenant Werner Meyer from intelligence attached to division HG as an interpreter, a demolition man, three radio men, one company clerk, two men from his own company. "With only three of us trained to fight," Cartage said it was imperative we get with a larger group. He set off toward what he thought was the coast. He recalled, "When daylight came, we stopped on a hillside along a dirt road, set out our landmines in a giant circle and pulled out our d-ration chocolate bars and cantens and ate breakfast. Meer Bravo Fordic and I sat down together and talked it over, deciding which way to go. At that moment, quite a lot of 101st troopers were sitting down talking it over."

Private John Fitzgerald had much to talk about, but no one to talk to. Fitzgerald was from the 101st Airborne. At about 0400, he found a captain and a private from the 82nd. They set out in search of others. The gliders were coming in and a German anti-aircraft battery opened fire. "With all the noise, we were able to crawl to within 25 yd of the battery," Fitzgerald related. It was firing continuously. The captain whispered a brief plan of attack, then called out, "Let's get those bastards." The private from the 82nd opened up with his bar, hitting two Germans on the right of the platform. The captain threw a grenade that exploded directly under the gun. "I emptied my M1 clip at the two Germans on the left," Fitzgerald said. In a moment, it was over. Perspiration broke out on my forehead. My hands were trembling. It was the first time I had ever fired at a living thing. I noticed the torn condom hanging loosely from the end of my rifle. I had put it there before the jump to keep the barrel dry, then forgot about it. They came on another larger battery. They attacked it and were repulsed. In the retreat, they got separated. So, as dawn broke, Fitzgerald was alone, wondering where he was.

Captain Gibbons of the 5001st PI put together a mixed group of a dozen men, and at 0300, set off. They drove off a couple of Germans from a tiny village, roused the French residents, pointed and gestured at the map, and discovered that they had just liberated Caribou. Gibbons knew that Caribbu was outside the 101st sector. It was an 82nd objective. He decided to move south toward his original objective, the bridges across the doovve. It was a long way off. "When we left Caribbeu," Gibbons remembered, dawn was just beginning. He set off with a dozen strangers toward an objective nearly 15 km away without any equipment for blowing a bridge. Later, Gibbons remarked, "This certainly wasn't the way I had thought the invasion would go, nor had we ever rehearsed it in this manner, but he was getting on with his assignment."

Throughout the Kotantan, junior officers from both divisions were doing the same. This was the payoff for the extensive briefings. The platoon and company leaders knew their battalion assignments. By 0400, many of them had set off to carry out their missions, however far away the target was. Captain Shettle found his objective before dawn, one of the few to do so. After he had blown up the communication linkup north of Karantan, he moved toward the two bridges over the doovve downstream from the lock. He was to establish a bridge head on the far bank, not below the bridges, which would be needed later for the hookup of the far left at Utah, which was Shuttle at this moment, and the right flank coming from Omaha. Shettt had about 15 men with him. They came to a French farmhouse, surrounded it, called out the family, and discovered that the only German in the place was a paymaster carrying the pay for the entire sixth parachute regiment. shuttle made him prisoner and confiscated the money. The farmer led the group to the bridges. They were defended by machine gun positions on the south bank, but volunteers dashed across and drove the enemy off. As dawn broke, however, German machine gunners forced Shettle's advanced guard to retreat to the north bank.

Just before dawn, Colonel Johnson, COO of the 5001st PIR, had been able to take the Labaret lock and establish a couple of squads on the far side. The 82nd's mission was to seal off the Kotantan from the south by destroying the bridges over the Duv River upstream from its junction with the Murder at Point Lab and Boseville by occupying and holding both banks of the Murder River. Then protecting the southwest flank of seventh core by securing the line of the Duv River. To the north, the critical objective was Smeaggle.

At 0400, Lieutenant Colonel Ed Krauss, third battalion, 5005th PIR, had gathered approximately 180 men. He put them on the road for his objective, Smary Glee. In the village, the fire was out. The residents had gone back to bed, and so had the German garrison. It was astonishing and inexplicable, but true. When Krauss got to the edge of town without being challenged, he sent one company to move as quietly as possible through town to set up roadblocks with mines in front. After giving the men a 30-minute head start, Krauss sent the other company into town to clear it out. A local Frenchman, half drunk, who had guided the battalion into the town, pointed out the bullets of the Germans. 30 of them surrendered meekly. 10 were shot trying to resist. That quickly, a key objective had been taken. Krauss cut the communications cable point. His men held the roads leading into Smelles. Most importantly, the main highway from K to Sherborg.

At dawn, a disaster. A glider landed jeep towing an anti-tank gun came barreling down the road from Chef Dupon. Before any of Krauss's men could stop it, the jeep hit one of the mines, which not only blew the hell out of it and the gun, but also killed the two men in the jeep and destroyed the roadblock. Fortunately, Krauss had already brought in two anti-tank guns. As the sun rose, he was holding the town the Americans had to have. Nowhere else had either American Airborne Division achieved its pre-dawn objectives. Bridges had not been taken or blown. The causeway exits were not secure. Not a single American company was at full strength. Only a handful were at half strength. An hour or more after sunrise, Americans were still trying to find one another. It led to the sobering thought that it might have been better to have come in at dawn. A daylight assembly would have been much quicker, so that by 07:30, units would have been on the move the same time or earlier than many of them got on the move. In fact, 22 hours after the drop, at the end of D-Day, the 1001st had assembled only about 2500 of the 6,000 men who had dropped.

But despite the time lost and relative failure at assembling, the night drop had accomplished a great deal. It had certainly confused the Germans. The junior officers taking the initiative had gathered together however many men they could, and were setting out for their company objectives. St. Merles was secure. But as dawn broke, every commander from company level on up in the American airborne felt cut off and surrounded and was deeply worried about his unit's ability to perform its mission. Despite the mixing of personnel, the two divisions were not in contact or communication. This was not a raid. No one was coming to pluck them out. They had to fight to take ground and hold it and link up. But they had only about onethird of their men to fight with. What they most feared was being forced to circle the wagons and fight defensive actions without radios or any idea where other Americans were, rendered passive by their weakness in numbers, perhaps even overwhelmed.

Just before dawn, Colonel Height finally got through to General Marks and received his orders. He should attack with his regiment northward out of Kerantan and clean out the area between that city and St. Marle. Height set out confident he could do just that. He had under his command an overstrength regiment that was in his opinion worth two American or British divisions. His paratroopers were tough kids, 17 years old, average age. They had been 6 years old when Hitler took power. They had been raised in a Nazi ideology that had been designed to get them ready for precisely this moment. They had an experienced and renowned commanding officer, a professional soldier with a record of audacity. The Sixth Parachute Regiment was a quintessential creation of Nazi Germany. The Nazis had brought together the professionalism of the German army with the new Nazi youth. They gave it new equipment. They would hurl their best against the best the Americans could put into the field. "Let them come," Gerbles had sneered. Now they had come, and they were in scattered pockets, highly vulnerable. As the first of the sun's rays appeared, height and the elite of the Nazi system marched off to take them on. The first significant counterattack of D-Day was underway. Fittingly, it would pit an American elite force against a German elite force. A trial of systems.

Chapter 13. The greatest show ever staged, the air bombardment. As dawn broke, Captain Shettle of the 56th PI said, "We could observe one of the most impressive sights of any wartime action. Wave after wave of medium and light bombers could be seen sweeping down the invasion beaches to drop their bombs. It was the largest air armada ever gathered. It was about to enter the frey in fearsome numbers."

On D-Day, the allies flew more than 14,000 sorties to the Luftvafa's 250, most of those against shipping on the fringes of the invasion. Many pilots and bomber crews flew three missions that day. Nearly every airman flew too. Spatz Harris and Lee Mallalerie put everything that could fly into the attack. They held back no reserves, a sharp reminder of how far they had come in the air war since 1939 to 42 when the RAF was on the defensive and could not have dreamed of the day when they would be leaving Great Britain uncovered. They had earned their victory in the air war and had paid a price for it, partly in equipment, mainly in human lives. It was the most hazardous service in the war. It was also the most glamorous.

The foot soldiers envied and resented the airmen. To their eyes, the fly boys hung around barracks doing nothing much of anything, went out at night and got the girls, and had an excess of rank. What the foot soldiers did not see was the Army Air Force in action. From the Flyboy's point of view, they were the veterans who had been at war since 1939 RAF or 1942 US. While the respective armies sat around doing not much of anything. They lived a strange existence. On bad weather days, which were a majority, they led quiet barracks lives. On pass, they had their pick of London. On their way to action. For endless hours they were cramped, cold, tense, fearful, and bored. When they entered action, they entered hell. With German flack thick enough to walk on, coming up from below, and German fighters coming in from behind and above, the air crews went through an hour or more of pure terror.

They were not helpless. The Allied bombers bristled with machine guns in the nose, under the belly, on top, in the rear. Experts told them they would be better off eliminating the weight of those guns and the men who served them. A B7 carried 13 50 caliber machine guns. With a lighter airplane, they could fly higher and faster and would be much safer. "No thanks," replied the air crews. They wanted to be able to shoot back. They took heavy casualties. Statistically, bomber crews could not survive 25 missions. Catch 22 was not fiction. Sergeant Roger Love Lace of the 386th Bomber Group had been told that he could go home after 25 missions. Then it was 30, then 35. On D-Day, he was on his 60th mission and eventually did a total of 76. In the two months preceding D-Day, the Allied Air Forces lost 12,000 men and over 2,000 planes. They persevered and triumphed. If how much they accomplished in trying to knock out German war production is a subject of continuing controversy, what they had accomplished in driving the Luftvafa out of France, forcing it back into Germany in a defensive role is not. They had gone past air superiority to achieve air supremacy.

The strategic air forces had not been built to provide tactical support for the land armies. But with the climax of the transportation plan coming in early June, that became their task. All involved agreed that just preceding and on D-Day, every bomber in Britain would participate in pounding the Atlantic Wall. There were disagreements on how specifically to do that. The final plan was as follows. On D-Day minus two, almost half the bombing effort would be in the Padal as part of the fortitude plan. The next day, half the crews rested while the others were given so-called milk runs. The RAF Bomber Command would open D-Day with a midnight bombing of coastal batteries and con. At first light, the US8th Air Force, 1,200 B7s, Flying Fortresses, and B-24s Liberators strong, would bomb for 1/2 hour the beaches on the Calvados coast, while B-26s, Marauders from 9inth Air Force, saturated Utah Beach. If the sky was clear, the bombing would cease 5 minutes before the troops went ashore. If cloudy, 10 minutes. Spatz Tedar and Lee Mallerie wanted a 1500yard safety zone. Ground officers wanted 500 yards. They compromised on 1,000 yards. After the heavies had returned to England from their dawn attack, they would refuel and go out again, this time to hit bridges and crossroads inland or to hit Carantan Khan and other towns. Spatz argued against this as inhumane and unlikely to have much impact. But Eisenhower supported Lee Mallerie on this dispute and those were the orders.

By June 4, Sergeant Roger Love Lace recalled, "The electricity of tension was so thick you could hear it, smell it, feel it." By the evening of June 5, we felt like we were sitting on a live bomb with the fuse sizzling. And then it started. We heard the aircraft overhead, the Dakotas hauling the airborne. We all stood outside and looked up against the semi-d dark sky. There were so many of them it just boggled your mind. In the briefing rooms at 0200 June 6, the men buzzed with excitement. They agreed that this had to be the invasion. The briefing officers, grinning like a skunk eating chocolate, called them to attention, pulled back the curtain covering the map, and announced the target. As Lieutenant Carl Carden of the 370th Bomb Group remembered it. Everything exploded and the cheers went up all over the room and there was a long period of joy. Now we were getting down to business and from now on the Americans were on the attack. The details of the briefing kept most spirits high. The crews were told they would be flying high, that flack would be light and the Luftwafa non-existent. Nevertheless, what about fighter cover? Someone asked. "There will be 3,500 Allied fighters over the beach this morning," one briefer assured them. "We were told it was our job to prepare the ground to the best of our ability to enable the infantry to get ashore to stay ashore and fight and win." Lieutenant John Robinson of the 344th Bomb Group, 9th Air Force said. "We also hoped that while they were about it, they'd kill a whole bunch of those damned anti-aircraft gunners for whom we had no love or pity."

But for the Marauder crews heading for the Kotantan coast where they would be hitting artillery imp placements, the details of their mission were distinctly discouraging. They would be going in at 500 ft if necessary. "Did he say 500 ft?" Sergeant Love Lace asked a buddy. That shook us some. The last time B26s had gone down on the deck like that, they had lost 10 out of 10 in a low-level mission in Holland. The Marauder, a two-engine medium bomber built by Martin, had high tail fins, a cigar-shaped body, and short wings. The crews called the B-26 the flying prostitute because she had no visible means of support. They had an affection for the craft that was well expressed by Lieutenant Robinson. "The Marauders were without any doubt the best bombers in the whole wide world." For Lieutenant JK Havner of the 9th Air Force, the target was the gun position near Barflur at Samarant Devarville. His plane would carry 20 250 lb generalpurpose bombs. "Our mission," he said, "was not to knock out the gun positions, but to stun the German gunners and infantry, keeping them holed up, and to create a network of ready-made foxholes, which our troops could use when they gained a foothold on what was to become known as Utah Beach."

The B7s were to go in at 20,000 ft, 10,000 ft lower than normal with bomb loads 1/3 heavier than usual. Targets were coastal batteries and Omaha and the British invasion beaches. Each fortress carried 16 500 lb bombs. After the briefings at airfields all over England, the crews ate breakfast, then got into trucks for a ride to the Revetments where they climbed into their bombers. They fired their engines. On the Marauders, the Pratt and Whitney 2000 horsepower engines sputtered and coughed and belched out smoke with fire from the exhaust, and they were ready.

Lieutenant James Dong was the pilot of a B-26 in the 387th Bomb Group. He was part of a 36 ship formation, two boxes of 18 in flights of six. He recalled that the taxi out was maddening. The takeoff was just as bad. One plane took off down the right side of the runway. Another would open up the throttle as the first plane reached the halfway mark to gun down the left side. It was dark and rainy. A plane in front of me went up in a ball of fire. Was my load too heavy to get off? He made it off the runway and began to climb. All around him, bombers were climbing, throttled wide open, using landing lights to avoid collisions. There were some anyway, airmen said that night assembly created a high pucker factor on each seat. "Even with 50 missions under my belt, my hands were wet and I felt drained of energy," Dong admitted. His group hit a cloudbank and separated. When he emerged at 8,000 ft, the sky was clear. He could not see any of his group, so he hooked on to another group of B26s and headed for Normandy. Something similar happened to hundreds of pilots.

In his B7, Lieutenant John Meyer heard the co-pilot on the intercom complaining about the clouds. He was saying, "It's a damn German secret weapon. Hitler's got another secret weapon." In his B-26, co-pilot Havner was going through mental anguish, more so than on any of my previous 24 missions. "I just couldn't get the thought out of my mind of those poor devils in Holland on that low-level raid. Here we were about to do the same suicidal thing with hundreds of marauders following us at spaced and regular intervals of only a few minutes." Lieutenant AH Corey was a bombardier in a B26. When his plane emerged from the clouds, it was alone. "In a minute," he said, "I saw a plane pop out of the clouds down below. It was a B-26. So, I took my blinker light and sent the code in his direction. He responded affirmatively with the code, then pulled up and stayed on our right wing. Momentarily, another popped up on the left wing. Then, more and more until three flights of six planes each were formed and took course toward the invasion coast."

Captain Charles Harris was the pilot of a B7 in the 100th bomb group. He was the last to take off at 0345. He recalled "as we were absolutely deadended Charlie and the entire 8th Air Force. I remember glancing back a couple of times and there was not another plane in the air behind us. But as far as we could see ahead were hundreds and hundreds of planes."

As the low-flying marauders approached Utah Beach, the sky brightened and the crews saw a sight unique in world history. None of them ever forgot it. All of them found it difficult to describe. Below them, hundreds of landing craft were running into shore, leaving white wakes. Behind the landing craft were the LSTs and other transports, and the destroyers, cruisers, and battleships. "As I looked down at this magnificent operation," Lieutenant Alan Stevens, a co-pilot in a B-26 of the 397th Bomb Group, said, "I had the surging feeling that I was sitting in on the greatest show ever staged." Lieutenant William Morardi, a B26 pilot, said, "As we approached the coast, we could see ships shelling the beach. One destroyer, half sunk, was still firing from the floating end. The beach was a bedum of exploding bombs and shells." Lieutenant Cory remembered that "the water was just full of boats, like bunches of ants crawling around down there. I imagined all those young men huddled in the landing craft, doubtless scared to death. I could see what they were heading into, and I prayed for all those brave young men. I thought, man, I'm up here looking down at this stuff, and they're out there waiting to get on that beach."

For the B7 crews, flying mainly at 20,000 ft up above the clouds, there was no such sight. They could see nothing but other B7s. Those that could tucked in behind a Pathfinder plane carrying radar. With radar, the lead bombardier would be able to mark a general target area. When the lead plane dropped its bombs, so would the ones following. That was not a textbook method of providing close-end ground support. Such bombing was clearly inappropriate to its purpose. Eisenhower had said when he postponed the invasion that he was counting heavily on the air bombardment to get ashore. He added that the allies would not have undertaken the operation without that asset. Eventually, after the infamous short bombardment in late July on the eve of Operation Cobra, Eisenhower learned the lesson that the B7 was not a suitable weapon for tactical ground support. The testimony from the B7 pilots and crews describing their experiences on D-Day suggests that the asset was wasted on D-Day and that the proper use would have been to do what the B7 was built to do. Pound away at big targets inside Germany, oil refineries, train depots, factory complexes, airfields, and leave the beach bombardment to the marauders and A20s havocs. But not even the commanders most dedicated to the idea that strategic air power would win the war, the ones who had opposed the transportation plan so strongly, ever considered for an instant not participating in D-Day. They wanted to be there, and Eisenhower wanted them there.

At 20,000 ft, with heavy clouds below and the sky just beginning to lighten, where there was could be a mystery. Many pilots never got themselves located. The orders were, "If you can't see the target or get behind a radar plane, bring the bombs home." In the 466th Bomb Group, 68 B7s took off, carrying 400,000 lb of bombs. Only 32 were able to drop their bombs. Those that did dropped them blind through the clouds over the British beaches. Lieutenant Carden had a brother down below. He recalled, "I did not know where he was, but I wanted to be accurate. We were a little bit late because of the weather, which affected the bombing accuracy of almost every group up there with us. They delayed on the split-second timing so as to avoid hitting men coming ashore. As a consequence, all the bombs from the B7s fell harmlessly two or even three miles inland. It was a day of frustration," said Lieutenant Meyer. "We certainly didn't do as we had planned. The good part for the B7s was that the flack was light and there was no luftvafa. It was a milk run."

Meer concluded at Utah Beach. It was no milk run for the marauders. They went in low enough for the Germans to throw rocks at us. Sergeant Love Lace recalled seeing the first wave just a couple of hundred yards offshore. zigzagging toward the beach. "We were running right down the shoreline looking for a target. We were drawing a lot of fire, not the usual 8mm, but smaller rapid fire stuff. I have this frozen image of a machine gunner set up by a barn firing at us. For a short second, I could look right down the barrel of that gun. A waste gunner or a tail gunner would return fire, but up in the top turret, I felt helpless. I couldn't bring my guns below horizontal. Therefore, I couldn't fire on anything."

Lieutenant Haber saw a plane in his box take a flack hit, do a complete snap roll, recover, and carry on. "Unbelievable," he remarked. "Now we're on our bomb run, and another of our ships takes a direct hit, blows up, and goes down. Damn, that briefer in his milk run. What's with all this flack?" Sergeant Ray Sanders was in Heaven's plane. "We were accustomed to heavy flack," he said. "But this was the most withering, heavy, and accurate we ever experienced." On his bomb run, Bombardier Cory was well below 1,000 ft, too low to use his bomb site. He could see men jumping out of the landing craft, guys who fell and were floating in the surf, tracers coming from the bunkers, spraying that beach. He used his manual trip switch with his foot providing the aiming point. He made no attempt to be accurate. He figured "I was making good foxholes for some of those guys coming ashore."

In Hav's B26, Sergeant Sanders heard "our ship sound like it was being blown or ripped to bits. The sound was much louder than anything I had ever heard and seemed to come from every surface of our ship. Before the terrible noise and jolting had quit, I grabbed the intercom and yelled, 'We've been hit.' And our co-pilot, Lieutenant Hav, came back on the intercom and said, 'No, we haven't been hit. That was our bombs going off. We were flying that low.'" Lieutenant John Robinson recalled, "The explosions really bumped my wings at that altitude. It was like driving a car down the ties of a railroad track." Many others had similar experiences. A good indication of how much of the explosive power of those bombs went up in air, but by no means all of it.

As Lieutenant Arthur Yankee at Latalain could attest, as the marauders came over, he huddled in his shelter and closed his eyes. A carpet of bombs hit the dunes. Sand sprouts geysered up in whirling pillars several meters high. One bomb landed only a few meters from Yankee's shelter, burying him. Wounded in the arm, he dug himself out with great difficulty and threw himself into a bomb crater. "Even in Russia," he thought, "I've never seen anything like this." Yonke was at the site of the present-day Utah Beach Museum. He had a flashback to a ceremony held on that spot just one week earlier. General Markx had decorated him with the Iron Cross for his bravery on the Eastern Front. There had been drinking, feasting, a choir singing, followed by a performance by a troop of visiting actors. The opening line of the play was, "How long are we going to sit on this keg of dynamite?" Yankee's men had broken up laughing. Now the dynamite had exploded.

The two 75mm cannon were destroyed. The 88 damaged. The two 50mm anti-tank guns gone, as were the flamethrowers. Yankee's radio and telephone communications with the rear were kaput. His men had survived, huddled in their bunkers. When they emerged, they were horrified. The mess corporal's assistant, an old man, came running up to Yankee. "Everything is wrecked, Hairlight. The stores are on fire. Everything's wrecked." Shaking his head, he added. "We've got to surrender, Hair Lloyd." "Have you gone out of your mind, man?" the 23-year-old Yankee replied. "If we had always surrendered in Russia in this kind of situation, the Russians would have been here long ago." He called out a command. "All troops fall in for entrenching." Just as they were getting into the work, here came another wave of marauders. The men huddled in the sand. Yankee sent a man on a bicycle to report to Battalion HQ, but he was killed by a bomb.

As the bombardment ended and the sky brightened, Yankee could see the naval armada slowly emerging out of the dark and headed straight toward Lamadane. The sight shattered any morale the Germans had left. Yankee's men had believed that Lamadain with its mighty cannon was impregnable. Now the fortress was destroyed and they were brought face to face with the reality of the naval forces rising up out of the sea. And all Yankee had to oppose the invaders were two machine guns and two grenade launchers. The American marauders had done an outstanding job of destroying Raml's fixed fortifications at Utah before the Germans had an opportunity to fire even one shot.

Another twin engine bomber, the A20 Havoc, was also effective in low-level missions, led by the 410th Bomb Group, known at least to themselves, as the world's best bomb group, and awarded the presidential unit citation. The 410th blasted Karantan, making it all but impossible for Colonel Height to move vehicles out of the city into the battle. After making the bomb run, the bombers continued across the Kotan Peninsula, then turned right, flew around the tip of the peninsula, and then north to home base in England. That gave them another never to be forgotten sight. As Lieutenant Dong described it, "out over the French countryside, scattered everywhere were parachutes and pieces of crashed gliders. I don't believe I saw an undamaged one. I had this sick feeling that things were not going well." Lieutenant Charles Middleton saw parachutes everywhere and parts of gliders scattered all over. You could see where they had gone through the hedge, leaving wings behind, some burnt and some still intact, although not many. Then he saw the most improbable sight. Not far from the battle zone, a farmer was plowing his field. He had a white horse and was seemingly unconcerned about all that was happening around him.

By 0800, many crews were back at base, having a second breakfast. In an hour or two, they were in the air again, bombing Sanlow and other inland targets. The RAF returned to Khan, trying to concentrate on the railroad station. The Germans in Khan in retaliation took 80 French resistance prisoners out of their cells and shot them in cold blood. In contrast to the near total success of the B-26s at Utah, the great bombing raids by B7s and B24s of June 6 against Omaha and the British beaches turned out to be a bust. The Allies managed to drop more bombs on Normandy in 2 hours than they had on Hamburgg, the most heavily bombed city of 1943. But because of the weather and the airmen not wanting to hit their own troops, most of the blockbusters came down in Norman Meadows or were carried back to England, not on the Atlantic Wall. Yet the B7 pilots and crews did their best and in some cases made important contributions, certainly far more than the Luftvafa bomber force.

At the top of the elite world of the Allied Air Forces stood the fighter pilots. Young, cocky, skilled veteran warriors. In a mass war fought by millions, the fighter pilots were the only glamorous individuals left. Up there all alone in a one-on-one with a Luftvafa fighter, one man's skill and training and machine against another's. They were the knights and shining armor of World War II. They lived on the edge, completely in the present. But young though they were, they were intelligent enough to realize that what they were experiencing, wartime London, the blitz, the risks, was unique and historic. It would demean them to call them star athletes because they were much more than that. But they had some of the traits of the athlete. The most important was the lust to compete. They wanted to fly on D-Day to engage in dog fights to help make history.

The P47 pilots were especially eager. In 1943, they had been on escort duty for strategic bombing raids, which gave them plenty of opportunity to get into dog fights. By the spring of 1944, however, the P-47 had given up that role to the longer ranged P-51, the weapon that won the war. Many experts say the P-51 made possible the deep penetrations of the B7s and thus drove the Luftvafa out of France. The P-47 Thunderbolt was a single engine fighter with classic lines. It was a joy to fly and a gem in combat. But for the past weeks, the P-47s had been limited to strafing runs inside France. The pilots were getting bored. Lieutenant Jack Baronfeld flew a P-47. At 18:30, June 5, he and every other fighter pilot in the base got a general briefing. First came an announcement that this was the big one. That brought cheers and electric excitement "I'll never forget," Lieutenant James Taylor said. "We went absolutely crazy. All the emotions that had been pin up for so long, we really let it all hang out. We knew we were good pilots. We were really ready for it."

The pilots, talking and laughing, filed out to go to their squadron areas where they would learn their specific missions. Barrenfeld had a 3/4 mile walk. He turned to Lieutenant Bobby Bergrren and said, "Well, Bob, this is what we've been waiting for. We haven't seen any enemy aircraft for 2 weeks, and we are going out tomorrow to be on the front row and really get a chance to make a name for ourselves." Bergman bet him $50 that they would not see any enemy aircraft. Lieutenant Taylor learned that his squadron would be on patrol duty 120 mi south of the invasion site, spotting for submarines and the luafa. They would fly back and forth on a grid pattern. "We were really devastated," Taylor remembered. "I looked at Smitty and Oyer, and they were both looking at the ground. All of us felt nothing but despair. It was a horrible feeling, and lots of the fellows were groaning and moaning and whatnot." Taylor was so downcast he could not eat breakfast. Instead of a night in shining armor, he was going to be a scout.

The first P-47s began taking off at about 0430. They had not previously taken off at night, but it went well. Once a loft, they became part of the Air Armada heading for France. Above them were B7s. Below them were marauders and Dakotas. The Dakotas were tugging gliders. Around them were other fighters. Lieutenant, later Major General Edward Giller, was leader for a flight of three P-47s. "I remember a rather harrowing experience in the climb out because of some low clouds. There was a group of B26s flying through the clouds as we climbed through, and each formation passed through the other one. That produced one minute of sheer stark terror." It was bittersweet for the P47 pilots to pass over the channel. Lieutenant Charles Moley recalled, "Ships and boats of every nature and size churned through the rough channel surface, seemingly in a mass so solid one could have walked from shore to shore. I specifically remember thinking that Hitler must have been mad to think that Germany could defeat a nation capable of filling the sea and sky with so much ordinance."

"Lieutenant Giller's assignment was to patrol over the beaches to make certain no German aircraft tried to strafe the landing craft. We were so high," he remembered, "that we were disconnected essentially from the activity on the ground. You could see ships smoking. You could see activities, but of a dim, remote nature and no sense of personal involvement." Radar operators in England radioed a report of German fighters. Giller and every other fighter pilot in the area rushed to the sector only to discover it was a false alarm. Lieutenant Moly also flew a P-47 on patrol that day. He recalled, "Flying back and forth over the same stretch of water for 4 hours, watching for an enemy that never appeared, was tedious and boring."

In the afternoon, Baronfeld flew support for a group of Dakotas tugging gliders to Normandy. The P47s, flying at 250 mph, had to make long, lazy S turns to keep the C-47s in visual contact, otherwise they would overrun the glider formation. "Battle formation two to 30 hund yards apart, then a turn, cross over, then we'd line up again. We were so busy, we had no sense of time. Of course, we were looking for enemy aircraft. There weren't any. Mouth dry, edge of seat, silence. Very exciting time." The gliders cut loose. Barrenfeld descended to below 1,000 ft to shepherd them into Normandy. But for the gliders, the ground was rough and the hedge too close together. "It was very disconcerting to see one cut loose, make the circle, and hit a hedge row. I thought, 'My god, this invasion is going to be a'"

failure if they are depending on these gliders for any sort of part."

The P38 Lightning was a twin-engine, twin-boom, single-seat fighter designed by the legendary Clarence Kelly Johnson of Lockheed. He later designed the U2 spy plane. The Germans called it Gabalvance Tifle, fork-tailed devil. Because of its distinctive shape, the Lightning was given the role of close-end support. The thought was that anti-aircraft crews on the Allied warships would recognize the shape even if they failed to notice the white bands painted on the wings and booms.

But although they were closer to the action, the P38 pilots found their high expectations quickly deflating. First, there were too many ships at sea with too many overanxious gun crews who had too much ammunition. The P38s got shot at by their own gunships, and they found no German aircraft to shoot at themselves.

"We circled and weaved in the air over our ships," Captain Peter Moody said. "We were somewhat envious of the fighters who were allowed to break free and fly over the French coast looking for targets of opportunity. At one point I heard a British controller radio to one of his aircraft. Roger Red Rover, you're free to romp and play."

From the point of view of Lieutenant William Satterhite flying a P38 over Omaha Beach, German resistance appeared to be devastating. Landing craft were being capsized, some were exploding, and the contents, including men and equipment, were being spilled into the surf in great numbers and quantity.

The Allies put 3,467 heavy bombers, 1,645 medium bombers, and 5,49 fighters into the air on D-Day. Not one plane was shot down by the Luftvafa. The flack batteries managed to shoot down 113 aircraft. Overall, except at Utah, the contributions made by the Allied Air Forces on D-Day could not be characterized as critical because they had accomplished the critical mission in April and May 1944. They had isolated the battlefield from much of the French railway system. They had made it difficult to impossible for German trucks and tanks to move by day. They had driven the Luftvafa out of the skies of France.

What they had not done was develop a workable doctrine for the use of the heavy bombers and tactical support of ground troops. Nor had they developed a working method of communication between the soldiers on the ground with those eager to shoot P-38 pilots over their heads. Techniques were developed later in the war that worked. In December 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge, the air ground coordination was outstanding and critical to the victory. But those techniques were not there on D-Day.

But what the air forces had accomplished before D-Day more than justified their cost. How completely the Allies controlled the skies over the battlefield was illustrated dramatically by the single Luftvafa bombing mission against the beaches. It came at dusk on D-Day. LSTs were jammed together offshore at Omaha. Higgins boats were on the coastline with jeeps, trucks, aid stations, tanks, men, and other equipment pressed together on the beach. A lucrative can't-miss target.

Four twin-engine Ju88s appeared over Omaha Beach. The sky was suddenly ablaze with tracers as every man on a machine gun or anti-aircraft gun in that vast fleet opened up. "The barrage was magnificent, thunderous, and terrifying," said Lieutenant Donald Porter, a fighter aircraft controller on an LCI waiting its turn to go into shore. "The low trajectory of the streams of tracers, mostly 50 caliber machine guns, had us ducking. The Germans were coming in at a very low altitude, so our firing was just clearing our own ships. I was huddled on the small and crowded deck with only my helmet and two blankets for protection."

Porter looked up and saw tracers converging just overhead. At that instant, he recalled, the Ju88 burst into flame from wing tip to wing tip. It seemed that the flaming plane would crash right on us, and our guns were firing into him even as he burned. Some 100 yards away from the LCI, Porter remembered, the German plane slid over and plunged into the water with a hissing sound. Our guns were still firing into him as he hit the sea about 50 yards to the starboard.

The staggering amount of hot metal the fleets poured into those Ju88s sent a signal. Whatever happened on the ground, the skies above Normandy belonged to the RAF and the US Army Air Force. While the channel belonged to the Royal Navy, the US Navy and the Allied warships.

P-47 pilots were not the only ones who felt a disappointment in not being able to participate more directly in D-Day. Ground crews all over England stayed busy refueling planes and repairing flack damage, making a direct contribution, but still feeling a bit out of it. Staff officers in London and throughout England from the different nationalities and services, often despised by the line officers, had done their work in advance, and on D-Day could only be spectators. The amount of sheer grind that the staff officers had put in denied some of them even the role of spectator.

Harry Crosby was group navigation officer for the 100th bomb group of the Eighth Air Force. He records, "During the week before D-Day, I worked 24 hours a day. I had to superend the preparation of maps and flight plans. I had to set up the formations for over a hundred different missions and variations. I had to brief all our navigators as a group and each lead navigator as an individual. I was a minute part in the whole operation, but I worked for 75 hours without even seeing my bed. I didn't shave. My orderly brought me a change of uniforms. I don't remember eating. I remember gallons of coffee. Each cup so hot and strong it shocked me into wakefulness."

By dusk on June 5, Crosby was a zombie. His CO told him to go to bed. Crosby protested. The CO made it an order. Crosby fell onto his bed without removing his tie or shoes. He slept for 24 hours. So, as for D-Day, he said, "I missed it all."

Shortly after Captain Shedtle of the paratroops saw the site that so impressed him, wave after wave of marauders coming over, he spotted a German anti-aircraft battery. He recalled, "I had my naval radio operator send coordinates to his ship at sea. The naval gunfire came almost immediately, and after correcting their aim, they fired a barrage which silenced the anti-aircraft fire."

The incident illustrates the coordination and teamwork that was the hallmark of the Allied effort. On June 6th, a paratrooper behind enemy lines uses a naval officer who had jumped with him, probably his first jump, to contact warships at sea, to silence a battery shooting at Allied aircraft. The men being protected were the men who had made it possible for the paratroopers and navy to be there in the first place, the men of the Army Air Force.

Chapter 14. A long endless column of ships. The naval crossing and bombardment.

The mine sweepers went first. There were 255 of them. Their job was to sweep up lanes from the Isle of Wight through the Channel up to the transport anchoring area off the French coast. The mines they were after consisted of contact and antenna mines, some floating, many anchored, plus pressure mines planted on the bottom and exploded by a change in water pressure exerted by the hull of an approaching ship. These mines constituted the Germans' most effective, indeed virtually only naval defense. The mines could be brutally effective. One of them caused the first Allied casualties in the invasion. At about 1700 on June 5, mine sweeper USS Osprey hit a mine that blew a large hole in the forward engine room. Fires broke out and at 1815 the ship had to be abandoned. Osprey sank soon after with the loss of six men.

The Mine Sweeper fleet under the direct command of Admiral Ramsay went on with its task. It cleared a wide channel from the Isle of Wight to Point Z, 13 mi southeast of the island. Around Point Z, there was a circle of 5 mi radius nicknamed Piccadilly Circus through which all the following vessels would pass. From Point Z, the mine sweepers broke up into groups to sweep 10 lanes to France, two for each task force, one for the slower transports, the other for the fast warships. They marked the lanes with lighted dan buoys. When that task was completed, their assignment was to move in to sweep the shallow waters off the invasion beaches. Destroyers provided cover.

The lead destroyer for the lead flotilla of mine sweepers came from the first nation Hitler had overrun. It was Polish named Slazac, commanded by Captain Ramald Nalich Tyinsky. Just behind Slazac was HMS Middleton. Next came the Norwegian destroyer Spanner. The mine sweepers they were covering were British, Canadian, and American. A fine show of Allied unity. At 2315 June 5, the three destroyers entered channel number 10 alongside the mine sweepers that cleared the lane and marked it with Dan Buoys. At 0303 June 6, the job was done and the destroyers took up their patrol station opposite Westward Sword Beach.

Behind the mine sweepers came the LCT flotilla. Each LCT carried four DD tanks and four jeeps with trailers full of ammunition plus their crews. For the 29th Division's sector of Omaha, Easy Green, Dog Red, Dog White, and Dog Green, 16 LCTs were bringing across the channel 64 DD tanks. The plan was to launch the swimming tanks from 5 km offshore. The timing had to be precise. The tanks were scheduled to climb onto the beach and commence firing at pillboxes at H hour -5 minutes in order to provide cover for the first wave of infantry, which would land at H hour 06:30, an hour after first light, and an hour after dead low tide.

The LCTs were in the van because they were the slowest and most difficult to maneuver vessels in the fleet. LCTs were built from three sections bolted together to form the 110 ft craft. With the heavy machinery in the stern and the bow both high and light, they were flat-bottomed with no centerboard. In a strong wind or tidal current, it was all but impossible to hold them on course.

Lieutenant Dean Rockwell commanded the LCT flotilla headed for Omaha. On June 5, he set off on his 20-hour journey to the far shore. At Piccadilly Circus, he had his first problem. LCT713 was missing. There were ships, vessels, and boats of all types circling and trying to form up, some with a big O painted on the side for Omaha, others with a U for Utah. Rockwell finally found LCT713 with its O cruising, in his words, blindly along among ships with great big U's on them. I came alongside and told the captain to look around and see where he was. "Oh," he said, and I guided him back to where he belonged.

Rockwell headed for France. The wind was strong. Holding position was difficult. Even staying afloat was a problem. Those Sherman tanks weighed 32 tons each, plus their ammo, food, fuel, and men. In Rockwell's words, "So combined with our weight, we had very little freeboard. In fact, the seas were running in over our decks. Everyone was miserable, especially the tankers."

At 0400 June 6, the LCTs reached the transport sector of Omaha. At 0415, they went from condition 1 to general quarters. At 0510, they went a kilometer closer to the beach to their launch position 5 km offshore. At 0522, the crews secured from general quarters to take up their beaching stations. Although the strong westerly winds continued, they were now in the lee of the Cotentin Peninsula, and the seas were relatively moderate.

Behind the LCTs came the bombardment groups: battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. There were six battleships, three American, three British; 20 cruisers, three American, three French, the remainder British and Canadian; 68 destroyers, 31 American, one Norwegian, one Polish, the others British and Canadian. The battleships were old. Nevada, with 10 14-inch guns, had been commissioned in 1916 and had been the only battleship to get underway at Pearl Harbor. Texas, mounting 10 14-inch guns, was 2 years older, while Arkansas, commissioned 1912 with 12 12-inch guns, had been scheduled for disposal and had been saved only by the coming of the war. HMS Warspite was 29 years old. She carried eight 15-inch guns, as did HMS Ramillies, commissioned 1917. HMS Rodney, with nine 16-inch guns, was the youngest of the battleships, commissioned 1927.

"The Old Ladies," Navy men called the battleships. They would be dueling the heavy German batteries. In the Utah Beach sector, the Germans had 110 guns, ranging from 75 mm up to 170 mm. Inland they had 18 batteries, the largest consisting of four 210 mm guns in casements near Saint-Malo. The old ladies were expendable, and it was expected that one or two of them at least would be lost, but they would make their contribution by drawing the huge shells away from the beach and onto them.

The main group of destroyers came behind the cruisers and battleships, ahead of the transports, LCIs, LCCs (landing craft control carried part of the way on LSTs before being lowered by davits to the sea), LCMs, and others. The entire fleet included 229 LSTs, 245 LCIs, 911 LCTs, 481 LCMs, all under their own power, and 1,089 LCVPs riding on LSTs to the transport area, plus various other transports, Coast Guard rescue boats, PT boats, block ships that would be sunk to create artificial harbors off Gold and Utah, and more. The most unwieldy craft, even worse than the LCTs, were the Rhino Ferries. Barges hooked together carrying trucks, jeeps, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment towed by LSTs across the channel with outboard motors to provide their own propulsion for the run-in to the beach.

On USS Bayfield, an attack transport that served as headquarters for Major General Raymond O. Barton, commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, the decks were jammed with troops and sailors. Barton's deputy commander, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, moved among the men, speaking softly and soothingly. Countless members of the Fourth Division recalled the words of reassurance that Roosevelt, the oldest man going ashore that day, said to them. They remember, too, that he began singing and urged them to join in.

Lieutenant John Robert Lewis described the scene. "During the cruise across, we had all assembled on the deck of the Bayfield and sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Onward Christian Soldiers. This was a very sobering time to sing the words, 'As God died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.'"

Seaman Joseph Dolan, a radio operator on Bayfield, remembered thinking that at that moment his high school class was holding graduation exercises. Had he not joined the Navy, he would have been there.

On LST 530, Seaman Gene Seismore reported to Captain Anthony Duke. Just before departing England, Seismore had told Duke, "I'm only 15, Captain, and I don't want to go on this trip." He had lied about his age when he enlisted. Duke had replied, "Well, Seismore, you are going anyway." "Well, Captain, I'm scared," Seismore rejoined. "And I want to get off now." Duke said he felt sorry for him, but the best he could do was order Seismore to report to the bridge every hour. "That way," he said, "I'll be able to see how you're doing, and you'll be able to see how I'm doing." So, Seismore reported, and he was doing fine.

LST 530 was headed to Gold Beach, the second LST in a column of 12. One of the first things Duke did was order the barrage balloon cut loose. The cables were snapping in the wind and were a danger to the crew. Other LST skippers did the same. Looking around, Duke recalled, "By God, I'll never forget the feeling of power. Power about to be unleashed that welled up in me as I viewed the long endless columns of ships headed toward Normandy."

In spite of the wind and rough sea, the crowded movement of the thousands of Allied ships and small craft ran off close to schedule with some minor bumping but no major collisions. This remarkable feat, according to Admiral Morrison, was incredible enough to suggest divine guidance. Against this host, the Germans could put into action a handful of gunboats, a few submarines, a small fleet of E-boats, and nothing more. In World War I, Germany had challenged Britain for control of the seas. By 1944, the Germans had only three ships larger than destroyers still afloat: the cruisers Prinz Eugen, Nürnberg, and Köln, and they were in port on D-Day.

At 2300, Nevada, followed by the cruisers Quincy, Tuscaloosa, and HMS Black Prince, left Piccadilly Circus to head southeast for Utah. At 0230, Nevada reached her position 11 miles off the coast. "As we neared our position in the Bay of the Seine," Lieutenant Ross Olsen recalled, "we felt like we were sneaking up on the enemy and even talked in whispers, thinking that we might be heard by the Germans on the beach, which of course was impossible. But when we cut loose the anchor, it made a tremendous noise as the anchor chain went through the hawsepipe. Olsen was sure the Germans had to have heard it." Quickly, the rattle of other chains running through hawsepipes filled the air off Utah and the other four beaches.

The Germans heard nothing, saw nothing. Although there had been a steady stream of ships coming from Piccadilly Circus since well before midnight, lined up so close in their columns as to practically form a bridge from the Isle of Wight to Normandy, and although the first ships reached the transport areas around 0200, German search radar failed to pick up anything. This was partly due to German inefficiency, more to the effectiveness of pre-invasion air bombardment when the bombers had made radar sites on the coast primary targets, destroying some and damaging many more. Further, the Allied aircraft were throwing down "windows," foil strips that caused hundreds of echoes on the German radars. Admiral Kinzel had canceled the usual E-boat patrols because of the foul weather, so the boats were still in port in Le Havre, Westward, and Cherbourg.

At 0309, German radar finally spotted the fleet. Kinzel promptly issued orders to the shore batteries to prepare to repel an invasion. He sent the E-boat flotillas and two armed trawlers into battle. They were underway by 0348.

In the American transports, the cooks fed the soldiers spam sandwiches and coffee. On the British LSTs, the men got a fried egg breakfast, swimming in grease, and a tot of rum.

Lieutenant Commander B.T. Henny, Royal Navy, the beachmaster for Gold, was astonished when at 0200, in the officer's mess on Empire Archbus, sharply uniformed stewards wearing white gloves proffered menus. Between 0100 and 0400, depending on when the men were due to arrive at the beach, the bosun's whistles sounded on the LSTs. "Now hear this, all Navy hands, man your battle stations." The sailors scurried to their posts. The bosun's whistles sounded again. "Now hear this. All assault troops, report to your debarkation areas." The men climbed into their LCVPs and other craft. When the whistle sounded again, followed by the order, "Away all boats." The heavily loaded craft were swung by the davits over the side and slowly lowered into the water.

On Empire Javelin, a British transport carrying the First Battalion, 116th Infantry, 29th Division, off Omaha Beach, the davit lowering one craft got stuck for half an hour halfway down the ship's side directly beneath the scupper. "During this half hour, the bowels of the ship's company made the most of an opportunity that Englishmen have sought since 1776," recalled Major Tom Dallas, the battalion executive officer. "Yells from the boat were unavailing. Streams colored everything from canary yellow to sienna brown and olive green continued to flush into the command group decorating every man aboard. We cursed, we cried, and we laughed, but it kept coming. When we started for shore, we were all covered with..."

The landing craft that had made the crossing hanging on booms over the sides of the LSTs were lowered into the water with only their coxswains aboard. As the coxswains of the LCVPs, mostly Coast Guard, almost all young, many still teenagers, brought their engines to life and began circling, the LSTs and other transports dropped their rope nets over the side. The men descending to their Higgins boats on those scramble nets provide one of the most enduring images of D-Day. Like the paratroopers who had dropped into France during the night, the infantry and combat engineers were grossly overloaded with weapons, ammunition, and rations. Their impregnated clothing and heavy boots added to their cumbersome, awkward feeling. It was dark, and the channel swells raised and lowered the little landing craft by 10 ft and more. As the coxswains brought them alongside, officers on deck instructed their men to time their jumps off the nets into the boats: jump as the landing craft reached the top of a swell so as to shorten the distance. Many failed. There were more than two dozen broken legs in the first hour alone. A few got caught between the ship and the landing craft. At least three men were squashed to death, others badly injured.

Seaman Ronald Seaborn, a naval telegraphist going into Gold as a forward observer, was carrying his haversack, a radio, a telescopic aerial, a revolver, and an assortment of pouches. Everything was on his back, which made him top-heavy, except the aerial, which he carried in one hand, leaving only one hand free to scramble down the net. "For me," he said, "that scramble was the most difficult part of the entire Normandy operation. But for a lucky wave, which almost washed the craft back onto the boat deck of the LST, and thus reduced the distance of my inevitable fall to a small one, I doubt very much whether I would have made the transit."

Overall, considering the difficulties, the loading went well. On the Higgins boats, assault platoons of 30 men and two officers carrying Bangalore torpedoes, mortars, BARs, rifles, and other weapons jammed together. They had to stand. There was insufficient room for anyone to sit. The tops of the gunwales were just about at eye level. When the boats were loaded, the coxswains pulled away from the mother ship and began to circle. The circles grew ever larger. The boats bobbed up and down, and almost immediately most of the spam or eggs and rum consumed earlier ended up on the decks, which made the decks exceedingly slippery.

On Seaman Seaborn's LCM, a Royal Marine Brigadier, "sat majestically on the seat of a jeep whilst the rest of us huddled miserably between the jeep and the sides of the craft, trying to avoid the vast quantity of cold spray coming over the gunwales." Men began throwing up. The wind flung the vomit back on the jeep and the brigadier. Seaborn recalled, he shouted to all on board that anyone feeling sick was to go to the other side of the craft, and within seconds the port side was full of green-faced men. As the LCM circled, the wind came in off the port, throwing another wave of vomit on the brigadier and his jeep. "Fortunately," said Seaborn, "the brigadier then succumbed to the motion and was past caring about the dreadful state he and his jeep got into."

Lieutenant John Ricker commanded the LCC designated as primary control vessel for Tear Green Beach, Utah. Lieutenant Howard Vanderbeek, commanding LCC60, set off for the coast, astern of Ricker's PC 1176. Along with the boats carrying underwater demolition teams from the Navy and the LCTs, the LCCs were in the van, waiting for the LCVPs and other craft to join up for the run into the beach. Vanderbeek said, "We felt naked, defenseless. Although hundreds of friendly guns on US battleships, cruisers, and destroyers behind us were poised and silent, ready to begin their onslaught, there were the Vermacht batteries ahead, waiting for enough light to fire." It was a cool night, and the spray hitting the men in the face was cold, but the soldiers and sailors gathered off the Normandy coast were sweating. Tension, fear, and anticipation were the dominant emotions.

The drone of the engines of the landing craft began to be overwhelmed by the drone of the first waves of bombers. Behind the forward naval elements, the 10 swept channels were jammed bow to stern with follow-up forces. The sailors manning the 5, 10, 12, and 14-inch guns on the warships were at their battle stations, ready to commence firing. What the airborne troops had started, the seaborn armada was about to continue. What Hitler had sown, he was now to reap. The free peoples of the world were sending the best of their young men and the products of their industry to liberate Western Europe and crush him and his Nazi party.

Shortly after 0520, the light began to come up in the east. Bombers began to drop their loads, German anti-aircraft gunners to shoot at them. But in the transport and bombardment areas, it was ominously quiet. No German batteries opened fire. The Allied warships were not due to commence firing until 0550, minus 40 minutes, unless they were fired upon.

On the destroyer USS McCook off Omaha, Lieutenant Jerry Clancy shook his head. "What I can't understand is why they don't fire on us," he told reporter Martin Summers standing beside him. "None of us could understand it," Summers wrote later. "And we all wished they would start firing so we could start firing back. That would be much better than waiting."

As the air bombardment increased in intensity, a reverent chorus of "Oohs" ran through the ship. Thunderous explosions rolled along the shore, followed by high bursts of multicolored flak, and then a geyser of flame here, another there. The blasts were coming so fast that they merged into one roar. The shoreline became a broken necklace of flame. Summers and Clancy tried to make conversation but could scarcely hear each other. "I guess this is about the longest hour in history," Clancy commented.

At 0535, the German batteries commenced firing on the fleet. Off Utah, Lieutenant Olsen on Nevada saw shells hitting all around. It seemed to him that every German gun in France was concentrated on Nevada. "We learned later that we were straddled 27 times by shells and never hit. We had been shelled for what seemed like ages," he said, "before we saw our main battery of 14-inch guns being trained and ready to open fire. When the battleships opened fire, it was as if Zeus were hurling thunderbolts at Normandy. The noise, the concussion, the great belches of fire from the muzzles made an unforgettable impression on every man present."

Soldiers in Higgins boats could see the huge shells as they passed overhead. Seaman James O'Neal on an LCI off Juno Beach noted that each time the battleships let go a salvo, they would be pushed sideways by the force of their guns, making fairly large waves. And as these waves came in toward the beach, they would pass us and rock our craft.

Holt Bradley was a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun on an LST off Omaha. 6 years later, he was a correspondent in Korea. 25 years later, he covered Vietnam. As he put it in his oral history, "The sound of battle is something I'm used to, but this, the opening bombardment on D-Day, was the loudest thing I have ever heard. There was more firepower than I've ever heard in my life, and most of us felt that this was the moment of our life, the crux of it, the most outstanding." To Bradley, the initial salvo from the warships was one huge explosion. "A hell of an explosion," he said. "I never heard anything like it in my life."

On the Bayfield, ship's stores officer, Lieutenant Cyrus Idlet, hurried on deck to observe. "It was like the fireworks display of a thousand Fourth of Julys rolled into one," he wrote in his diary. "The heavens seemed to open, spilling a million stars on the coastline before us, each one spattering luminous tentacle-like branches of flame in every direction. Never before has there been any more perfect coordination of firepower than that unloosed by our air and naval forces on this so-called impregnable coastline which Rommel had so painstakingly fortified with every obstacle man is capable of conceiving. Pillows of smoke and flame shot skyward with great force. The resounding blasts even at our distance were terrifying. Concussion gremlins gave involuntary sporadic jerks on your trouser legs. The ship shrugged and quivered as if she knew what was occurring. One of the men watching with Idlet shouted in his ear, 'I'll bet there are a lot of dirty drawers on this ship right now. There were a lot more among the Germans in the casemates taking the pounding.'"

The Allied airborne troopers witnessed the bombardment from the receiving end, some shells falling between them and the beach, others passing overhead. John Howard at Pegasus Bridge described it this way. "The barrage coming in was quite terrific. You could feel the whole ground shaking toward the coast. Soon they lifted the barrage farther inland. They sounded so big and being poor bloody infantry, we had never been under naval fire before. And those damn great shells came sailing over. Such a size that you automatically ducked, even in the pillbox as one went over. And my radio operator was standing next to me, very perturbed about this. And finally, he said, 'Blime me, sir. They're firing jeeps.'"

In Vierville, the tiny village at the top of the bluff at the west end of Omaha, the air bombardment had awakened the populace. When the bombers passed, a strange calm succeeded. Pierre and Jacqueline Prepel hurried to the home of Mure Clement Marie because they knew he had, despite stern German orders, a pair of binoculars. They recalled from a window in the attic. "The three of us in turn were able to contemplate the formidable armada getting bigger and bigger as it closed in. We could not see the sea anymore, only ships all over. Then came the first salvo. Naval shells descended on Vierville. Within minutes, there was not a single glass left on the windows. One shell exploded in the upstairs bedroom, and everything fell in the dining room below. Another shell whistled through the house, coming in one window and going out another. A shell exploded in the baker's bake house, killing the maid and the baker's baby she was holding in her arms."

Every gun in the Allied fleet was blazing away. USS Harding, a destroyer, Commander George C. Palmer commanding, opened fire at 0537 on Omaha Beach. The target was a battery east of Port-en-Bessin, range 4,800 yd. Harding sent 44 rounds of 5-inch shells toward the German guns, temporarily neutralizing them. Meanwhile, near misses from the Germans sent geysers up all around Harding. The nearest miss was 75 yd over. At 0547, Harding shifted her fire to three pillboxes some 3,000 yd distant in the Colleville draw. She expended 100 rounds before smoke completely obscured the target. By then, the entire shore had disappeared in clouds of smoke, dust, and debris. Commander Palmer could not see his landmarks and began to navigate by radar. When the wind made intermittent observation possible, Harding opened fire on a house in the draw. 20 rounds destroyed the place. At 0610, Harding shifted fire to another fortified house and destroyed it after expending 40 rounds. Spotting an enemy fieldpiece on Omaha Beach with a crew preparing to fire at incoming landing craft at 0615, Harding closed the shore to 1,700 yd and fired six salvos at the German gun. The shelling did not destroy the gun, but it did send the German personnel scattering back into the bluffs.

All the while, German guns ashore blasted back. The men on Harding could hear the whine and scream of the shells as they passed overhead in stern. Lieutenant William Gentry remembered that the Germans were shooting at the battleships and cruisers seaward of Harding, but their trajectories were so flat that shells were whizzing by at the level of our stacks. Some members of the crew were sure a couple of shells went between our stacks. At 0620, as the landing craft approached Omaha Beach, the gunnery officer reported, "Mission completed." And Commander Palmer ordered ceasefire.

There were 68 Allied destroyers off the five beaches. Each of them participated in the pre-landing bombardment in a manner similar to Harding, pounding their pre-arranged targets, mainly pillboxes and other fortified positions or the spires of the church steeples, and then shifting to targets of opportunity before lifting fire to allow the landing craft to get in. Two of the destroyers had bad luck. The Norwegian destroyer Svenner was on the far left flank nearest Le Havre. At 0537, the half-frozen E-boats from Le Havre, ordered into action by Admiral Kinzel, dashed in as close to the fleet as they dared and unleashed a volley of torpedoes. The only hit was on Svenner just off the port bow of Slazac. Captain Nallet Tammenky described the result. "A flash of explosions occurred amidships, followed by sound of detonation, and then the burst of fire and smoke that shot high into the air. Svenner broke amidships and sank." Captain Kenneth Wright, a commando, wrote his parents 5 days later. "It was rather appalling. The ship just cracked in half and the two ends folded together as if it were a pocket knife closing." Svenner was the only Allied ship sunk by the German Navy that day. Even as the E-boats fired their torpedoes, HMS Warspite attacked them. The battleship sank one and the remainder did a quick about-face and returned to the relative safety of Le Havre. Thus ended the sole serious attempt by the Kriegsmarine to interfere with the landings.

Off Utah Beach, planes laying a smoke screen between the Germans and the bombardment fleet appeared at 0610 to do their job. But the plane, which should have hidden USS Cory, a destroyer, was shot down by flak. For a few moments, therefore, Cory was the only Allied ship the German gunners could see. They concentrated a heavy fire on her. Cory began to maneuver rapidly, firing all the while. She was taking a great risk as only a relatively small area had been swept of mines. Machinist mate Grant Gullixson was down in the forward engine room. "The pipes were dripping wet, the turbines hissing steam. Our job," he said, "was to give the skipper, Lieutenant Commander Hoffman, whatever he asked for. Full speed ahead, emergency astern." Overhead, the guns roared. All of a sudden, the ship literally jumped out of the water. As the floor grates came loose, the lights went out and steam filled the space. Cory had struck a mine amidships. It was total darkness with steam severely hot and choking. Gullixson said he was in what must be one of the most terrifying situations known to man. Caught in the engine room with bursting turbines, boilers, and pipes in a sinking ship. The water was rising. Within minutes, it was up to his waist. At this time, he recalled, there was another rumble from underneath the ship. Cory had struck another mine and was all but cut in two. Hoffman headed out for sea by hand-steering his ship, but within minutes Cory lost all power and began to settle. At 0641, Hoffman ordered abandoned ship.

Down in the forward engine room, "We grappled to open the hatch, which we did, and began to evacuate," Gullixson recounted. "By the time we got up on deck, the main deck was awash and ruptured clean across. It was obvious the Cory was dead. I noticed at this time that my life belt and shirt were missing. They had been ripped from my body by the explosion. I abandoned ship on the starboard side about midship. We didn't jump off. We literally floated off because the ship was underwater." Two hours later, he and others were picked up by USS Fitch, given coffee laced with the ship's torpedo alcohol, and eventually transferred to a transport and taken back to a hospital in England. Gullixson said, "On this ship was Chief Ravvenki, the chief of the forward fire room. He had steam burns over 99% of his body. We tended to him, and he could talk a little, but the burns were too much. He passed away the next day."

Seaman Joseph Dolan was stationed in the Combat Information Center (CIC) of the Bayfield. "I still remember the urgent message that I copied from the Cory. It said Cory was hit and was sinking and they had many casualties and needed help quickly. Most messages were coded, but this one was in the clear because of the urgency of the situation."

Seaman Ar Bayer of the Fitch was launched in a whaleboat to pick up survivors. He remembered that Cory's stern stayed up to the last. He saw a man clinging to the top blade of the Cory's propeller, but there were a great number of survivors clinging to debris or rafts, and he picked them up first. By the time he turned back to Cory, the man on the propeller was gone. Fitch took 223 survivors on board in the course of the morning.

Ensign Doug Burch was on a subchaser off Utah Beach. When the Cory hit the mine, he recalled, "Many people were blown into the water, and I had the experience of finding a sailor who had B positive blood and helping him on a direct transfusion on our deck after he was hauled aboard. When the pharmacist mate said, 'He's dead,' I wasn't sure if it was him or me."

The mines were playing hell with the Allied vessels off Utah. PC 1261 struck a mine at 0542 and sank in 4 minutes. At 0547, LCT597, directly astern of PC 176, struck a mine. Lieutenant Vanderbeek in LCC60 saw her lifted out of the water by the powerful force of the mine. "We were but a few yards away and felt the explosion's potent shock waves course through our craft," he said. LCT 597 went down instantly, taking the cargo of four DD tanks with her. At about the same time, Vanderbeek learned that his sister craft LCC80 had fouled her screw on a Dan buoy and was out of commission. That left only Vanderbeek's LCC60 as a guide for the LCTs and first wave of LCVPs at Omaha. It was an impossible task for one boat to do the work of three, made even worse by the offshore wind and strong tidal current. As Vanderbeek guided the LCTs and LCVPs into shore, he drifted to his left, so that when he signaled them to go on in, they were 500 to a,000 m southeast of their intended landing site. This proved to be fortuitous.

By 0600, the remaining LCTs had launched their DD tanks. As the tanks swam ashore, they were hampered by the headwind and tidal current. The Higgins boats comprising the first and second waves passed through them, headed for shore. As the landing craft moved in, the battleships and cruisers continued to fire. As they belted away, they raised a continuous wall of sound so immense it could be felt as well as heard. German batteries and the drumming of the engines of the bombers overhead added to it.

Nevada was anchored off Utah. Texas and Arkansas were off Omaha. They were at anchor because the swept area was too narrow to allow maneuvering, meaning the Navy regarded the mines as more dangerous than the German batteries. The transports were behind them, the destroyers and landing craft in front headed toward shore in columns of Higgins boats, DUKWs, LCIs, and LCTs. Supporting the battleships were the cruisers. For Nevada, the initial targets for her 14-inch guns were German batteries. Her smaller guns were drenching the beach with shells. At 0620, Nevada turned her 14-inch onto the beach as well. General Collins had requested this action, saying he had great confidence in the accuracy of the big guns and wanted them to knock gaps in the concrete seawall. The guns were firing point-blank, almost on the horizontal. As the great shells passed over, men on the Higgins boats swore that the vacuums created by the passing shells caused the boats to actually lift out of the water.

At Omaha, Texas blasted away at the battery on Pointe du Hoc, where the Rangers were shortly scheduled to land. By 0550, it was light enough for spotter planes to direct the fire. The huge naval shells dug numerous craters in Pointe du Hoc, tumbled great chunks of cliff into the sea, and apparently destroyed the casemates holding the guns.

Wing Commander L.C. Glover was an RAF spotter for HMS Warspite, which was pounding away at the Verrières battery to the east of Sword Beach. He was flying midway between the ship and the shore. He recalled, "I called out the order, 'Fire,' and turned slowly broadside onto the shore to wait for the fall of shot. Suddenly, in the clear sky, my aircraft experienced a most violent bump, which practically shook me out of my wits. At the same moment, I saw two enormous objects moving rapidly away from me toward the shore, and immediately realized that I had flown at right angles through the slipstream of Warspite's two ranging 15-inch bricks. A struck, I followed the shells down quite easily with my eyes during the rest of their curved flight, and saw one of them actually hit the gun emplacement we were engaging." Less happily, Glover reported that at least two Allied planes were hit and destroyed by shells that day.

At 0615, Texas turned her 14-inch guns on the exit road at the western end of Omaha. That road led up a ravine to the village of Vierville. As Admiral Morrison put it, "the volume and accuracy of naval fire would largely determine how tough a time the First Battalion, 116th Regiment, 29th Division, would have to secure this exit." After H hour, the Germans were firing back from their batteries at Port-en-Bessin. Nick Carbone, a sailor from Brooklyn on Texas, watched a great German shell skip in the water just between Texas and a British cruiser. Imitating a famous American voice, Carbone said, "I hate war. Eleanor hates war."

On the western end of Omaha, Arkansas turned her guns on a battery at La Madeleine, while the cruisers and destroyers pounded away at German casemates and pillboxes situated along the bluff where the cemetery stands today. Off the British and Canadian beaches, a bombardment just as intense was hurled at the enemy. In short, a tremendous tonnage of shells hit the beaches and batteries. The results, for the most part, were terribly disappointing. As anyone who has visited the Normandy beaches will attest, this was not because of inaccurate fire, but rather the result of German skill and fortification building.

Seaman Ian Mishi on HMS Orion, a cruiser, was right when he said, "Our shooting was very good, and direct hits were soon being recorded. We scored 13 direct hits on the battery before shifting target. But at Longues-sur-Mer, Saint-Malo, and the other batteries, the casemates stand today, battered but unbroken. They took many direct hits, dozens in some cases, but even the 14-inch shells failed to penetrate. The shells made pock marks. They knocked away some concrete. They exposed the steel reinforcing rods, but they did not penetrate. Many of the German gunners inside were rendered deaf or knocked out by concussions." An official report from the Royal Navy admitted that "no serious damage either to the concrete structures or the guns in the strong points was achieved, but pointed out that the shelling effectively neutralized the positions by terrifying the enemy personnel in them and by preventing them from manning their weapons and firing on the troops during the landings." That was wishful thinking. Between the lifting of the naval bombardment and the landing of the first waves, many Germans managed to man their guns and commence firing. Inaccurately, it should be added; they had no spotter planes, and the forward observation posts on the edge of the cliffs were blinded by the smoke. So although they dueled with the battleships and cruisers sitting at anchor, they scored no hits. The smaller batteries, pillboxes, and tows, the ones right on the beach or in the bluff above Omaha, also took a pounding and survived. Those on the beach had embrasures opening to the sides, not out to sea, so as to deliver enfilading fire parallel to the shoreline, while being fully protected from fire from the warships. As the first wave hit, they came to life, delivering a withering fire at the tanks and infantry.

From the point of view of the soldiers going ashore, the great naval bombardment was as ineffective as the great air bombardment. According to Admiral Morrison, the reason was not enough time was allowed, and the fault was the armies, not the navies, because the army did not wish the bombardment to start before daylight. In Morrison's opinion, H hour should have been postponed to 07:30 to give naval gunfire more time to play on beach defenses.

As the warships lifted their fire and took on targets inland, LCTRs went into action. Lieutenant Eugene Bernstein was in command of the lead LCTR at Omaha with 13 other craft following him. At 3,500 m, the LCTRs spread out into a line abreast with 100 meters between the craft. Bernstein recalled being amazed that he was right on target and right on time. Medic W.N. Sulken was in LCTR 450. He remembered that each member of the crew was armed with a fire extinguisher. "Our skipper was in the conning tower with his finger on a button. We held our breath, hanging on to anything that was stationary. We fired our rockets and hell broke loose. The ship seemed to explode. We listed sharply and I remember being buried under arms and legs. Now the fire extinguishers came into play. Small fires broke out and smoke rose up through the bulkheads. The heat and noise were terrific. Everyone was cursing and screaming and fighting the flames that threatened to envelop the entire craft. I can't describe the sound of a thousand rockets being released in less than a minute. I remember a shipmate describing it as the rush of a hurricane. The craft shuddered, was thrust backward, and momentarily lost steerage."

The rockets, 14,000 of them, whooshed over the Higgins boats in the first wave, arching their way to the beach. As Joseph Balcowski, historian of the 29th Division, put it, "Their roar was like the final crescendo of a great symphony. To the men on the Higgins boats, it seemed that no man could possibly live through such a bombardment. Unfortunately, many of the rockets fell harmlessly into the surf. A few hit at the lower edge of the bluff and in the level areas between the bluff and the beach. The rockets set off grass fires which provided some smoke and caused landmines to explode, but they killed few if any German defenders."

There was one final bombardment from the sea. It came from Sherman tanks aboard LCTs approaching the shoreline. Under the circumstances, rough water, smoke and haze, extreme excitement, it was wildly inaccurate. But that those Shermans were close enough to the beach to fire was itself a near miracle, made possible by the courage and common sense of...

One man, Lieutenant Rockwell, who had just made what was perhaps the single most important command decision of any junior officer on D-Day. The LCTs approaching Omaha were supposed to launch their DD tanks 5 km offshore. They had split into two groups. The eight LCTs to the left of Rockwell's flotilla launched as planned, and all but three of the 32 tanks sank. The swells were too high, the tanks too low, the skirts insufficient.

There was a certain gallantry involved as tank after tank drove across the lowered ramp and into the water despite seeing the tank in front go down. There was also a certain stubbornness and blind stupidity involved. The tank commanders could see the tank in front of them get hit by a wave, the canvas collapse, the tank disappear. But they had been given the order to launch, so launch they did. The skippers of the LCTs watched helplessly, rendered immobile by fright, unwilling to take charge. It was a pitiful sight.

Only the skipper of LCT 600, Inson HP Sullivan, was brave enough to take command. When he saw the first tank in his group of four sink, he ordered the crew to pull up the ramp and then drove on into shore. Those three tanks were the only ones from his flotilla of LCTs to make it. They provided suppressing fire at Easy Green.

Lieutenant Rockwell, off dog white and dog green, made his own decision. He got on a tank radio, despite orders not to use the radio, to call Captain Elder of the 743rd Tank Battalion in a nearby LCT. Rockwell was prepared to argue as he assumed Elder would want to follow orders. With regard to using the radio, Rockwell later said, "At this stage of the game, I was willing to take a chance because it was necessary to get on with the invasion is what it amounted to."

To Rockwell's relief, Elder agreed with him. "I don't think we can make it," he said. "Can you take us right in?" That was exactly what Rockwell wanted to hear. Using flags and Morse code, he ordered the seven other skippers of his LCT flotilla to keep their ramps up and drive into the beach. As they approached, the eager tank crews opened fire against the bluff, shooting over the bow. Rockwell's flotilla went in line of breast on LCT 607. The skipper failed to act. Enson Sam Grunfast, second in command, who had been a boy scout and could read the Morse code faster than his signalman, put it bluntly. He froze. So the signalman looked at me, I looked at him, and I then took over the command of the boat. I gave the signal that we were obeying the order to go ashore. As LCT 607 drove in, it hit a mine. It literally blew us skyhigh, said Grunfest. The skipper was killed. All the men were killed except two and myself. The four tanks were lost and all of the Navy personnel. I wound up in a hospital for several months requiring extensive surgery.

Seaman Martin Wvik was on Rockwell's boat LCT 535. He recalled, "I was at my post in the forward port locker room near the bow, warming up the small Briggs and Stratton engine that we used to lower the ramp." "Timing was now critical. If that ramp dropped too soon, the water would be too deep. If it dropped too late, the tanks would not be able to do the job, and the 16th Infantry would not have the help of the tanks at the moment the infantry most needed it. The noise was deafening. The battleships and cruisers were shooting over the LCTs from behind. On each side of the lane reserved for the landing craft, the destroyers were banging away. Aircraft engines droned overhead. As Rockwell got close, the LCTRs let loose. On his LCT, the tank crews started up their engines. Speaking was impossible, thinking nearly so. Further, the smoke obscured Rockwell's landmarks, but a shift of wind rolled back the smoke for a moment, and Rockwell saw he was being set to the east by the tide. He changed course to starboard and increased speed. The other skippers saw this move and did the same. At the moment the naval barrage lifted, Rockwell's little group was exactly opposite Dog White and Dog Green, the tanks firing furiously. This was the moment Rockwell had been preparing for over the past 2 years. This was the reason LCTs existed. But to Rockwell's amazement, what he had anticipated was not happening. He had always assumed the enemy would be firing at his LCT as it came in, but so far no German gun had done so.

At 0629, Rockwell gave the signal to Warvik, who dropped the ramp. LCT 535 was the first ship of the first wave to launch equipment in the Omaha area. Warvik remembered that the tanks started out down the ramp, clanking and grinding. They sure made a racket on that steel deck. They were in about 3 ft of water. The first tank lurched forward, dipped its nose to the slope, crawled ahead through the breakers to the sand 50 yards away, the water washing over its back and pouring off again. It began firing, and at that instant, so did the Germans. An 88 mm gun was infiltrating the beach from an emplacement to the right. Rockwell watched as 88 shells hit three of the landing craft on his right in quick succession. He expected the next shell to hit his LCT, which was lying still and broadside to the gun, a can't-miss target, when the last of his tanks went into the water. As it cleared the ramp, Warvik raised it. The German gunners turned their fire from the LCTs onto the tanks, and then, Rockwell recalled, "We pulled that famous naval maneuver known through naval history as getting the hell out of there." He used his anchor to retract. He had dropped it going in. It had a separate engine to winch off, and it worked. As Rockwell backed off, the tanks he had been responsible enough and courageous enough to put on the beach were blasting away with their 75mm cannon and 50 caliber machine guns. As LCT 535 retracted, Higgins boats carrying the 116th Regiment began moving in. It was 0630 at Omaha Beach, Hour.

At Vidashan Nest 62 above the Kovidal Draw, Private France Gakal had just been through the most shocking hour of his life. At 0400, he had been ordered to take his firing position behind his machine gun, but at first nothing moved. Was it another false alarm? The minutes slowly ticked by. Was it going to be real this time? We stood at our weapons and shivered in the thin summer uniforms. The cook prepared hot red wine. An NCO appeared and checked our readiness, saying, "When they come, don't shoot too soon." At first light, the bombers were overhead, and an incredible number of ships began to appear on the horizon. Small craft, small ships, big ships, all apparently coming right at WN62. An endless fleet. Heavy warships cruised along as if passing for review. Goal tried to concentrate on his machine gun, checking it again and again to take my mind away from impending events. The naval guns opened fire. Goal remembered, "Salvo after salvo fell into our positions. Debris and clouds of smoke enveloped us. The earth shook. Eyes and ears filled with dust. Sand ground beneath teeth. There was no hope for help. The bombardment increased in its fury. The morning dawn over the approaching landing fleet showed for us our approaching doom." Gacul was amazed that the allies were coming at low tide. During an inspection in May, Raml had assured the lieutenant in command of WN62 that the allies would come at high tide. Goal was even more amazed when the naval bombardment lifted and he discovered no one in his platoon had been killed, only a few wounded. We crouched small and helpless behind our weapons. I prayed for survival. Then the sea came alive. Assault boats and landing craft were rapidly approaching the beach. A comrade stumbled out of the smoke and dust into my position and screamed, "France, watch out. They're coming." The 75mm cannon at WN62 fired on one of the American tanks. The tank fired back. The shell exploded inside the casemate and put the German gun out of commission. It was 0630 at Omaha Beach.

Chapter 15. We'll start the war from right here. The fourth division at Utah Beach. The plan was for DD tanks to land first at 0630 immediately after the naval warships lifted their fire and the LCTRs launched their 1,000 rockets. There were 32 of the swimming tanks at Utah carried in eight LCTs. In their wake would come the second battalion, eighth infantry in 20 Higgins boats, each carrying a 30-man assault team. 10 of the craft would touch down on Ter Green Beach opposite the strong point at Leun de Varil. The others to the south at Uncle Red Beach. The second wave of 32 Higgins boats carrying the first battalion 8th infantry plus combat engineers and naval demolition teams was scheduled to land 5 minutes later. The third wave was timed for H plus 15 minutes. It included eight LCTs with some bulldozer tanks as well as regular Shermans. 2 minutes later, the fourth wave, mainly consisting of detachments of the 237th and 299th Engineer Combat Battalions, ECBs, would hit the beach.

None of this worked out. Some craft landed late, others early, all of them a kilometer or so south of the intended target. But thanks to some quick thinking and decision-making by the high command on the beach and thanks to the initiative and drive of the GIs, what could have been mass confusion or even utter chaos turned into a successful low-cost landing. Tides, wind, waves, and too much smoke were partly responsible for upsetting the schedule and landing in the wrong place. But the main cause was the loss to mines of three of the four control craft. When the LCC's went down, it threw everything into confusion. The LCT's skippers were circling, looking for direction. One of them hit a mine and blew sky high. In a matter of seconds, the LCT and its four tanks sank.

At this point, Lieutenants Howard Vanderbeek and Sims Galier on LCC 60 took charge. They conferred and decided to make up for the time lost by leading the LCTs to within 3 km of the beach before launching the tanks, which were supposed to launch at 5 km, giving them a shorter and quicker run to the shore. Using his bullhorn, Vanderbeek circled around the LCTs as he shouted out orders to follow him. He went straight for the beach, the wrong one, about half a kilometer south of where the tanks were supposed to land. When the LCTs dropped their ramps and the tanks swam off, they looked to Vanderbeek like odd-shaped sea monsters with their huge donut-like skirts for flotation, wallowing through the heavy waves and struggling to keep in formation. The Higgins boats carrying the first wave of assault teams were supposed to linger behind the swimming tanks, but the tanks were so slow that the coxswains drove their craft right past them. Thus it was that E company of the second battalion 8th infantry fourth division was the first allied company to hit the beach in the invasion. The title current running from north to south had carried their craft farther left so they came in a kilometer south of where they should have been.

General Roosevelt was in the first boat to hit the shore. Major General Barton had initially refused Roosevelt's request to go in with the eighth infantry, but Roosevelt argued that having a general land in the first wave would boost morale for the troops. He'd said they'll figure that if a general is going in, it can't be that rough. Roosevelt had also made a personal appeal, saying, "I would love to do this." Barton had reluctantly agreed. Luck was with Company E. The German fixed fortifications at the intended landing site at exit 3 were far more formidable than those where the landing actually happened at exit 2 opposite lamadane. Thanks to the marauder pounding the battery there had taken. The German troops in the area were from the 919th regiment of the 79th division. They had been badly battered by the combined air and sea bombardment and were not firing their weapons. There was only some small arms fire from riflemen in the trenches in the sand dune just behind the 4-ft concrete seawall. In those trenches were the Germans driven from their fixed positions by the bombardment. Their leader was Lieutenant Yankee. He looked out to see and was amazed. Here was a truly lunatic sight, he recalled. I wondered if I were hallucinating as a result of the bombardment. What he saw was a DD tank. Amphibious tanks. This must be the allies' secret weapon. He decided to bring his own secret weapon into action, only to discover that his Goliaths would not function. The bombardment had destroyed the radio controls. "It looks as though God and the world have forsaken us," Yankee said to the runner by his side, "What's happened to our airmen?"

At that instant, Sergeant Malvin Pike of E Company was coming in on a Higgins boat. He had a scare. My position was in the right rear of the boat, and I could hear the bullets splitting the air over our heads. And I looked back, and all I could see was two hands on the wheel and a hand on each 50 caliber machine gun, which the Navy guys were firing. I said to my platoon leader, Lieutenant Rebek, "These guys aren't even looking where they're going or shooting." About that time, the coxswain stood up and looked at the beach and then ducked back down. The machine gunners were doing the same, and we just prayed they would get us on the beach. The boat hit a sandbar 200 m from the shore. The water was shallower off exit 2 than at exit 3, which was why the Navy had insisted on going in at exit 3. The coxswain said it was time for the infantry to go, that he was getting out of there. Lieutenant Rebek responded, "You are not going to drown these men. Give her another try." The coxswain backed off the bar, went 100 ft to the left, tried to go in and hit the bar again. Rbertch said, "Okay, let's go." But then the ramp got stuck. "The hell with this," Recheek called out. He jumped over the side. His men followed. "I jumped out in waist deep water," Sergeant Pike recalled. "We had 200 ft to go to shore, and you couldn't run. You could just kind of push forward. We finally made it to the edge of the water. Then we had 200 yd of open beach to cross through the obstacles. But fortunately, most of the Germans were not able to fight. They were all shook up from the bombing and the shelling and the rockets, and most of them just wanted to surrender."

Captain Howard Lees, commander of E Company, led his men over the seawall to the top of the dunes. What we saw, Sergeant Pike remembered, was nothing like what we saw on the sand table back in England. We said, "Hey, this doesn't look like what they showed us." Roosevelt joined them, walking calmly up to their position, using his cane. He had had a heart attack, wearing a wool knit hat, he hated helmets, ignoring the fire. About this time, 0640, the Germans to the north in the fortifications at Leun Dearville began shooting at second battalion with 88 mm cannon and machine guns, but not accurately. Roosevelt and Lees conferred, studied their maps, and realized they were at the wrong place. Roosevelt returned to the beach. By now, the first Sherman tanks had landed and were returning the German fire. Commodore James Arnold, the Navy control officer for Utah, was just landing with the third wave. "German 88s were pounding the beach head," he recalled. "Two US tanks were drawn up at the high water line, pumping back. I tried to run to get into the lee of these tanks. I realize now why the infantry likes to have tanks along in a skirmish. They offer a world of security to a man in open terrain who may have a terribly empty sensation in his guts." Arnold found a shell hole and made it his temporary headquarters. He recalled, "An army officer wearing the single star of a brigadier jumped into my headquarters to duck the blast of an 88." "Sons of buzzards," he muttered as we untangled sufficiently to look at each other. "I'm Teddy Roosevelt, your Arnold of the Navy. I remember you at the briefing at Plymouth." Roosevelt was joined by the two battalion commanders of the Eighth Infantry, Lieutenant Colonels Conrad Simmons and Carlton McNeely. As they studied the map, Colonel Vanfleet, CO of the regiment, came wading ashore. He had landed with the fourth wave carrying the 237th and 299th ECBs. "Van," Roosevelt exclaimed. "We're not where we're supposed to be." He pointed to a building on the beach. "It was supposed to be to the left." "Now it's to our right," Roosevelt said. "I figure we are more than a mile further south." Van Fleet reflected that ironically they were at the exact spot he had wanted the Navy to land his regiment, but the Navy had insisted it was impossible because the water was too shallow. "We faced an immediate and important decision," Van Fleet wrote. "Should we try to shift our entire landing force more than a mile down the beach and follow our original plan, or should we proceed across the causeways immediately opposite where we had landed?" Already men were crossing the seawall and dunes in front of the officers while Navy demolition men and engineers were blowing up obstacles behind them. Roosevelt became a legend for reportedly saying at this point, "We'll start the war from right here." According to Van Fleet, that was not the way it happened. In an unpublished memoir, Vanfleet wrote, "I made the decision. Go straight inland, I ordered. We've caught the enemy at a weak point, so let's take advantage of it." The important point was not who made the decision, but that it was made without opposition or time-consuming argument. It was the right decision, and showed the flexibility of the high command.

Simmons and McNeely immediately set about clearing the German beach opposition, preparing to seize the eastern ends of exits one and two, then cross the causeways to drive west. First, however, they needed to get their men through the seawall and over the dunes. The engineers and naval demolition teams came in right after the first wave, also landing opposite exit 2. They were taking more fire than the first wave and could see that the spot they were heading for was not the place they had studied back in England. They could also see that they were going to be dropped in waist deep water. So they began to lighten up their packs. The first thing that went, Sergeant Richard Cassaday of the 237th ECB remembered, were cartons of cigarettes. He had six. One man carried 10 cartons. Cassaday tore open a carton, grabbed a pack out of it, and threw all the rest away. So did others. We were wading in cigarettes up to our knees in that boat, Cassaday recalled. The demolition teams consisted of five Navy CBs, combat demolition units, and two or three army engineers. There were 10 teams. Each man carried between 50 and 75 lbs of explosives on his back, either TNT or composition C, a plastic explosive developed by the British that looked like a bar of laundry soap. It would burn if lit or explode when properly detonated. The CB personnel tended to be older than most D-Day men. Most of them were trained by miners from the western United States who were explosive experts. The CBs were responsible for the outermost set of obstacles, the ones that would be the first covered by the tide. The CBs were prepared to work underwater if necessary, although without anything like the special equipment modern frogmen use. Orville Wakefield recalled that when the recruiter came around to ask for volunteers for the underwater demolition teams, he said that experience in the Pacific had shown how critical the teams would be to a successful invasion. Wakefield said. He also explained that it was extremely hazardous duty and they needed good swimmers and we would have special training physically, mentally, and we would be expendable. We would be working with booby-trapped and mined obstacles. The good thing was that we would pull no KP duty. Everything turned out to be true.

At Utah, Wakefield's team prepared the outer obstacles for demolition while incoming fourth division troops dodged around them. The team set up their charges, got them wired together, shouted, "Fire in the hole," and blew them apart. Wakefield and his buddies then went up to the seawall where they got into a slit trench and just watched what was happening on the beach. When we first came in, there was nothing there but men running, turning, and dodging. All of a sudden, it was like a beehive. Boats were able to come through the obstacles. Bulldozers were pushing sand up against the seawall and halftracks and tanks were able to go into the interior. It looked like an ant hill. The army engineers simultaneously went after the next set of obstacles closer into the beach. They attached their explosives to the obstacles, whether single poles with mines or Belgian gates, then connected the individual charges by primer cord so that everything would go up at once. Sergeant Al Picassavich was with a team from the 237th ECB. He and his buddies got their explosives in place on one set of obstacles, all connected, and ran toward the seawall to set off the primer cord. "Fire in the hole," they shouted. "Just before the explosions went off," Picasavage remembered, "when we were up against the wall, some of the landing craft were coming in. The ramps were dropping and the men ran in and they didn't realize what they were heading into. When they heard us yelling and screaming at them, they laid down behind the obstacles for protection." "My God," I said to Jimmy Gray, a medic. So, I left the wall and ran back and grabbed men by their field packs and started screaming, "Get the hell out of here because this is ready to blow." I pulled about six men and yelled at the rest and headed back toward the wall. I was 15 to 20 ft away when everything blew and a piece of shrapnel hit me in the helmet. The team went to work closer to the seawall, hurrying to get the job done before the tide came in and covered the obstacles. And General Roosevelt was standing there, Sergeant Cassaday said, walking up and down the beach with his cane. And I called out, "Go knock that bastard down. He's going to get killed." And somebody said, "Do you know who that is?" I said, "Yes, it's Roosevelt, and he's going to get killed." Roosevelt moved on, and the team blew the obstacles. Within less than an hour, the teams had cleared eight 50-yard gaps in the obstacles and were going after the ones still standing. Next, the 237th went to work blasting holes in the seawall. Tank dozers from the 70th Tank Battalion cleared the debris after the blasts. All the while, 88 shells were coming in, but most of them were splashing into the water as the Germans continued to concentrate, not very effectively, on the wave after wave of landing craft.

Seaman Martin Gutakunst was a communications expert attached to the CBs. He recalled that after the obstacles were cleared and the holes blown, a number of the more adventurous and brave demolition men moved along the far side of the wall and got Germans to surrender. He joined them. He said, "We could see many German gun emplacements protected by their concrete walls and roofs. Inside the bunkers, they had scenery painted along the walls that represented the area as you would see it if you were outside, and narrow slits through which they could spot their fire, but no one was there to fire. The Wehrmacht soldiers had either surrendered or fled inland along the causeways." The men from the 237th ECB followed the dozers through the holes in the seawall climbed over the dune and saw signs saying Akung Minan. The pressure from behind of men and tanks trying to get off the beach to move inland was such that the engineers were more or less forced to move forward. Those were the first men inland, Sergeant Vincent Powell of the 237th said. And suddenly they started stepping on mines. S-mines, bouncing betties. These mines bounced up and exploded. These men began screaming and running back to the beach with blood just flowing. And that's when the tanks started in.

At 0645, the swimming tanks were still chugging their way to the beach. They had been scheduled to land before the assault teams, but they were not even the first tanks ashore. LCTs carrying sea company of the 70th tank battalion under the command of Captain John Ahern touched down before the DD tanks arrived. The Shermans were firing as they came in. Ahern was in the second tank in the first LCT. Lieutenant Owen Gavagan commanded the tank that preceded Ahern's. They drove through 5 ft of water in their waterproofed Shermans. Ahern turned over control of the four dozer tanks to the engineers and divided the remaining 14 Shermans into two groups, retaining control of one and giving Lieutenant Yman command of the other. Ahern turned his group left, looking for an opening through the seawall, while Yman turned right. Ahern found an opening, turned toward it, and confronted a Goliath. They had been used at Anzio, but Ahern had not been in Italy, and no one had told him about the Goliaths. He could not figure out what on earth it was. Fortunately, the Goliath he faced just sat there. He later learned that the radio control device had been blown up in the bombardment. Ahern got his tanks through the opening in the seawall. Looking south, he saw a German fortification. He fired some shells at the bunker. With that, a couple of dozen Wehrmacht troops emerged, hands above their heads, and began running toward Ahern. He dismounted to take them as prisoners. They began yelling to me and gesturing at me to stay put. They were yelling, "Kung Minan." With this, I gestured to them to move toward the road inland, where we took them prisoner and turned them over to the infantry. They were not Germans at all, but battalion troops from Georgia in the Soviet Union.

Ahern drove south on the beach road. It turned inland toward Pupeville, while a dirt road continued to parallel the dunes. He detached Lieutenant Teague with five tanks to head toward Pupeville, which he hoped was in the hands of the 101st Airborne, and proceeded south with two tanks to see if there were any more fortifications he could assault. His tank hit a landmine that blew the front left bogey. Ahern radioed to Teague to report that he was immobilized, climbed out of his tank, and proceeded on foot to scout the area. He stepped on an S-mine. The explosion threw him into the bank of a hedgerow unconscious, his legs mangled. His crew searched for him. When he came to and yelled, they spotted him, but he cautioned them not to come up because of the mines. The crew returned to the tank, got out a long rope, threw it to him, then dragged him out. Stretcher bearers got him to a makeshift field hospital where his foot was amputated. Engineers told him later that they removed 15,000 S-mines from that area.

Lieutenant Elliot Richardson was CO of a medic detachment that landed with the fourth wave. He recalled, "I waited to the shore with my guys. There were occasional shell bursts on the beach, but it didn't amount to much as most of the German guns had been put out of action. I walked up to the top of the dune and looked around. There was this barbed wire area and a wounded officer who had stepped on an anti-personnel mine calling for help." Richardson held a brief debate with himself. It was obviously dangerous to go into the area. Nevertheless, he recalled, I decided that I should go. I walked in toward him, putting each foot down carefully, and picked him up and carried him back. Richardson's men got the wounded officer on a stretcher and carried him down to an aid station on the beach. "That was my baptism," Richardson said. "It was the sort of behavior I expected of myself."

Captain George Mabberry, S3 of Second Battalion, 8th Infantry, crossed the dunes and found himself with several members of G Company caught in a minefield. Three men stepped on S-mines. Colonel Van Fleet described what happened. Mabry had a choice to withdraw to the beach or go after the enemy. Each alternative meant crossing the minefield. Mabry chose to charge. Firing as he ran, Mabry charged 25 yards to an enemy foxhole. Those Germans who resisted, he killed. The others surrendered. Next, he gathered a handful of G Company men, sent for two tanks, and assaulted a large pillbox guarding the causeway at exit one. Sergeant Pike of E company joined Mabry's group. As Mabry led the men across the causeway headed toward Pupeville, he caught up with Lieutenant Teague of the 70th Tank Battalion. Teague had lost three tanks to landmines, but was moving cautiously ahead with his remaining two Shermans. Mabry put infantry in front and pushed on, urging speed because they were so exposed on the causeway and were taking mortar fire, simultaneously urging caution because of the mines. They came to a bridge over a culvert and figured it must be prepared for demolition. Further, the scouts reported that they had seen some Germans duck into the culvert. Mabberry sent troops out into the flooded fields to pinch in on both sides of the culvert. The Germans surrendered without putting up a fight. Mabry had them disconnect the charges, then sent the prisoners back to the beach and pushed on. After the guards put the prisoners into a landing craft to be taken back to the Bayfield for interrogation, they reported to Van Fleet. It was 0940. Vanfleet radioed General Barton on Bayfield. I am ashore with Colonel Simmons and General Roosevelt, advancing steadily. As new waves of landing craft came in, Van Fleet and Roosevelt sent them through the holes in the seawall with orders to move inland. Already the biggest problem they faced was congestion on the beach. There were too many troops and vehicles, not enough openings. Sporadic incoming artillery fire and the ubiquitous mines made the traffic jam horrendous. Still, at 10:45, Van Fleet was able to radio Barton. Everything is going okay. The beach area was comparatively secure. The reserve battalions were coming ashore.

Mabry pushed forward on the causeway. He kept cautioning his scouts. You know, he said to Sergeant Pike, "The paratroopers are supposed to have taken this town Poopville, but they may not have. Let's not shoot any of our paratroopers." Pike said, "Okay." The scouts got to the western edge of the flooded area. We could see the bushes and a few trees where the causeway ended, Pike recalled. "And then I saw a helmet and then it disappeared. And I told Captain Mabberry that I saw a helmet up there behind those bushes." And he said, "Could you tell if it was American or German?" and I said, "I didn't see enough. I don't know, sir." The men on the far end of the causeway shot off an orange flare. And these two guys stood up and the first thing we saw was the American flag on their shoulder and it was two paratroopers. They said, "Fourth division." And we said, "Yes." Lieutenant Eugene Brriier of the 101st was one of the two paratroopers. He greeted Pike and asked, "Who's in charge here?" Mabry came up and replied, "I am." Briier said, "Well, General Taylor is right back here in Poopeville and wants to meet you." It was 11:10. The link-up between the 101st and fourth divisions had been achieved. Exit one was in American hands. Mabry talked to Taylor, who said he was moving out to accomplish further objectives, then proceeded through Pupeville in the direction of Somar Deont. There were 40 or so dead German soldiers in Pupeville. Testimony to the fight the 101st had been engaged in near Somari Duont. Lieutenant Lewis Nixon of the 101st asked Mabberry for a bit of help from the two tanks. Mabry detached them and they went to work. You can hear about the results in the next chapter. Then it was on to Smarie Deont where the Mabry force helped the paratroopers secure the town.

The fourth division and attached units were pouring ashore. Their main problem was with the sea, not the Germans. The waves were pitching the landing craft around, coming over the gunwales to hit the troops smack in the face, making many of the men so miserable they could not wait to get off. The boats were going around like little bugs, jockeying for position. Private Ralph Devotepe recalled, "I had an extra extra big breakfast thinking it would help, but I lost it. So did many others." Marvin Peret, an 18-year-old coast guardsman from New Orleans, was a coxswain on a New Orleans built Higgins boat. The 30 members of the 12th regiment of the fourth division he was carrying ashore had turned their heads toward him to avoid the spray. He could see concern and fear on their faces. Just in front of him stood a chaplain. Peret was concentrating on keeping his place in the advancing line. The chaplain upchucked his breakfast. The wind caught it, and Peret's face was covered with undigested eggs, coffee, and bits of bacon. One of Peret's crew dipped a bucket in the channel and threw the water over his face. "How's that, Skipper?" he asked. "That was great," Peret replied. "Do it again." The crew member did and the infantry men broke into laughter. It just took the tension right away, Peret said.

Sergeant John Beck of the 87th Mortar Battalion had taken seasickness pills. They did not work. He threw up anyway, but they had an unintended effect. He fell asleep while going in. The explosion of shells awakened me as we approached the coast, he remembered. My best friend, Sergeant Bob Meyers from Newcastle, Pennsylvania, took a number of those pills, and it drove him out of his mind. He didn't become coherent until the next day. He made the invasion of Normandy and doesn't remember one thing about it. Who decided to hand out those pills is one of the mysteries of D-Day. They were also given to the airborne troopers, many of whom complained later that the only effect they had was to make them drowsy. They had not been used in any of the practice runs, many of which had been in water as rough as on June 6th. As the flat-bottomed, square-bounded landing craft slammed into the waves, one anonymous green-faced GI summed up the feelings of all his buddies. That so Higgins, he hasn't got nothing to be proud of inventing this boat.

Colonel Russell Red Reer was CO of the 12th Infantry scheduled to land at 10:30. For the first 4 hours of the invasion, therefore, he was watching from an LCI 6 km out, not seeing much because of the smoke and haze. The hands on my watch would not move, he wrote. The time from 6:30 until we landed at 10:30 was the longest 4 hours I ever spent. The 12th was supposed to land north of the eighth, but the coxswains followed the orders from Roosevelt to bring the follow-up waves in behind the eighth regiment, which put the 12th 2 km south of where it expected to be. It don't matter, Colonel Reer declared when he discovered the error. We know where to go. Reader led his men through a hole in the seawall to the top of the dune where he saw Roosevelt. "The causeways leading inland are all clogged up," Roosevelt yelled. "Look at it. A procession of jeeps and not a wheel turning." To Reader, Roosevelt looked tired, and the cane he leaned on heightened the impression. Reader's immediate objective was San Martin Devarville, where he hoped to effect a link-up with the 82nd Airborne. Off to his right was exit 4, the one his regiment had been scheduled to use. But the east end of exit 2 had not been secured and was coming under fire from German artillery to the north. The battery of four 155mm cannon at Samar Kuf. He could move his regiment right to the causeway, then use it to cross the flooded fields. But if he did that, his men would be exposed and under observation. Using causeway 2 was out of the question. It was jammed with jeeps, tanks, trucks, and troops. His option was to cross the inundated area to reach San Martin. Reader made his decision. "We are going through the flooded area," he yelled. He saw Lieutenant Colonel Charles Chuck Jackson, CO of his first battalion, and gave him an arm signal. Jackson had just made the same judgment and set off immediately. Sergeant Clifford Sorenson was with Jackson. He recalled that aerial reconnaissance had estimated that the flooded area was maybe ankle deep, except in the irrigation ditches, which they estimated to be about 18 in deep. Well, they made a big mistake. That flooded area was in some places up to your waist, and the irrigation ditches were over your head. Some brave souls would swim across the irrigation ditches and throw toggle ropes back and haul the rest of us across. So much for aerial reconnaissance. The battalion marched through the inundated fields for nearly two kilometers, and we waited and waited and waited. Sorenson said, "An occasional sniper shot would be fired and didn't hit anybody. We were mostly interested in keeping from drowning because the bottom was slick and the footing tricky. You could slip down and maybe drown with all that equipment." I was so angry. The Navy had tried to drown me at the beach and now the army was trying to drown me in the flooded area. I was more mad at our side than I was at the Germans because the Germans hadn't done anything to me yet. It took time, 3 to four hours or more to get across, but it was accomplished without loss. When the battalion reached the high ground, Reer signaled Jackson to turn right and proceed to San Martendville. He did. The battalion reached a crossroads where it received some artillery fire that sent the men scattering for cover. General Roosevelt came up. He had hitched a ride on the hood of a jeep that had brought him in on causeway 2. Roosevelt spotted Colonel Jackson. "Well, Chuck, how are things going?" he asked. Jackson explained the situation. "Let's go up to the front," Roosevelt suggested. "We are at the front," Jackson replied. "See those two men about 50 m away? They are the leading scouts of Company A. Let's go talk to them," Roosevelt said. They did, got the scouts moving, and the battalion followed. By late afternoon, the eighth infantry in its supporting regiment, the 22nd, had hooked up with the 82nd Airborne at San Martan de Varville and San Germaine de Varville. There they bivouacked for the night, somewhat short of their D-Day objective, but pleased to be inland and in contact with the 82nd. The 12th Infantry, meanwhile, had reached its D-Day objective. Captain Mabry had moved the lead elements through S. Marie Deont to take up an overnight position north of Leforge. Company K sent a reconnaissance platoon forward to Chef Dupont to establish contact with the 82nd Airborne. So by dusk, the 12th was in contact with both paratroop divisions.

That so much had been accomplished by the attacking battalions was due in part to the support of the Navy warships. Forward observers had accompanied the fourth division men inland, and whenever they ran into enemy artillery or tanks, called back to the battleships and cruisers for suppressing fire. Spotter planes did the same. The Navy reported on Lieutenant Ross Olsen was a gunnery officer on the Nevada. I recall that our 5-in guns fired so much that the paint peeled off the guns, and all that was left showing was the blue steel. We also had to halt the guns for a while to clear the deck of empty shell casings. Normally, these were saved for reloading, but this day they were dumped over the side as they were hindering the movement of the gun turrets. On one occasion, Nevada got a target that required all its guns, the 14-in as well as the 5-in, to fire almost straight ahead. When Nevada unleashed the volley, it cost Olsen his hearing in his right ear and 50% of his left. He has worn hearing aids ever since. He said the shelling also destroyed the 26-ft motor whaleboat on the boat deck, knocked the door off the mess hall, peeled all the insulation material off the mess hall bulkhead, and broke almost every light bulb in the overhead fixtures on the port side.

Badly wounded men, German as well as American, were being brought out to the big ships by the returning landing craft. Pharmacist mate Vincent Deljudici was on the Bayfield. He was busy all day tending to many men, but two stuck especially in his mind. One was a Mexican American GI who had the terrible experience of stepping on two mines simultaneously. German medics had treated him by putting tourniquets on both legs and both arms, but they had been driven off by an American patrol and left him in the field. He was picked up by some GI stretcher bearers and transported back to the Bayfield, but they had failed to remove the tourniquets, and gangrene had set in. Deljudichi assisted in amputating one leg below the knee, the other above, and both arms. The soldier also had abdominal wounds which Deljudichi debrided. It was a sad sight. Deljudichi said the man did not complain. He had a look of resignation on him. He came out of his anesthesia, looked at his four stumps, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep. Later, Deljudichi tended a wounded German corporal who he remembered as tall, thin, a rather handsome chap with blonde hair. He had been wounded on his right hand and all five fingers were dangling and his hand and fingers were blackened. Deljudichi amputated his fingers with scissors, put sulfa powder on his hand and for my effort he remembered, I got a smile and a "danke schön."

Lieutenant Yankee was in an improvised dugout on the dunes firing with his rifle at the incoming Americans. A tank spotted him and blasted the dugout with its 75mm cannon. Yankee was buried alive. He felt someone digging him out. It was a GI. Yankee had won an Iron Cross on the Eastern Front. His instinct was to get away. Anything rather than captivity. He saw a machine pistol on the ground and dove for it. The American pushed it aside and in a calm voice said, "Take it easy, German." The GI sent Yankee, hands clasped over his head, to a POW enclosure on the beach. There, Yankee was wounded again by shrapnel from an incoming German shell.

CB Orville Wakefield was up by the seawall. He said that by middle afternoon, the beach had changed from nothing but obstacles to a small city. It was apparent that we NCD units had done our job well because as far as I could see to one side, the beach was all the way open. There was nothing holding the landing craft back. We figured our day was well spent, even though no one ever knew who we were. We were being questioned, "Who are you guys? What do you do?" The coxswains didn't like us because we always had so many explosives with us. When we were inland, the army officers wanted to know, "What is the Navy doing in here?" An army medical officer spotted Wakefield's team and said he needed volunteers to carry wounded men down to the shore for evacuation to a hospital ship. He said, "Are you guys going to just sit here or are you going to volunteer?" We didn't think much about that idea. We had just come off the hot end of the demolition wire, but finally we did volunteer to do it for him. We carried the wounded down to the shore. German shells were still coming in. By this time, Wakefield noted, it was no longer a rush of men coming ashore. It was a rush of vehicles. Then he saw a never-to-be-forgotten sight. All of a sudden, it seemed like a cloud started from the horizon over the ocean, and it came toward us, and by the time it got to us, it extended clean back to the horizon. Gliders were coming to be turned loose inland. Reinforcements were pouring in from the sea and from the air. Utah Beach was secure. In the morning, the Americans would move out to cut the base of the Cotentin to take Cherbourg to get on with the job of winning the war so they could go home. Wakefield said, "At dusk, I had my most important thought that day. Waiting into chest deep water at first light that morning, I found that my legs would hardly hold me up. I thought I was a coward." Then he had discovered that his seabags with their explosives had filled with water and he was carrying well over 100 lbs. He had used his knife to cut the bags and dump the water, then moved on to do his job. When I had thought for a moment that I wasn't going to be able to do it, that I was a coward, and then found out that I could do it, you can't imagine how great a feeling that was, just finding out yes, I could do what I had volunteered to do.

Overall casualties were astonishingly light. The 8th and 22nd regiments had only 12 men killed. Another 106 wounded. For the 12th regiment, the figure was 69 casualties. Nearly all were caused by mines, either sea or land, mostly those devilish S-mines. The fourth division had taken heavier losses in training. In the disaster it slapped in sands, it lost almost 20 times as many men as it did on June 6th. Equally astonishing was the speed with which the fourth division and its attached units got ashore. This was thanks to the organization, training and skill of all those involved, whether army, navy, army air force, or coast guard. They overcame logistical problems that seemed insurmountable. On D-Day in 15 hours, the Americans put ashore at Utah more than 20,000 troops and 1,700 motorized vehicles. General Jodl had estimated that it would take the Allies 6 or 7 days to put three divisions into France. At Utah alone, counting the airborne

Divisions, the Americans had done it in one day. D-Day was a smashing success for the Fourth Division and its attached units. Nearly all objectives were attained, even though the plan had to be abandoned before the first assault waves hit the beach. By nightfall, the division was ready to move out at first light on June 7 for its next mission, taking Mossberg and then moving on to Sherborg. It went on to fight battles far more costly than the one it won on the Kotantan beach on June 6th, distinguishing itself throughout the campaign in northwest Europe, especially in taking Sherborg, in holding the German counteroffensive at Mortain, in the liberation of Paris, in the Herkin Forest, and in the Battle of the Bulge.

There were many reasons for the success of the Fourth Division on D-Day, not least being the German reliance on mines, flooded areas, and fixed fortifications instead of high-quality troops to defend the supposedly impregnable Atlantic Wall. As important was the air and sea bombardment and the naval shelling through the day. Credit belonged too to General Roosevelt and his colonels, men like Van Fleet, Reer, and Jackson, for making quick and correct decisions. Junior officers, men like Captain Zahhern and Maberry, made indispensable contributions. But most of all, the Fourth's success was thanks to the airborne troopers behind the German lines. The paratroopers held the western exits. They confused the Germans and prevented any concentrated counterattacks aimed at the seaborne invaders. They put out of action batteries that might have brought heavy artillery fire down on Utah Beach. How the paratroopers did it and why they were so thankful to link up with the Fourth Division, whether at noon or nightfall, is its own story.

Chapter 16. News rest. The airborne in the Cotentin.

At dawn, the men of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were scattered in small pockets throughout an area that ran 10 kilometers southwest from the mouth of the Douve River to the northern edge of Carentan, then 20 km northwest from Carentan to Pointe de la Hoe, then 20 km northeast to the coast near Ravenoville. Few men knew where they were. Unit cohesion was almost non-existent. Most of the paratroopers were in groups of a half dozen to 50 men. In some cases, all officers; in others, all enlisted men. The groups were usually mixed, containing men from different companies, battalions, regiments, and even divisions. Strangers to the leaders who were trying to get them to move on objectives to which they had not been assigned and for which they had not been briefed. As a consequence, the airborne troops fought a score or more different engagements, unconnected to each other. Many of them fights for survival rather than battles for planned objectives.

For most airborne troopers, D-Day was a day of confusion. But precisely because the Americans were so badly confused, the Germans were worse off. They grossly overestimated the size of the force attacking them, and they could get nothing coherent or helpful from their interrogations. Thanks to the initiative of individual Americans, some of them general officers, some junior officers, some NCOs, some enlisted, the 82nd and 101st managed to overcome most of their difficulties and complete their most critical missions.

Seizure of Sainte-Mère-Église and the exits from Utah.

The way it was done, however, was hardly textbook fashion or in accordance with the plan. There was virtually no overall control because it was impossible for the generals and colonels to give orders to units that had not yet formed up. The groups that had come together were unaware of where they were or where other groups were, a problem that was generally compounded by the ubiquitous hedgerow. Radio communication could have overcome that problem, but most radios had been damaged or lost in the drop, and those that were working were inadequate. The SCR 300 signal corps radio, which weighed 32 pounds, had a speaking range of five miles, but only under perfect conditions. The much more common STR 536, weighing only 6 lb, and called a walkie-talkie, because a man could talk into it and walk at the same time, had a range of less than one mile. Worse, they were easily jammed by the Germans.

Sergeant Leonard Levenson was part of General Ridgway's headquarters group. He came in by glider and managed to find his way to Ridgway's command post near a small farm outside Sainte-Mère-Église. He described the situation. Ridgway's aide was there, plus a couple of staff officers and two or three other enlisted men. The command post was trying to be a directional center, but it was not really in control of anything. We were just standing there waiting for things to develop. Ridgway, a very brave and forceful man, was continually on the move in and out, trying to exercise his control. But what we were doing was just gathering information, trying to find out what was happening. There weren't any messages. We didn't have any phones or radios. We didn't even have a map set up. We were not functioning as a CP.

At the other end of the command chain, Private John DeLury of the 508th PIR remembered a feeling of euphoria as dawn came up. The dreaded night was over, and I was still alive. But my feeling of euphoria was short-lived. Morning had arrived, and with it I found we lost our best ally, the concealment afforded us by the night. We couldn't dig in and do a holding action because the Krauts had the communications, transportation, tanks, artillery. So once they located us, they would surround us and chew us up. So all our actions were evasive. We'd go in one direction, hit Germans, run like hell, and try again at a different route. All the time trying to find our own regiment or any other sizable friendly force.

For Sergeant D. Zayn Schlimmer of the 508th, each field became a separate battleground. He had a sense of intense isolation. In this situation, he found a strange ally in the brown and white Norman cattle. Schlummer explained, "When there were cows grazing in a field, we were pleased because we could be reasonably certain that the field was not mined. Also, by watching the cows, who were by nature quite curious animals, we could tell whether there was anyone else in the field, because the cows would stand waiting, facing anyone there in anticipation of being milked. Over all these years, I've had a place in my heart for those lovely Norman cows with their big eyes and big udders." But the cows could only spot Germans, for Schlummer and his small group, not kill them, and the paratroopers had precious little in the way of killing weapons.

By mid-morning of D-Day, Schlummer recalled, "More troopers had assembled, but we had no mortars, few machine guns, few bazookas, fewer radios, little medical supplies, few medics. Really not much more than a few grenades and our rifles." But despite the lack of heavy weapons, they had an aggressive spirit and a can-do attitude.

Sergeant Sydney Mac Callum of the 56th PIR got into a typical hedgerow fight with Sergeant William Adley beside him. They were setting up when a German machine gun fired on them. Mac Callum and Adley dove to the ground, but not before Adley got hit in the head. The machine gun kept firing over their bodies but could not depress low enough to hit them. Mac Callum said, as the bullets kept hitting the hedgerow inches above our heads, "I asked Adley if he was hit bad." And these were his words. "I'm dying, Mickey. But we are going to win this damn war, aren't we?" "You damn well we are." When the firing ceased, Bill was dead. Mac Callum concluded his story with a question. "How much farther beyond the call of duty can one go than this?"

The northern exits from Utah, a kilometer or so inland from the beach across the flooded fields, were Number 4 near Saint-Martin-de-Varreville and Number 3 near Audouville-la-Hubert. They were assigned to the 505th PIR. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cole, commanding the Third Battalion of the 505th, was the first to get there. He had landed near Sainte-Mère-Église, wandering through the night, collecting a group of about 75 men from his own battalion, others from the 56th PIR, plus a handful of men from the 82nd Airborne, and moved out towards Saint-Martin-de-Varreville. Along the way, he had a skirmish with a German patrol. The Americans killed several of the enemy and took 10 prisoners. At Saint-Martin, Cole sent a reconnaissance party to check out the battery there. It had been damaged by bombing and was deserted. Cole then split his force, sending one group to seize Exit 3, another to take Exit 4. At 0930 near Audouville-la-Hubert, the Americans saw German troops retreating across the causeway from the beach. Without loss to themselves, the Americans killed 50 to 75 of the enemy. By noon, the exits were securely in American hands.

Captain L. Legs Johnson led a patrol down the causeway to the beach. He saw German soldiers in one of the batteries waving a white flag. They were underground, part of the coastal defense group, and they were relatively older men, really not very good soldiers. "We accepted their terms of surrender, allowing them to come up only in small groups. We enclosed them with barbed wire fencing, their own barbed wire, and they were pretty well shocked when they learned that there were a lot more of them than there were of us. There were at least 50 of those guys." Johnson took his helmet off, set it down, lay on the ground with his helmet as a headrest, really taking it sort of easy, waiting for the Fourth Infantry Division to come up. At about 1100, the infantry were there, Johnson recalled. "And it was really sort of amusing because we were on the beach with our faces all blackened, and these guys would come up in their boats and crash down in front of us. And man, when they came off those boats, they were ready for action. We quickly hollered to them and pointed to our American flags."

Inland by about a kilometer from Saint-Martin-de-Varreville, there was a group of buildings holding a German coastal artillery barracks known to the Americans from its map designation as WXYZ. Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Cassidy, commanding the First Battalion of the 505th, short of men and with a variety of missions to perform, sent Sergeant Harrison Summers of West Virginia with 15 men to capture the barracks. That was not much of a force to take on a full-strength German company, but it was all Cassidy could spare. Summers set out immediately, not even taking the time to learn the names of the men he was leading, who were showing considerable reluctance to follow this unknown sergeant. Summers grabbed one man, Sergeant Leland Baker, and told him, "Go up to the top of this rise and watch in that direction, and don't let anything come over that hill and get on my flank. Stay there until you're told to come back." Baker did as ordered. Summers then went to work, charging the first farmhouse, hoping his hodgepodge squad would follow. It did not, but he kicked in the door and sprayed the interior with his Tommy gun. Four Germans fell dead. Others ran out the back door to the next house. Summers, still alone, charged that house. Again, the Germans fled. His example inspired Private William Bert to come out of the roadside ditch where the group was hiding, set up his light machine gun, and begin laying down a suppressing fire against the third barracks building. Once more, Summers dashed forward. The Germans were ready this time. They shot at him from loopholes, but what with Bert's machine gun fire and Summers' zigzag running, failed to hit him. Summers kicked in the door and sprayed the interior, killing six Germans and driving the remainder out of the building. Summers dropped to the ground, exhausted and in emotional shock. He rested for half an hour. His squad came up and replenished his ammunition supply. As he rose to go on, an unknown captain from the 101st, misdropped by miles, appeared at his side. "I'll go with you," said the captain. At that instant, he was shot through the heart, and Summers was alone again. He charged another building, killing six more Germans. The rest threw up their hands. Summers' squad was close behind. He turned the prisoners over to his men. One of them, Private John Camian from New York City, called out to Summers, "Why are you doing it?" "I can't tell you," Summers replied. "What about the others?" Camian asked. "They don't seem to want to fight," said Summers. "And I can't make them, so I've got to finish it." "Okay," said Camian. "I'm with you." Together, Summers and Camian moved from building to building, taking turns, charging and giving covering fire. Bert, meanwhile, moved up with his machine gun. Between the three of them, they killed more Germans. There were two buildings to go. Summers charged the first and kicked the door open to see the most improbable sight: 15 German artillerymen were seated at mess tables eating breakfast. Summers never paused. He shot them down at the tables. The last building was the largest. Beside it was a shed and a haystack. Bert used tracer bullets to set them ablaze. The shed was used by the Germans for ammunition storage. It quickly exploded, driving 30 Germans out into the open where Summers, Camian, and Bert shot some of them down as the others fled. Another member of Summers' makeshift squad came up. He had a bazooka which he used to set the roof of the last building on fire. The Germans on the ground floor were firing a steady fusillade from loopholes in the walls, but as the flames began to build, they dashed out. Many died in the open. 31 others emerged with hands raised to offer their surrender. Summers collapsed, exhausted by his nearly 5 hours of combat. He lit a cigarette. One of the men asked him, "How do you feel?" "Not very good," Summers answered. "It was all kind of crazy. I'm sure I'll never do anything like that again." Summers got a battlefield commission and a Distinguished Service Cross. He was put in for the Medal of Honor, but the paperwork got lost. In the late 1980s, after Summers' death from cancer, Private Baker and others made an effort to get the medal awarded posthumously, without success. Summers is a legend with American paratroopers nonetheless, the Sergeant York of World War II. His story has too much John Wayne Hollywood in it to be believed, except that more than 10 men saw and reported his exploits.

At 0600, General Taylor made his first D-Day command decision. He had with him Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, 101st Artillery Commander, Colonel Julian Ewell, CO 3rd Battalion, 501st PIR, 18 other officers, and 40 men. With the sunrise, Taylor could see the church steeple at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. "I know the shape of that one," he said. A payoff from the pre-invasion briefing. He was in position to move his group south to defend the line of the Douve River or east to Exits 1 and 2. Either way, he would be carrying out 101st missions. "It remains for us to help the Fourth Infantry Division in every way possible," he said. He set off from just south of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont for Pouville, called "Poopville" by the GIs, and Exit 1. Lieutenant Eugene Brier was in the lead with flank guards on both sides out into the fields. As they approached Pouville, shots rang out. The village was held by some 60 men of the German 91st Division. They were hunkered down, occasionally firing out of second-story windows. It took Taylor's small force nearly 3 hours to complete the house-to-house, really window-to-window fighting. Ewell's battalion suffered 18 casualties and inflicted 25 on the enemy. Nearly 40 Wehrmacht troops surrendered. In one house, Brier found a wounded German on the floor. "His gun was near him," Brier recalled. "I almost shot him when I realized that he was seriously wounded. He signaled to me to hand him something. I saw that he was pointing toward a rosary. I grabbed his gun, unloaded it, threw it aside, picked up the rosary, and handed it to him. He had a look of deep appreciation in his eyes, and began to pray, passing the beads through his fingers. He died shortly thereafter."

With Pouville taken, Taylor had possession of Exit 1. He sent Lieutenant Brier on an 8-man patrol down the causeway with orders to make contact with the Fourth Infantry Division coming in at Utah. A couple of German soldiers had fled Pouville headed toward the beach. Four German soldiers at Utah had meanwhile fled inland along the causeway. When they met and realized they were caught in a nutcracker, they hid under a bridge. Meanwhile, Captain Maberry was advancing inland along the causeway. Flooded fields to both sides. Brier shot an orange flare up into the air to show that, quote, "We were friends." The troops came on. When they got to the bridge, six Germans came out with their hands up and surrendered. "I went to the road and met Captain Mabry. I recorded the time. It was 11:10. The linkup at Pouville was complete." Brier took Mabry to meet Taylor. When Mabry told him how smoothly the landings at Utah were going, Taylor turned to his chief of staff, Colonel Gerald Higgins, and said, "The invasion is succeeding. We don't have to worry about the causeways. Now we can think about the next move."

When the German Sixth Parachute Regiment moved out to attack, it was hit almost immediately by naval gunfire. "No one can imagine what it was like. When the ships fired, it was like a storm. It was hell. It lasted. It lasted. It was unendurable. We lay on the ground, pressed against the earth," Private Aegon Roars declared. Private Wulfgang Garretts was in Roar's unit. Garretts had spent 2 years worrying that the war would end before he could take part in it. But he said, "At the end of one hour, I wanted only to go home. We were all terrified. There were some who cried and called for their mothers."

Colonel Height wanted to see the situation for himself. So he set off on his motorcycle and drove from Quinéville to Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, where he climbed to the top of the church steeple, the one Taylor had spotted an hour earlier. It was 50 m or so above the ground and gave him a magnificent view of Utah Beach. "What he saw quite took his breath away. All along the beach," he recalled, "were these small boats, hundreds of them, each disgorging 30 or 40 armed men. Behind them were the warships blasting away with their huge guns. More warships in one fleet than anyone had ever seen before." Cannons from a single German coastal bunker were firing at the incoming American troops, who had no cover on the gently rising slope. Except for this small fortification, the German defense seemed non-existent, or in any case, invisible. Around the church, in the little village, and beyond, in the green fields, crisscrossed by hedgerows, all was quiet.

The Germans had a battery of four 105 mm cannon at Brécourt Manor, a couple of kilometers north of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, but the guns were not firing, even though they were perfectly situated to lob shells onto the landing craft on Utah and to engage the warships out in the channel. An identical battery at Holdy, just to the south of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, was also not firing. No one ever found out why. As with the Germans eating breakfast at WXYZ when Summers burst in on them, it was and remains inexplicable. Of course, these artillerymen were not top-quality troops. Nothing to match Height's paratroopers. Many were overage. Some were just kids. Few had any heart for fighting American paratroopers. But the biggest problem was the absence of leadership. The junior officers and non-coms in the artillery units either would not or could not take charge and make their men do their duty. They were prepared to defend themselves from their trenches, bunkers, and stone farmhouses. They were not prepared to stand to their guns.

Height dashed down the circular stairs from the steeple and got on his radio. He ordered his First Battalion to get to Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and Holdy as quickly as possible to hold the villages and get those guns shooting. Thus did the Wehrmacht pay the price for overextending itself. Its best troops were either dead or POWs or invalids or fighting on the Eastern Front. The garrison troops in the Cotentin were almost useless, even a detriment. Height's clear mission was to open the road from Carentan to Sainte-Mère-Église, concentrate his regiment to drive the small 82nd Airborne force in Sainte-Mère-Église out of town, and by such a counterattack, throw the Americans on the defensive. That was what he had intended to do, but the sad state of affairs at the batteries at Brécourt Manor and Holdy forced him to divide his force and put one of his battalions on a defensive mission. Height was the only German regimental commander doing his job that morning. The others were in Rennes for the war game. That was one reason for the failure of the Wehrmacht to launch any coordinated counterattacks, even though it had been preparing for this day for the past 6 months. And even though Rommel had insisted on the absolute necessity of immediate strong counterattacks while the invaders were still on the beaches, but the war game at Rennes was only one small part of the abysmal failure of the Wehrmacht. Paralysis in the high command permeated everything.

The BBC radio messages to the French Resistance were more or less ignored. For this failure, at least there was an excuse. There had been so many false alarms in the preceding weeks that the German coastal units had become exhausted and exasperated by the continuous alerts. Further, the messages did not indicate where the invasion was coming. The dummy paratroopers dropped by SAS convinced some German commanders that the whole operation was a bluff, but the major factor in the Wehrmacht's failure appears to have been a consequence of the soft life of occupation.

As early as 0615, General Max Penzel, chief of staff to General Dollmann's 7th Army, told General Speidel at Laroche-Posay of the massive air and naval bombardment. A half hour later, Penzel reported to Runstedt's headquarters that the landings were beginning, but he added that the 7th Army would be able to cope with the situation from its own resources. With that news, General von Salmuth, commanding the 15th Army, went back to bed. So did Speidel and most of Rommel's staff at Laroche-Posay. General Blumentritt from Runstedt's headquarters told General Jodl at Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgaden that a major invasion appeared to be taking place and asked for release of the armored reserve, First SS Panzer, outside Paris. Jodl refused to wake Hitler. Permission was denied. General von Manteuffel, commander of the Panzer Lehr Division, had his tanks ready to move to the coast by 0600, but did not receive permission to do so until late afternoon. Berlin radio reported landings in Normandy at 0700. OKW released its first communiqué announcing the invasion at 0930, but not until 10:30 did word reach Rommel at his home in Herrlingen. He left immediately for the long drive to Laroche-Posay, but did not arrive until after dark.

The cause of all this mess, beyond complacency and divided command responsibility, was the success of Operation Fortitude. As Max Hastings notes, every key German commander greeted the news of operations in Normandy as evidence of *an* invasion, not *the* invasion. The Calvados and Cotentin coasts were a long way from Laroche-Posay, a longer way from Paris, an even longer way from the Pas-de-Calais, and a long, long way from the Ruhr industrial heartland. Despite all their post-war claims to the contrary, the Germans just could not believe that the Allies would make their major, let alone their sole, landing west of the Seine River. So they decided to wait for the real thing at the Pas-de-Calais. They were still waiting 3 months later as the Allied armies overran France and moved into Belgium. This from an army that claimed to be the best and most professional in the world. In fact, from the Supreme Commander in Berchtesgaden on down to the field officers in France, to the local commanders in Normandy, to the men in the barracks at WXYZ, it was an army inferior in all respects except for weaponry, especially the 88s and the machine guns, to its Allied opponents.

The inferiority was shown again and again on D-Day at Brécourt Manor at 0830, just about the time Sergeant Summers started his attack at WXYZ. Lieutenant Richard Winters and 10 men from E Company of the 506th PIR attacked the 50-man guard at the battery of 105 mm. The Germans were dug in behind hedgerows. They had extensive interconnecting trenches. They had machine guns and mortars and clear fields of fire. Winters' squad-sized group had one light mortar, two light machine guns, two Tommy guns, and five rifles. But although Winters was outnumbered 5 to one, and was attacking an entrenched enemy, he and his men prevailed. They did so because they used tactics they had learned in training, plus common sense and some calculated courage. At a cost of four dead, two wounded, Winters and his men killed 15 Germans, wounded many more, took 12 prisoners, and destroyed four German 105mm cannon. The Americans had done the job through the quickness and audacity of a flanking attack led by Winters, supported by suppressing fire from mortars and machine guns. One factor in their success was that this was their first combat experience. As Sergeant Carwood Lipton said, "He took chances that morning he would never take again. But we were so full of fire that day, I was sure I would not be killed. I felt that if a bullet was headed for me, it would be deflected or I would move." After destroying the guns, when his small group disengaged, surviving Germans still held the hedgerow around the manor house and were using their machine guns to lay down harassing fire.

At about 1200, two Sherman tanks came up from the beach. Winters climbed onto the back of the first tank and told the commander, "I want fire along those hedgerows over there and there and there."