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It's the 5th of June, 1944. Early evening. The powerful engine of a Packard automobile rumbles through the chocolate box villages of southern England.
The vehicle's identifying livery has been blacked out, but everyone recognizes the man sitting ramrod straight in the backseat. It's General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American commander of Operation Overlord. Everywhere he goes, Ike is serenaded by cheers and salutes, plus the occasional wolf whistle directed at his female driver. Her name is Kaye Summersbee, and she ignores the catcalls.
She needs to get her boss to Greenham Common, an air base 50 miles west of London and 50 miles north of the coast. By the time they arrive, it's after 8:00 p.m. But Britain is on double summertime for the war effort and the sun won't be setting for a couple of hours. Eisenhower exits the Packard into a hive of activity. Genial by nature, Ike is a slender man of average height, the very image of a clean-cut American. Hands in pockets, he looks casual.
even if he doesn't feel it. The general makes his way from the parking lot to a row of tents. The men there are busy packing up and their faces have blackened. They are about to drop into northern France by parachute, under cover of darkness. The first wave of the D-Day invasion force, preceding the boys on the beaches by a good six hours. The paratroopers of the 502nd Regiment surround the Supreme Commander. Some are keen to shake his hand,
Others find themselves tongue-tied in his presence. Ike greets a tall man, who introduces himself as First Lieutenant Wallace Strobel from Michigan. He's 22 years old, he tells the general. In fact, today is his birthday. Eisenhower, well into his 50s, engages the young man in conversation about the fishing spots they'll visit when all this is over. This scene repeats itself for hours. One by one, Eisenhower sprinkles a little bit of stardust on his men.
Men who left their homes thousands of miles away to join a fight that for many of them starts tonight. Before long darkness has fallen and then things start to get underway. The ground shudders as transport aircraft begin thundering down the runway. A Douglas C-47 heaves into the sky, what the Brits call a Dakota. Ike checks his watch. It's on time. Wheels up before 11pm to make parachute drops in France in the early hours.
The general takes a short, sharp breath to steady himself. Up there, somewhere over the English Channel, 22-year-old Wallace Strobel from Michigan is on his way to France. Right now, his family back home will be starting to think about dinner, with no idea that their son, brother, boyfriend is about to leap into enemy territory. Around midnight, Ike climbs back into the Packard, and Kay Summersbee drives him away from Greenham Common. He sits in silence,
Glad of the dark, because he sometimes needs to wipe away tears. Less than a week ago, Air Chief Marshal Trafford Lee Mallory begged Eisenhower to call off the airborne operation, based on a predicted casualty rate of 80%. That's 13,000 Wallace Strobels who might never go fishing again. After days of soul-wracking deliberation, Eisenhower decided the mission must go ahead as planned.
The boys on the beaches will be relying on the airborne troops to hold back German reinforcements. Now, on the eve of D-Day, the Supreme Commander bears the weight of all those lives on his shoulders. It takes an hour to reach the coast. Kay asks if he'd like to go to Portsmouth. In the rearview mirror, Ike catches her eye and shakes his head. He wants solitude right now, a chance to prepare for the day ahead.
Wordlessly, Kay drives him back to Southwark House instead. The Supreme Commander returns to his modest caravan in the woods to pass the longest night of his life. From the Noiser Network, this is D-Day. By the time D-Day rolls around, the Americans have been in Britain for more than two years, ever since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war. Military historian Jeff Wara says,
After Pearl Harbor, when the U.S. declares war on Japan, Germany, and Italy, it's decided that a division of U.S. forces has to be sent to help defend Britain against the possibility of a Nazi invasion.
And then thereafter, it becomes a staging ground for the opening of a Western Front in Europe to match the Soviet Eastern Front. So from 1942 until 1944, you have this continual process of building up U.S. forces, establishing armed camps, chiefly in England, extending all the way from basically Plymouth around to Norwich, most of them clustered in East Anglia. And this is the basis for the massive troop buildup that leads eventually to D-Day.
By 1944, the base at Greenham Common is just one of 200 dotted around the country. In total, Britain is playing host to 1.6 million American GIs, so called for the distinctive stamp on their equipment. Theories vary as to what it stands for. General infantry? Government issue? Galvanized iron? Either way, the Americans have certainly made their presence felt.
frequently outnumbering the populations of the small villages nearest to the camps. They've introduced the beleaguered locals to Coca-Cola, nylon stockings, jazz music and a fresh wave of energy and optimism. Some call it the friendly invasion. Nula Kalvi is the author of the New York Times bestseller "G.I. Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love."
The first GIs started arriving two months after Pearl Harbor. Churchill had offered ships the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth to bring them over and they were kitted out with bunks for all the soldiers. And as the ships came in, local kids would rush to the docks to meet them because they'd heard that the GIs had lots of candy and chewing gum. Less easily won over, however, are British men.
particularly when the Americans start dating local girls. Well, they actually issued a little book, I've got a copy of one here, called Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942. And in it, it sort of explains what to expect.
that the British are reserved but not unfriendly. So if people don't talk to you on the train or on the bus, it doesn't mean they're being unfriendly, they're just being British. Another thing they were warned was not to steal the British men's girlfriends because there was a real fear that resentment between British and American men in particular could undermine the alliance and play into the Germans' hands.
There was often tension, particularly with the local men, but it cut both ways. The Brits called the Americans yanks, the Americans called the Brits limeys. So there was a lot of banter, but it was more or less good-natured. Then there were the famous three O's. To their British detractors, the GIs are overpaid, oversexed and overhear. But the Americans have the perfect comeback. As far as they're concerned, the Brits are underpaid, undersexed and under-Eisenhower.
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Plus, you automatically get daily backups and world-class security. Get started now at Bluehost.com. And what of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man in charge of the entire D-Day operation? Back in December 1941, when the Pearl Harbor attack catapults the United States into the war, he is a brigadier general at an army base in Texas. Since graduating in 1911, he's served 30 years in the military.
Though he never saw combat during the First World War, he distinguished himself on home soil as a tank commander. But it's his exceptional skills at leadership, organization, and strategy that have seen him leapfrog through the ranks. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Ike is summoned to work in the War Department in Washington. Weeks later, shortly after the first American GIs ship out to Europe, he's promoted to Chief of War Plans.
Time magazine names him as one of the finest staff officers in the US Army. But he's still a long way off from becoming Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces. Eisenhower is chiefly modest and self-effacing, but he immediately strikes everyone as a really serious professional soldier. He's a relatively colorless figure, but he's a real professional and he has the perfect temperament. Sir Max Hastings.
He wasn't one of the great commanders. He wasn't Alexander the Great or Caesar or anybody like that, because his whole background, he'd never really run a proper military campaign or directed a battle. He'd been a peacetime soldier for years. But he was a very wise man and he was a very smart guy and he was a very cool guy.
You know, there's nothing that really suggests that he's going to have this meteoric rise. But he basically, he's appreciated by George Marshall, who's FDR's right-hand man during the war, you know, chief of staff of the army. And Marshall kind of grooms Eisenhower. When the United States joins the war in 1942, it's already raging in multiple theaters. The Pacific, Africa, Asia, and Europe, the Allies are stretched thin.
Eisenhower agrees with Roosevelt and Churchill that the only way to win is to combine forces, take down Germany together. This plan becomes known as "Europe First". In May 1942, Eisenhower travels to Britain to inspect the US forces there. He is disappointed by what he finds. "We must get going," he writes in his diary on the 4th of June, almost exactly two years before D-Day. The following week, he is approached by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall,
"There's a job going," Marshall tells him. "In fact, it's the biggest American job in the war." Three days later, Ike's diary entry is typically understated. "Chief of Staff says I'm the guy." Eisenhower is heading up to Etusa, the European Theater of Operations US Army. Despite the Allies' agreement that an invasion of northern France is essential, there are other, more immediate priorities.
By late 1942, Eisenhower is commanding the Mediterranean Theater. The Allies stage a three-pronged assault on North Africa by landing from the sea in Algeria and Morocco. It's the first joint venture for British and American troops, and an important trial run for an amphibious invasion, like the one planned for D-Day. The seaborne mission is a success, but the subsequent operation to sweep through North Africa soon turns to embarrassment for the Americans.
In their first confrontation with the Germans, at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, the US troops are thrown into disarray. 300 dead, 3,000 injured, and another 3,000 captured. The figures dwarf the German casualties by 6 to 1. The Americans are forced to retreat with their tails between their legs. Churchill has long argued that the Americans will need to toughen up before D-Day. Eisenhower doesn't disagree.
but right now, he's more worried about the effect of the defeat on morale. He reassures his men that the fiasco at Kasserine wasn't their fault. It was rather a failure of command. Ike sacks the general responsible and appoints a new commander in his place: Major General George S. Patton. You might remember him as the loudmouthed tough guy who ends up in hot water for slapping a man suffering from shell shock. Right now though, Patton is just what the GIs need.
His trademark tough love approach soon brings the men up to fighting pitch, as Eisenhower puts it. Ultimately, the Allies are successful in North Africa and use the momentum to take Sicily and Italy as well. Gradually, the focus returns from the Mediterranean to the English Channel. Churchill, Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin are pushing ahead with plans for a new Western Front.
For the Soviets, this is essential to relieve pressure on their forces in the east. For years now, Stalin has been pushing his British and American counterparts to get on with it. But when he learns they haven't even named a commander for the operation, the Soviet leader grows increasingly impatient. Giles Milton
For a long time after the decision had been made to launch D-Day, there was no commander. And in fact, this infuriated Stalin, who at the Tehran conference, where he met with Churchill and Roosevelt, he said rather dismissively and sarcastically, what's the point in having a second front if you can't even name a commander? And it was shortly after this that the allies, principally Churchill and Roosevelt, settled on General Eisenhower, who was going to be in charge of Operation Overlord.
So why is an American put in charge of an operation that will be launched from England and involve tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth troops? Doesn't Churchill want one of his own men to take the lead? In fact, compared to the bullish Roosevelt, Churchill's commitment to D-Day is qualified. Churchill had moments when he said, why are we trying to do this thing now?
And I've always believed that if the Americans hadn't kept up the pressure to get on and do D-Day in 1944, it wouldn't have happened until 1945 because the British were haunted, first of all, by their casualties in the First World War, but also they'd take a lot more punishment than the Americans so far in the Second. Churchill was haunted by this vision of Rommel, of whom he had a healthy respect.
leading another German army to defeat the British and Americans on the beaches. Now, if that had happened, it would have been an absolute catastrophe. Eisenhower would have to be sacked, all the generals would have to be sacked. I think it's a very interesting question whether Churchill could have kept his job as British Prime Minister. The PM is acutely conscious that if D-Day goes wrong, his own political career will be on the line. But if an American takes on responsibility for the operation…
A centuries-old tradition states that the nation putting forward the majority of troops should take the leadership role. That's the United States. In October 1943, Churchill sends a telegram to Roosevelt suggesting that US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall would be the perfect man for the job, a veteran of the Western Front in World War I. He has both strategic and field experience.
But the president wants his right-hand man by his side in Washington. So instead, Roosevelt calls on Marshall's protégé, Eisenhower. It's a shrewd choice. Overlord poses challenges that suit his particular skill set. Why Eisenhower? Some people raised their eyebrows and thought he was a strange choice. But I think the strength of Eisenhower was he was able to get on with people. He was, if you like, he was a soldier diplomat.
It's a talent that'll need to handle the famously arrogant Field Marshal Montgomery, head of British ground forces, not to mention the hot-headed General Patton. The generals leading the troops into battle all have big egos. Men like Montgomery, General Patton. Often they detested each other. They had massive fallouts and Eisenhower was always there to sort of soothe things over.
He was a real kind of shock absorber for the Allied war effort. He settled everything down, he absorbed all the stress himself, took it all on himself and allowed the constituent parts to do their bit. I think Eisenhower was an absolutely brilliant Supreme Commander, not least because he put up with and managed all these prima donna generals. Running alliances is very difficult and Eisenhower did it brilliantly.
There's obviously a great deal of rivalry between the two armies, between the various services within the armies, but it ends up operating quite smoothly on D-Day and afterward. As the new head of SHAFE, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhower wastes no time making his priorities clear. Based in the glitzy west end of London, his men have been making themselves comfortable, maybe too comfortable.
When they're not wining and dining local girls, they spend their free time at lavish clubs set up specially for them by the American Red Cross and designed to make them feel like they've never left home. They would have jukeboxes playing the latest American music. They would have donuts, coffee, magazines from home. The biggest one was on the corner of Piccadilly Circus in the West End because lots of GIs were based in Mayfair. In fact, so many that it gained the nickname Little America.
One of Ike's first orders as Supreme Commander is an unpopular one. He tells his men to start packing. He moved Schaaf out of Grosvenor Square to a camp in Bushy Park near Teddington in West London. Not everyone was happy about moving out of the luxury hotels, but in fact they only stayed about three months there before moving down to Portsmouth to prepare for D-Day. Schaaf's new base of operations is Southwark House, a 19th century Georgian mansion that already hosts a large naval detachment.
Built in 1800, the manor house features a stunning semicircular portico supported on ionic columns. It's this really beautiful white stucco neoclassical building, sort of looked like something out of a period drama. But inside, this was where the invasion was being coordinated.
So you have to imagine a large English country house and inside it's full of experts. Some are brilliant on the terrain of Normandy, some are weathermen, some are studying the beaches, some are planning what operations the French Resistance will be carrying out.
Everyone has their appointed duty and all are focused on one goal, which is to get 156,000 men safely ashore on D-Day and create a beachhead which is going to be large enough to bring enough tanks and armoured vehicles ashore that the Germans will not have a chance of driving the Allies back into the sea. As the deployment of those troops draws ever closer, Ike can't stop worrying about their fate.
Other generals such as Montgomery and Patton might sound cavalier when they talk about casualties, but Eisenhower never loses sight of the personal sacrifice. That's why he's been writing and rewriting a letter to his men. It's known as the Order of the Day, and on the morning of Monday, June 5th, D-1, it's delivered to the 175,000 members of the Allied Expeditionary Force. Ike has been working on the letter for months now,
refining his motivational rhetoric. A week ago he recorded a spoken version, which has already been delivered to the BBC in London and radio stations across the United States. It will be broadcast tomorrow, once the mission is already underway. 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 hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
In company with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world." The order of the day focuses on victory, but privately, Eisenhower is gripped by the thought of failure.
D-Day could have gone wrong on many different levels. And in fact, Eisenhower was so worried that the invasion would fail, he actually wrote a second note saying, unfortunately, the D-Day landings have failed. So even the Supreme Commander was not at all convinced that D-Day was going to succeed. It's on Monday afternoon, after the troops have received their order of the day letters, that Ike sits down and puts pencil to paper once again.
He's writing a speech he may have to give this time tomorrow if those brave men are all lying dead on French beaches. "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre areas have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold," he scrawls. "The troops have been withdrawn." He stops, cursing his cowardly use of the passive voice. He strikes a line through it and writes, "I have withdrawn the troops instead."
My decision to attack at this time and place, he continues, 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. Mine alone. He underlines those words so forcefully that his pencil breaks. Ike slips the note inside his wallet. Hopefully this is where it will stay. He doesn't tell anyone that he's written it.
Not even his closest confidant, his driver, Kaye Summersbee, 20 years his junior. The young Irish woman is an excellent driver, able to find her way around London streets even during blackout. And she has the looks of a Hollywood movie star. Over time, their relationship is developed from the professional to the personal.
He spent a lot of time with her, and of course, this gave rise to innumerable rumors that they were having an affair. And his wife back in America also knew about Kay's existence and was extremely unhappy about it. Was he having an affair? We just don't know. The likelihood is that he probably was, but he was certainly unhappy.
Years later, Kay's memoirs will offer a glimpse of the intimacy between the two of them. She recalls holding hands by the fire, pairing up for games of bridge in which they shared an almost telepathic bond, and receiving a puppy as a gift.
It's Kay who notes that by late evening of June the 5th, Ike is in a state of high anxiety. "He has to know that this could very well fail. Chances of it failing are arguably higher than it succeeding. He's torn by doubt, but that's the nature of war, you know?" The journey back from Greenham Common takes over an hour. The Packard is buffeted by wind and driving rain. Eventually Ike and Kay arrive at his trailer in the woods near Southwark House.
They dash through the rain. Captain Harry Butcher, Eisenhower's official aide, is already inside. He's almost as nervous as his boss. Aircraft roar overhead, and they take turns to identify the type. Kay knows that no one will be able to sleep. She goes to the little kitchenette and begins brewing up some coffee. Ike prowls around the cramped space. He looks like a wounded animal, unable to settle. He stops to fiddle with the dial of his radio.
The trailer fills with bursts of static, snatches of music. The chatter of operatives reporting troop movements. As she takes him a cup of coffee, Kay looks into his eyes. They're bloodshot from exhaustion and perhaps from tears as well. She clicks off the radio, hoping to give him a little peace. "For some of those men they visited tonight, D-Day will be a death sentence. The only question is how many and to what end." Outside, the wind suddenly drops.
leaving an eerie silence. Ike rips open a pack of Camel cigarettes, his fourth of the day. He taps out a smoke, lights up, and takes a drag that burns an inch of tobacco. The air in the trailer becomes more leaden than ever. He tells Kay he's going to quit smoking when all this is over. Harry Butcher slaps his thighs and stands up, announcing that he's going to his tent to rest. Kay is exhausted too, but she can't leave Ike in this state.
She pours more coffee, tries to massage the tense knots from his shoulders. Sometime in the small hours, she can't keep her eyes open any longer. She goes to her own quarters to try and get some sleep if she can. The trailer door slams shut behind her, but Eisenhower barely notices. His mind whirls with images of aircraft in black clouds, boats in high waves. They'll be fighting the elements as much as the enemy tomorrow.
The Supreme Commander takes the handwritten note from his wallet, unfolds the scrap of paper and reads his apology one more time: "In case of failure, the fault is mine alone." As the wind picks up and starts to howl again at his door, Ike downs the dregs of his coffee. He wipes his eyes and waits for dawn. In the next episode, airborne troops become the first Allied soldiers to set foot in France.
Engineless gliders crash land behind enemy lines. And D-Day claims its first British casualty. That's next time on D-Day.
