Decision

Some 30 hours before H-hour General Eisenhower made the great decision. The moon, the tide, the carefully calculated weather forecasts were favorable. At night, while his staff got out the orders, the General walked alone on the crunching cinder path near his headquarters tent. Deep within himself he wrestled with the feeling he called "boiling over." His fingers rubbed the lucky coins he had rubbed before the invasions of North Africa and Sicily. Now began the taut moments that come to every commander after the battle order has been given, and there is no turning back.

Twenty-four hours were left to bid his battle teams a last Godspeed. In the morning "Ike" Eisenhower stood at an English quayside, chinning in his friendly Kansas way with embarking Tommies. In the afternoon he called newsmen into his trailer tent, told them of the great decision. He slouched in his chair, grinned lopsidedly, chain-smoked cigarets, wisecracked a bit, once leaped like an uncoiled spring to exclaim: "The sun is out!"

All evening his khaki staff car, marked with the four red stars, rolled across the sleeping countryside. At busy, nervous dromes the General chatted with the air soldiers. He looked for a paratrooper from Kansas. He joked with one youngster about his haircut. He asked a boy who had been a Dakota farmer how much wheat he had grown per acre.

Night cloaked the countryside and the airdromes were humming with preparation when he gave his last "good luck." Then from the rooftop of an ivied English mansion he watched the cavalcade of planes roaring across the sky, toward France.

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