June Night

Inside a barbed-wire enclosure, where the crews of a troop carrier squadron were confined like some kind of rare and precious birds, a whistle skirled. Pilots, copilots, navigators turned out, listened to the briefing. They squinted at the sky. It was a squally night with a fitful, pale moon.

The Briefing Was Over. The men climbed into trucks, whipped off to the airfield. Already a clattering rumble spread across the night-hung countryside: engines on the warmup. They piled out of the trucks at the darkened stations and went to work.

Paratroops, grotesque and awkward in their equipment, climbed into the C-47 transport planes. In swift succession the aircraft took off and crawled up toward the cloudy sky. With formation lights on because of the dense traffic, a parade of transports, gliders, tow planes, which in single file would have stretched more than 200 miles, droned across the English Channel.

In the carriers the paratroops dozed, or pretended to. They were the Army's elite, the tough boys -- lean, wiry men clad in green camouflaged battle dress, faces stained with cocoa and linseed oil. ("We'll have something to eat if our rations run out.") They carried the fanciest arms, and the most primitive.

Near midnight the first planes reached their objective near Cherbourg. Men snapped their rip cords over static lines, waited, crouching. The command came, and they leaped. White, yellow and red parachutes blossomed in the night. Men by the thousands, weapons by the thousands floated down upon captive France.

Sweepers. Across the Channel another fleet moved--an ungainly motley of fishing trawlers, old coal-burners and new, specially designed craft. Their dirty, dangerous chore: to sweep the waters clear of mines. They moved with care, ploughing the Channel in straight furrows towards the coast, where midget submarines for the past three days had laid out beach markers. They went to work.

German coastal guns barked. The coast flamed and thundered, but the firing from the coast was sporadic and ineffectual. The hell that flared as the minesweepers worked was raised by the most savage bombing in history.

Climaxing a steady, 96-hour bombardment, a thousand Fortresses and Liberators rained explosives, pinpointing German installations in the uncertain light.

Medium bombers and fighter bombers swept low, peppering the countryside, shooting up an occasional enemy tank. Fighters strafed while others circled overhead. The Luftwaffe, either unwilling or unable to fight against such odds, stayed on the ground. It even passed up its chance at the Allied warships, which followed in the wake of minesweepers, wheeled into line and added their terrible blows.

Battleships, cruisers, destroyers stood off the coast, wrapped themselves in smoke screens and hurled steel from 640 guns. They arrived in two divisions. On the east they were British and Canadian vessels under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian. On the west they were U.S., under the command of Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk. Never before, not at Tarawa or Kwajalein or Salerno, had a target been subjected to such overwhelming bombardment from air and sea.

The vaunted coast defenses of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt had no effective response. Whether gunners were stunned or wiped out or ordered to retire, there was no adequate opposition to Allied power.

Some opposition developed later, according to German claims. E-boats, a German version of U.S. PT boats, darted out from the coast, attacked the Allied fleets on the flanks in a gallant attempt to atone for missing air power. At least two U.S. destroyers were lost.

But 15 minutes after a rosy sun lifted over the pastures of Normandy, khaki-clad U.S. and British troops began to pour ashore--the British on the left near Havre, the Americans on the right near Cherbourg.

On the way to the boats in England some of them had picked flowers, stuck them in their gun muzzles. One man carried a guitar, another wore a red & white sign on his back: "Danger--Minefield." At the boats they got the last miscellaneous tokens of the supply service care: Seven sticks of chewing gum, emergency rations, insecticide powder, cigarets, a tin of canned heat, water-purification tablets, chewing tobacco, one razor blade, twelve seasickness pills, two vomit bags--which many of them used.

Fighters. The landing-craft fleet had detached itself from its escorting warships and had swarmed in swiftly toward the beaches. They were LCMs, LCIs, LSTs--all of the big and little types of the weird landing-ship brood. Some of them had crossed the Channel under their own power, part of the great armada which numbered more than 4,000 ships. The smallest of them were loaded, lowered from troop transports and cargo ships to join the parade shoreward, bouncing in the chop of the Channel's blue water. PT boats darted in close, giving protection, watching for opposition from the water front which never developed.

On the beaches the landing craft disgorged, riflemen deployed. Beachmasters established their stations, directing the mounting traffic. By 10:30 in the morning bulldozers were carving out temporary airstrips. England was tied to the invasion coast at last. The Crusade was on.

At D-day's end little was known beyond that. Behind enemy lines U.S. and British airborne troops were fighting savagely, spreading damage, disrupting German communications, creating diversions. From the pebbled shores, the infantry and the armored columns were slowly pushing inland, clattering toward the roads and rails that link coast and interior.

At day's end the boats which had landed the greatest amphibious force in history began ferrying the wounded and the dead back to England.

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