"This is It"

The world got the shock it had been waiting for. But to the U.S. the shock was cushioned by the dead of night; the news came in the hours when the soberest of men are drunken with sleep. Perhaps never was such big news heard by so few. When the nation woke up, the great fact was hours old.

Over the quiet American cities and the somnolent farms a bombers' moon shone through the cool June night. At 12:37 a.m. (E.W.T.) bells tinkled on the news tickers in newspaper and radio offices. FLASH:

GERMAN TRANS-OCEAN AGENCY CLAIMS ALLIED INVASION HAS BEGUN. Out Went the news over U.S. radio stations. Was this it?

For three hours, Radio Berlin kept it up: paratroopers landed near the Seine estuary; the harbor of Le Havre shelled; Calais and Dunkirk raided by strong bomber formations. Every new flash brought the probability nearer. But most of the U.S. slept on.

"In Ten Seconds . . ." Finally the break came. The Allied side was going to speak. All four major networks stood by for London. Over the shortwave at last came the dry, deliberate voice of Colonel R. Ernest Dupuy, press aide to General Eisenhower: "This is Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. The text of Communique No. 1 will be released to the press and radio of the United Nations in ten seconds."

In measured tones, Colonel Dupuy counted up to ten. Then, reading slowly, he confirmed the news: the invasion had begun, on the northern coast of France.

For the next few hours, the great, pulse-beating job of telling the U.S. people of the greatest military undertaking in his tory belonged to the U.S. radio. The U.S. slept on, but the radio worked as if it had the biggest audience in history. First, from London, came the rolling, authoritative voice of General Eisenhower, reading his proclamation to the people of Western Europe; then Norway's King Haakon and Belgian Premier Hubert Pierlot.

Just an hour after Communique No. 1 came the first eyewitness account. NBC's Wright Bryan, who had flown over the invasion coast with paratroopers, stepped to a London microphone, breathlessly told of the lack of German opposition.

In CBS's Manhattan newsroom, Broadcaster Bob Trout roamed about with a portable microphone for seven hours, reading rapid-fire dispatches as they clacked in, letting his listeners hear the clack of the tickers, the excited shuffling of chairs.

Any Other Morning. As morning came and the realization finally dawned that this was Dday, the U.S. people reacted like Americans.

In early-morning Washington, a cab driver, parked near the White House, said: "It may be D-day but it looks just like any other morning to me." Two days earlier the U.S. had received a false invasion flash from the Associated Press's London office, sent by an inexperienced girl teletype operator. Now, in Redding, Calif., a policeman echoed the sentiments of many citizens when he said: "That girl wasn't far off, was she?" Awakened by a New York Post reporter at her West Point hotel, Mrs. Dwight Eisenhower exclaimed : "The invasion? What about the invasion? Why hasn't someone told me?"

After finishing his brief radio speech hailing the fall of Rome, President Roosevelt had gone to his bedroom with black out blinds down. He read dispatches there until the invasion was officially announced. General George Marshall, asked if he had spent the night at his desk, said simply: "I had done my work before." The evening before he had been at the Soviet Embassy, where he received the Order of Suvorov; then had gone to his Fort Myer, Va. home to sleep.

Across the land, generally, the mood was solemn. There was no sudden fear, as on that September morning in 1939 when the Germans marched into Poland; no sudden hate, as on Pearl Harbor day. This time, moved by a common impulse, the casual churchgoers as well as the devout went to pray.

The U.S. people had wondered for weeks how they would behave on Dday.

When it came, they went about their regular business. Race tracks called off their programs for the day; many stores closed at noon. The citizens stuck to their radios, read newspaper extras as they rolled off the presses, sat and thought, stood and drank, knelt and prayed.

Londoners acted like good Englishmen.

U.S. correspondents rushed to Piccadilly Circus, hoping to see something like Times Square on New Year's Eve. They found Londoners going to work as usual. At the Billingsgate fish market, fishmongers used their famed and choicest profanity in explaining to housewives why they were out of fish: even fishing smacks might be in the invasion. There was a note of helplessness, too. The wife of a British major with the invasion forces, remembering the old Irish song And Women Must Wait and Weep, exclaimed: "I wish they'd bomb London, too. It would make me feel better."

In Moscow the people literally danced in the streets. There the populace, from Stalin down to the lowest party member, had waited for two and a half years for the Second Front. This was the happiest capital. The Russian radio called it "The Victory Front." In the lobby of the Metropole Hotel, an ecstatic Muscovite threw her arms around an American correspondent, exclaimed: "We love you, we love you, we love you. You are our real friends."

German civilians did not get the news for several hours after invasion began. In Northern France, the long-waiting, long-suffering populace heard it in the drone of planes and the roar of guns.

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