D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (80 page)

At the veterans hospital in Helena, one soldier on crutches exclaimed, "This is it, brother. We've got 'em on the run now." Another called out from his bed, "Boy, do I wish I could be there!"

There was a silence in the ward. "Yeah," the boy on crutches finally said, without enthusiasm. Then he thoughtfully added: "I'll bet that beach is like hell on the Fourth of July."
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At Lawson General Hospital, near Atlanta, wounded German POWs took the news with derisive laughter and a "just you wait" attitude. One of them told a reporter, "The high command will simply let the Allies penetrate a few miles and then pinch them off with the thousands of SS elite guards who are stationed near Paris."
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In Dallas, Texas, patriotism ran high. At 0235 a hospital intern and a city ambulance driver helped Mrs. Lester Renfrew give birth to a daughter. She heard sirens going and asked what was the cause. Told that the invasion had begun, she named her little girl Invasia Mae Renfrew.
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In Norfolk, Virginia, Mrs. Randolph Edwards named her June 6 daughter Dee Day Edwards.
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On June 4, Mollie Panter-Downes reported in her "Letter from London" for the
New Yorker,
"Everyone is existing merely from one ordinary day to the next, waiting for the great, extraordinary one."

Panter-Downes noted an unexplainable rise in the rental of punts on the Thames and a record crowd at a cricket match at Lord's. Then she turned to a phenomenon of the war in Britain that was always an irritant and sometimes costly, the prohibition on any weather news either in the newspapers or over radio. In May, frosts wiped out the famous Vale of Evesham berry and plum crops. "The fruit growers regret that the official secrecy on weather conditions was not relaxed for once to give them a warning which might have helped save some of the fruit."

The loss was a serious one for the British diet, made worse by a drought that had damaged the hay crop, meaning less milk. The weather was the natural topic of conversation in a rural pub Panter-Downes dropped in on, the one she expected to hear, but instead "the one topic, as much there as in London clubs and bars, is the invasion."
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On June 6, Panter-Downes sensed something that other commentators missed: "For the English," she wrote, "D-Day might well have stood for Dunkirk Day.

"The tremendous news that British soldiers were back on French soil suddenly revealed exactly how much it had rankled when they were seen off it four years ago."

There was no celebrating, however; far from it. "The principal impression one got on the streets was that nobody was talking. . . . Everybody seemed to be existing wholly in a preoccupied silence of his own. . . . Everywhere, individual silences."

Business was extremely bad. Taxi drivers said it was their worst day in months. Theaters and movie houses were half empty, all but unheard of in 1944. The pubs didn't fill, either. Londoners stayed home. "Everybody seemed to feel that this was one night you wanted your own thoughts in your own chair."

In the countryside, "Everything is different now . . . every truck on the road, every piece of gear on the railways, every jeep and half-track which is heading toward the front has become a thing of passionate concern.

"Farmers who wanted gray skies for their hay's sake now want blue ones for the sake of their sons, fighting in the skies and

on the earth across the Channel." Women who gathered at train crossings where troops headed for the battle went by "didn't know whether to wave or cheer or cry. Sometimes they do all three."
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King George VI made a D-Day broadcast to the nation. "Four years ago," he began, "our Nation and Empire stood alone against an overwhelming enemy, with our backs to the wall. . . . Now once more a supreme test has to be faced. This time the challenge is not to fight to survive but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause."

The king knew that nearly all his subjects were listening and realized that the mothers and wives among them deserved special concern. "The Queen joins with me in sending you this message," he said. "She well understands the anxieties and care of our womenfolk at this time and she knows that many of them will find, as she does herself, fresh strength and comfort in such waiting upon God."

The king called on his subjects to pray: "At this historic moment surely not one of us is too busy, too young, or too old to play a part in a nation-wide, perchance a world-wide, vigil of prayer as the great crusade sets forth."
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The House of Commons went about its business. The first question came from Mr. Hogg, Oxford. He asked the secretary of state for war "whether he could give an assurance that all ranks of the Army had been informed that unless A.F.B. 2626 was completed they would not have a vote at the next General Election whether or not they were on the old register; and on what scale A.F.B. 2626 had been issued to units."

The secretary of state for war, Mr. John Grigg, replied at ten-minutes length that it was being done.

Another member wanted to know if the prime minister would consider the complete restoration of the abbey of Monte Cassino as a memorial to the heroes who had captured it, to be done at the expense of Germany as a part of reparations. Labor leader Clement Attlee, member of the coalition War Cabinet, replied that is was "premature to consider such proposals."

The secretary of state for the colonies, Col. Oliver Stanley, rose to remind the House that in many of the colonies "there are large numbers of people who are condemned to live at an abysmal level of existence. The standard of living of the peoples in the Colonial areas should be built up." Mr. Attlee, in replying to an-

other question, switched the area for postwar concern from the colonies to the home front. He urged "the composition and terms of reference of the proposed Royal Commission on the subject of equal pay between men and women."

John Grigg made an unhappy announcement about men who had been overseas for five years or more: "I much regret that owing to the shortage of men it may be necessary, at any rate for the time being, to send such men overseas again after a period of three months in this country instead of six months as hitherto."

A member pressed the secretary of the treasury to see to it that members of the Association of Office Cleaners were referred to as such instead of as charwomen or charladies, which was resented by the 2,400 members of the association. The secretary replied that the word "cleaners" would henceforth be used.

As the mundane gave way to the silly in Commons, the tension built. Rumors buzzed around about when the great man would appear on this, his greatest day.

Churchill sent word to expect him at noon.

When Churchill entered Commons, every seat was taken, every member was leaning forward expectantly. They were not so much expecting (or even wanting) to be swept away by Churchill-ian eloquence as they were eager for whatever news the prime minister could tell them.

The master toyed with his audience. Churchill began with Rome. He was obviously enjoying his old role of war reporter ("still this country's best reporter," Raymond Daniell wrote in the New
York Times).
Churchill went into fifteen minutes of detail about how Rome was taken, then an analysis of the meaning of the event. It was all welcome news, the kind that prime ministers love to be in a position to tell the members, but the members squirmed on their benches. They wanted to hear about how it was going on the other side of the Channel.

Finally Churchill got to it. "I have also to announce to the House that during the night and early hours of the morning the first of a series of landings in force upon the European continent has taken place. So far, the commanders . . . report that everything is proceeding according to plan. And what a plan!

"Landings on the beaches are proceeding at various points at the present time," he said. "The fire of shore batteries has been largely quelled. Obstacles which were encountered in the sea have not proved as difficult as was apprehended."

He left to great cheers. He returned four hours later to add

more detail. "There is very much less loss than we expected. The many dangers and difficulties which at this time yesterday appeared extremely formidable are behind us.

"A very great risk had to be taken in respect to the weather, but General Eisenhower's courage is equal to all necessary decisions that have to be taken in these extremely difficult and uncontrollable matters."

He referred to Maj. John Howard's operation at Pegasus Bridge and claimed that British troops had "fought their way into the town of Caen, nine miles inland."

Churchill was fond of saying that the first casualty of war is truth. His rosy report fell, at times, into that category. But he was telling the truth when he described the airborne landings as having taken place "on a scale far larger than anything that has been seen so far in the world."
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For Edward R. Murrow in London, it was a day of frustration. CBS put him in charge of coordinating the work of its many correspondents and reading the various announcements coming from SHAEF and others. He would much rather have been in France. Adding to his woes, radio correspondents had precious little to pass on to the States. Mobile transmitters were not set up on the beach or even on ships. Reporters who went into the beach in landing craft, including Bill Downs, Larry LeSueur, and Charles Collingwood, could not broadcast.

Finally, in the small hours of June 7 (2300, June 6 in New York), Murrow got what he wanted. It was a recording that had been made at daybreak just off the French coast, sent back to London by small boat. "I think you'll like this," Murrow told New York as he put it on. It was George Hicks of ABC, reporting from the
Ancon.
He described the array of ships, while in the background could be heard the exchanges between the German batteries and the Allied warships. That broadcast, cutting through the static and punctuated by the sounds of battle, became the most widely listened-to account of the D-Day landings.
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In Paris, the military governor, General Stulpnagel, issued a proclamation that was broadcast by French Radio: "German troops have been given orders to shoot any person who is seen to be cooperating with the Allied invasion forces, or who gives shelter to Allied soldiers, sailors, or airmen. Such Frenchmen will be treated as bandits."

Prime Minister Pierre Laval of the Vichy government broadcast a national appeal to his countrymen to ignore Eisenhower's call over BBC for resistance: "With sadness I read today of the orders given to Frenchmen by an American general. . . . The French government stands by the armistice of 1940 and appeals to Frenchmen to honor their country's signature. If you took part in the present fighting, France would be plunged into civil war."

Marshal Petain called on Frenchmen to stand with the Germans: "The Anglo-Saxons have set foot on our soil. France is becoming a battlefield. Frenchmen, do not attempt to commit any action which might bring terrible reprisals. Obey the orders of the government."
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Parisians listened and kept their own counsel. The country as a whole was quiet. Resisters went into action, of course, but most French people were not in the Resistance. In Normandy, and everywhere between Normandy and the German border, people were apprehensive about their village or farm or city becoming a battlefield. They could hardly be sure who was going to win; the Germans were there, among them, occupying their country, while the Allies were only a hope. They did the sensible thing, kept quiet and kept their thoughts to themselves.

In the smaller cities in the south of France, people were more open with their feelings. Anthony Brooks of SOE walked into Toulouse at dawn. He knew from the BBC broadcasts the hour had come and he was putting his operation into action. But only he and other Resisters knew that this was D-Day.

"So I walked into Toulouse through the market garden area and there were all these little one-story houses and these enormous great stretches with lettuces and onions and they were thinning them out, like a painting.

"Suddenly as I was walking past a house, just after sunrise, shutters were flung open and a little girl, I suppose eight years old, stark naked, shouted in the local jargon, 'They've landed!' and the liberation of Europe had begun."

Brooks went to a meeting in Toulouse, where "we lifted our glass for a very early morning drink, white wine, because we never really believed that we would see it. I mean liberation. I couldn't believe when I was parachuted into France in 1942 that I'd ever see D-Day."
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One famous American expatriate who was a French resident wrote down her feelings and her perception of the effect on the Germans. In 1940, Gertrude Stein had fled Paris when the Ger-

mans entered. "They all said, 'Leave,' " Stein wrote in 1945, "and I said to Alice Toklas, 'Well, I don't know—it would be awfully uncomfortable and I am fussy about my food.' "

But they went. Stein and Alice Toklas lived in the village of Belley at the corner made by Italy and Switzerland. Stein's attitude was, "Alice Toklas could listen to the wireless, but as for me I was going to cut box hedges and forget the war."

Of course she could not. On June 5, 1944, she wrote, "Tonight Rome is taken it is a pleasure and such a pleasure . . . and it has taken everybody's mind a little off their feelings about the [Allied] bombardments in France about the civilians killed. . . . But to-night Rome is taken and everybody has forgotten the bombardments, and for the French to forgive and forget and forget and forgive is very easy just as easy as that. Rome is taken and it is not the end but the beginning of the end."