The Steel Wave (42 page)

It had stayed in his pocket all day, memorized, recited to himself a half dozen times. But it hadn’t been read aloud. So far, it wasn’t necessary.

The air was cold, and he looked up, a glimpse of moonlight through thick clouds, the weather still holding, a stiff breeze drifting past. It was the only error the weathermen had made, the prediction that the wind would die down. But the rest? He thought of Captain Stagg, the man’s edgy confidence.
Guesswork.
All right, Captain, good job. All of you. He was blinking through wetness now, but it was not emotion, just pure rugged exhaustion, his eyes battered by the breeze, losing focus. He turned toward the tents. Better try to get some damned sleep, he thought.
Try.
It can’t be as bad as last night.

The night before, with the paratroopers in their planes and the landing craft in motion toward the beaches, Eisenhower had tried to take advantage of those agonizing hours before any news could come in, before reports could be made by anyone whose feet were actually on French soil. But there had been no real sleep for him, just exhausted fitfulness, thunderous doubts rolling through him, horrible scenarios, every possible failure, questioning the wisdom and the certain cost of sending so many men into such an uncertain place. The doubts had rolled through his head in the voices of Churchill and Brooke and of the myriad staff officers whose torturous griping and petty jockeying for position had so often undermined this gargantuan undertaking.

Eisenhower had rolled in his cot, sweating and furious, fantasizing what he should have said to them, hard curses in the faces of those men he would never dare to blister outside his imagination. Through all the angry sleeplessness, he worked to turn his mind toward the positive, seeing the faces of the well-wishers and optimists, the men whose planning had been so meticulous. It can’t
all
go wrong, he thought. And God knows it can’t all go according to plan. No one expects every detail to unfold exactly as the maps predict. Except Montgomery, of course.

Eisenhower had kept the man’s image in his mind, cheery with confidence, stern and condescending. With the interminable darkness still engulfing his tent, Eisenhower continued to ask himself the same question, silently repeating the words: Is all that confidence justified? Is Monty right and all of this will work? Is
he
sleeping right now?

And then, while it was still dark, the first call had come in, intercepted by Harry Butcher, who would generously believe his boss was fast asleep. Butcher had written down the details with breathless relief and could not wait for the waking hour to deliver the message, so it came to Eisenhower in soft morning darkness, Butcher creeping stealthily toward the tent, expecting snoring. But Eisenhower was up, sitting on his cot smoking a cigarette when Butcher came. Every possible disaster had boiled up inside of him when he saw Butcher’s shadow, but then he had seen the man’s smile. The caller had been Leigh-Mallory, and Eisenhower immediately understood why. Leigh-Mallory had been the greatest naysayer of them all, but as air commander he had received the first reports from the paratroopers in both armies, reports that might have confirmed his deadly pessimism. But the losses were not nearly as awful as he had predicted, barely thirty C-47s missing out of the thirteen hundred that had gone across. It was a staggering piece of good news, offered by a man who showed genuine graciousness in admitting he had been wrong. The word from the paratroopers and glider crews themselves had been slow in coming, but word did come, and despite the predictable chaos of a large-scale night jump, the British in particular were actively engaged around their designated drop zones. Word had been more sporadic from the American zones, nothing yet from Ridgway, brief reports from Maxwell Taylor. Leigh-Mallory had relayed more news as well, better news. There had been virtually no sign of German fighter planes, except in the one area with the name Eisenhower had desperately wanted to hear: Calais.

When word came from the beaches as well, Eisenhower knew by daylight that the landings had succeeded. The winds had been vicious, many landing craft lost, the technological wonders of amphibious tanks and trucks faring poorly as a result of the high surf. But the men had pushed ashore to minimal opposition, the beachheads spreading even now. Except for Omaha. There had been very little word from Bradley for agonizing hours, Bradley himself staring through binoculars at the horrific carnage that had engulfed the men of the Twenty-ninth and First divisions. Throughout the day, as successive waves of landing craft brought added troop strength to reinforce all the beaches, Omaha had suffered a catastrophic traffic jam. Because the first men ashore had been unable to push inland, they had blocked the way for the others coming in behind them. By midmorning, thirty-four thousand men had fought their way ashore on Omaha Beach, only to huddle in whatever cover the beach could offer them, many protected only by the disastrous waves of human and steel debris that clogged the shoreline.

Eisenhower shivered in the cold, started to move, then stopped and looked east, into the blackness. I will find out about that, he thought. That’s the first place I will go. First thing in the morning. Bradley will know what the hell happened there, and Bradley will straighten it out. But I have to see for myself.

He didn’t know numbers yet; it was too soon to tally the casualties. But it’s bad, he thought. And it could have been just as bad at every beach. But it wasn’t. They didn’t know we were coming…that’s the only answer. But why not? Was it as simple as our bombing their weather stations? Would they even be looking at their weather reports? He shook his head and rubbed a hand across his forehead. It would seem not. We prepared to meet their warships, and there were none to meet. We sent fighters to hold off the Luftwaffe, and the Luftwaffe didn’t come. There was no sign that they were expecting us at all, except maybe at Calais. The intelligence worked. The deception…my God, it might still be working. What other explanation is there? They are not fools over there. That’s Rommel, after all. But their planes were patrolling
Calais.
Even if Rommel knew we were coming, he most definitely did not know where. I’ll be damned.

He turned toward the tents again, dim shapes moving in the darkness, the staff hard at work, gathering information, monitoring radios and wireless sets, passing messages through, some to London and Washington, others to ships that stayed close to the beaches. Eisenhower had sent his own message to Marshall that morning, as much information as he could offer.

Then the public broadcast had come, carefully worded, relayed through the BBC.

A landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force…. The hour of your liberation is approaching.

Broadcast messages had followed from various European heads of state, the king of Norway, the premiers of the Netherlands and Belgium. The one missing voice had been French. Charles de Gaulle had refused to have the timing of his own message dictated by Eisenhower or anyone else, so he had waited until six that evening before making his own pronouncement. Despite every effort to discourage him from inciting a nationwide riot in the ranks of the Resistance, de Gaulle had done exactly that, issuing an all-out call to arms that burned through Eisenhower. SHAEF still had hopes that, through its many contacts across France, the Maquis could be encouraged to lay low until the invasion had secured a viable foothold. Voices of reason might still prevent underground fighters from revealing themselves so that the enraged Germans would not begin a campaign to massacre Frenchmen. But de Gaulle seemed intent on defying all reason, ordering his people to obey only those commands of what he called the French government, virtually ignoring the fact that the invasion was an Allied affair. As a final straw, de Gaulle intimated that the Normandy invasion was the genuine article, the single thrust. Despite agonizing efforts by Eisenhower’s staff and British government ministers to convince de Gaulle to go along with the Calais deception, de Gaulle’s message made no mention of Calais at all. To any German intelligence agents who were charged with monitoring de Gaulle’s statements, the conclusion had to be that Normandy was in fact the sole operation, what de Gaulle described as “the supreme battle.”

Eisenhower reacted to de Gaulle’s statement with as much self-control as he could muster, but he pulsed with anger at the thought of the man’s moronic bluster. How many Frenchmen will die, he thought, because of that puffed-up idiot? How many of
us
? But we can say nothing at all, cannot contradict him. There can be no public comment to the French people implying that the Allies and SHAEF don’t support French national interests. But de Gaulle’s interests aren’t French, they’re de Gaulle himself. He has put himself squarely at the top of the French government, when no one has either elected or appointed him to the role. He’s wrapped himself in the tricolor, a one-man French flag. No, we missed our chance, he thought. I should have included him in the operation in a far more meaningful way. We could have launched him out of a landing craft, a one-man army. Who needs fighting divisions when we have de Gaulle?

As the day had worn on, encouraging details continued to roll in, and one surprise visitor provided a remarkable contrast to the annoyance of Charles de Gaulle. This visitor was General Frederick Morgan. Morgan had been the engineer and architect behind the original planning for Overlord, and now he was simply a bystander, the plan growing like a child from Morgan’s cradle to full adulthood. But there was no bluster in this man, just a humble need to know anything Eisenhower was willing to tell him, and Eisenhower understood the magnitude of the man’s humility. If the plan had not worked, Morgan could easily have been the goat, the accomplishments of his long career crushed by the weight of the failure. But with encouraging reports from the beaches, Morgan had gone away with only a display of quiet satisfaction, leaving Eisenhower with a few encouraging words.

While it had once been Morgan’s plan, it had been Eisenhower’s to carry out. More Morgans, fewer de Gaulles, he thought. But it would never be that way. And these men will not become easier to command now that this operation is in full gear. Montgomery, Bradley…just do your job. It’s all still on paper, and so far what was drawn on paper seems to be working. But paper is never enough. Men died today, taking those beaches, and men are dying tonight trying to hold them. Never forget that. There is no victory here, not yet. I will see them both in the morning, and you can damned well bet Monty will be strutting like a bantam rooster. But dammit, this is just the beginning. We’re ashore for now. He couldn’t shake the name: Rommel. What are
you
doing right now? You have too much power and too many good people not to respond. It could still be a bloody awful mess, more than Omaha Beach. What about the paratroopers? We need to hear from Ridgway, anything, some word. Is he alive? Have they accomplished any of their objectives?

Eisenhower moved closer to his tent, his boots muffled by the cinders spread thickly on the path. The note was stiff in his shirt pocket, and he fingered it again:
I have withdrawn the troops….
God help me. If I have to tell that to our people back home…well, I might as well not go home at all.

He was at the tent now, leaned inside, the speck of light from a small gas lamp, mostly covered, no light reaching the roof of the tent. The blanket was flattened neatly on the cot, his extra boots standing straight in one corner. He moved toward the small dressing table and reached for the porcelain pitcher, heavy with water. Thank you, whichever one of you did this. You coddle me too much. He drank from a tin cup, heard muffled voices outside, the work ongoing, men who would be working all night long. I have to know, he thought. I have to get out there and talk to people and see for myself. But there’s nothing I can do now, and, dammit, I need some sleep.

He took off his jacket, always aware of the note in his shirt pocket, the awful message. He felt for it, pulled it out, and, held it up in the faint glow, folded neatly. So much at stake, he thought. This has been the first day of something that will possibly win us this war. Or lose it. So…what do I do with this? He looked toward the small wastebasket. No, not yet.

He put the note back in his pocket, moved to the cot, and sat and unlaced his boots. The tent shook above him, the wind picking up, the tent flaps snapping, canvas rustling, the darkness around him alive with hard whispers.

26. ADAMS

LA FIÈREBRIDGE
JUNE 7, 1944

T
he glider landings had been a nightmarish blend of relief and catastrophe. The tight checkerboard pattern of the hedgerow country created fields that were mostly too small for landing even the smaller Waco gliders. Many of them avoided enemy fire only to plunge nose-first into the hedgerows themselves, shattering crashes that destroyed the aircraft and, often, everything and everyone inside. Throughout the night, many of the paratroopers had served as rescue squads for gliders impacting in fields close by, the night ripped by the awful cries of the injured. The enemy contributed their own nightmare, more than just Rommel’s asparagus. Scattered German machine gunners were drawn to the sounds of the crashes, setting impromptu ambushes for paratroopers who did what they could to help. Even those gliders that were able to come down without killing their crews often spilled their cargo across wide-open ground, men and equipment set upon by both sides, small firefights that shattered the darkness with deadly confusion. No one knew how many of the 175 gliders had survived complete destruction from their landings, but some men did emerge unscathed, magnificent reinforcements, and with them came crates of ammunition, rations, and radios. Even Gavin received an unexpected bonus, a glider coming down close to his command post that brought an intact jeep. Better still, the heavier gliders brought a handful of 57mm antitank guns and, near Sainte-Mère-Église, at least three snub-nosed 105mm howitzers. As the antitank guns were brought forward at La Fière Bridge, the paratroopers understood, if the Germans came again, that this time it might be a fair fight.