The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

  Cometh the hour: D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 83; Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, 240–41; Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945, 231–32; Powers, “The Battle of Normandy,” JMH (July 1992): 455+ (skid-proof socks).

  “at peace with his soul”: Naval Guns, 19; CCA, 269 (June 5); Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 581 (“I consider it”); Miller, Ike the Soldier, 599–600 (“I have no sympathy”).

  A wiry, elfin figure: Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945, 231–32 (padded shoes); Chalmers, Full Cycle, 187; D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War, 595 (sharp rap); Liebling, Mollie & Other War Pieces, 128 (ruddy, truculent); PP, 411–12 (bespoke overcoat); CBH, June 1 and 2, 1944, box 4; Allen, Lucky Forward, 23 (“son-of-bitchery”); GSP to Beatrice, Feb. 3, 1944, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 11, folder 15 (“bad for the soul”).

  With a curt swish: Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 577–78 (salmon); Moorehead, Montgomery, 36 (“pointed flint”); http://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/page.aspx?id=8362; http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofstpaul00uoft; The Pauline, March 1946, 50–52; Montgomery, A Field-Marshal in the Family, 306–8 (prayers in Latin).

  Glancing at his notes: “Address on 15 May 1944: Brief Presentation of Plans Before the King,” IWM, PP/MCR, C46, Lt. Col. Christopher “Kit” Dawnay Collection, micro R-1.

  The Bay of the Seine: “Strategy of the Campaign in Western Europe, 1944–1945,” USFET General Board study no. 1, n.d., 6–8, 14; “The Planning and Tactical Background of the Invasion of the Continent of Europe,” n.d., Numa A Watson Collection, MHI; CCA, 72–73 (“strategically unsound”); ALH, I-183; WaS, 15 (“impudent reconnaissance”); George E. Creasy, OH, Feb. 4, 1947, FCP, MHI; Mason, ed., The Atlantic War Remembered, 345; www.msubmus.co.uk*.

  Upon returning from Italy: GS V, 283; CCA, 165; LSA, vol. 1, 185 (230 additional support ships); WaS, 8.

  As he unfolded his plan: Moorehead, Montgomery, 192–93; James, The Counterfeit General Montgomery, 53; Howarth, ed., Monty at Close Quarters, 62, 66 (“essentially didactic”); Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 591 (two thousand clerks).

  Montgomery pressed ahead: Hinsley, 439–40, 459–60; “Address on 15 May 1944: Brief Presentation of Plans Before the King,” IWM, PP/MCR, C46, Lt. Col. Christopher “Kit” Dawnay Collection, micro R-1 (“Last February”). The German high command in the west at the time of the invasion had forty-eight infantry and ten panzer divisions. Ludewig, Rückzug, 31–42.

  Some officers in SHAEF: ALH, I-201; WaS, 13 (one and one-third divisions).

  Montgomery envisioned: Cirillo, “The Allied High Command,” lecture to British Army Doctrine and Development Directorate, n.d., a.p.; Crosswell, Beetle, 607, 633; CCA, 188; GS V, 284 (Paris).

  Precisely how that titanic: ALH, II-73–87.

  But that lay: “History of COSSAC,” May 1944, file #95, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, 7; CCA, 10 (“ugly piece of water”); Smith, The English Channel, 12; Room, Placenames of the World, 6; www.jpmaps.co.uk/map/id.22553*; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Channel; Benjamin A. Dickson, “G-2 Journal: Algiers to the Elbe,” MHI, 104 (“already assaulted”); memo, Aug. 21, 1942, NARA RG 165, E 421, JPS studies, box 603 (tunneling).

  “Nothing must stop them”: “Address on 15 May 1944: Brief Presentation of Plans Before the King,” IWM, PP/MCR, C46, Lt. Col. Christopher “Kit” Dawnay Collection, micro R-1; Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, 351.

  None departed: “Instructions for Visitors,” SHAEF, May 4, 1944, NARA RG 331; PP, 456 (tumbler of whiskey); memo, W. H. S. Wright to Henry Stimson, July 25, 1944, NARA RG 337, E 54, AGF top secret general corr, folder 319.1 (“biding his time”); GSP to Bea, Apr. 9, 1944, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 11, folder 16.

  At 2:30: D’Este, Warlord, 665 (“Risks must be taken”); D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 87–88 (“I am hardening”); Thompson, The Imperial War Museum Book of Victory in Europe, 2 (most prodigious undertaking).

  Shortly after six P.M.: Thomas W. Mattingly and Olive F. G. Marsh, “A Compilation of the General Health Status of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Mattingly Collection, DDE Lib, n.d., box 1, 53; Three Years, 550 (ringing), 538–39 (“The strain is telling”).

  As the drear suburbs: Eisenhower in 1946 described Churchill’s statement as “shocking.” OH, DDE, June 3, 1946, SLAM, A. S. Nevins Papers, MHI. Churchill had used the phrase to George Marshall three months earlier. Reynolds, In Command of History, 395.

  “You will enter”: “History of SHAEF, Feb. 13–June 6, 1944,” July 1944, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 CB 8, 14–17. Technically, the naval portion of the invasion was code-named NEPTUNE; for simplicity, OVERLORD—code for the overall invasion plan—has been used for all facets of the operation. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, 338 (“feet in the stirrups”).

  For years he had pondered: Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 314–15, 324–25.

  Planners had even coined: Gilbert, D-Day, 28–29 (PINWE); Chandler, 1869 (“Film Planning Commission”); memos, SHAEF, Apr. 4 and 23, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 6, box 9, “leave and furlough,” 210.7-12 (CIRCON); Three Years, 526 (“fog dispeller”); Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 200 (gliders).

  For every PINWE item: Richard Collins, SOOHP, 1976, Donald Bowman, MHI, II, 14–15 (“what parts would burn”); memos, Apr. 27, May 12, 26, 27, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 1, “Liquidation of German Personalities,” box 1.

  As the invasion drew nearer: John W. Castles, Jr., memoir, ts, n.d., USMA Arch (biological warfare and Geiger counters); Chandler, 1860 (“radioactive poisons”); Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 199–202 (“unknown etiology”).

  Perhaps less far-fetched: memo, “Gas Intelligence,” Maj. Gen. P. G. Whitefoord [sic], Jan. 20, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 27, SHAEF, box 83; DOB, 272; Kleber and Birdsell, The Chemical Warfare Service, 5, 655 (two dozen kinds of gas).

  Fifteen hundred British civilians: “Historical Report of G-1 Section,” June 19, 1944, XIX District, NARA RG 407, E 427, pre-invasion planning file 100, box 19231; Brig. Gen. Alden H. Waitt, “Summary Report of Situation in ETO,” July 5, 1945, NARA RG 337, AGF OR, box 2 (160,000 tons); “Chemical Warfare Plan,” June 2, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 89 (secret SHAEF plan).

  “Everybody gets more”: Miller, Ike the Soldier, 588.

  Thirty minutes after leaving: Williams, “Supreme Headquarters for D-Day,” AB, no. 84 (1994): 1+; “Chief Engineer’s Report on Camouflage Activities in the ETO,” Nov. 15, 1945, Howard V. Canan Papers, HIA, box 3 (garnished nets).

  Here hundreds of staff officers: Three Years, 531 (“oldish”); Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945, 157 (double socks); Raymond H. Croll, ts, 1974, MHI, 240–55 (language classes).

  Eisenhower’s office: Summersby, Eisenhower Was My Boss, 129–32; Davis, Soldier of Democracy, 466; D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, 490 (golf ball).

  Vernal twilight lingered: Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945, 197; Eisenhower, Strictly Personal, 57 (bomb shelter); Chandler, 1852; Summersby, Eisenhower Was My Boss, 138, 162 (“Bad Woman”); Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 448 (“don’t have to think”).

  “A man must develop”: Miller, Ike the Soldier, 598; Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945, 213 (last troop reserves); “Notes on the Planning of Operation Overlord,” 21st AG, n.d., UK NA, WO 216/139, 29–30 (Double Intense); “Casualties and Effects of Fire Support on the British Beaches in Normandy,” Army Operational Research Group, Report No. 261, n.d., UK NA, CAB 106/967 (above 40 percent).

  Love’s Tables: “A Moving Army,” SOS, ts, n.d., NARA RG 498, UD 602, ETO HD; Cosmas and Cowdrey, Medical Service in the European Theater of Operations, 202 (12 percent); “The United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941–1945,” vol. 1, part 3, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, 1946, 719; Field Order No. 35, 1st ID, Apr. 16, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427, 301-3.9 (gas warfare); Naval Guns, 21 (“one-third to one-half”); “Report of Operations,” 12th AG, vol. 2, G-1 section, n.d., CARL (combat drownings); Casualty Division History, n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #4 (punch cards).

  Recent exercises and rehe
arsals: Thompson, The Imperial War Museum Book of Victory in Europe, 9 (“hopping about”); Waugh, Men at Arms, 140; “Comments on Exercise TIGER,” NARA RG 407, E 427, FUSA, n.d., file 455 (DUCK, OTTER); Yung, Gators of Neptune, 160 (“got confused”); “Rough Draft of Gen. Maxwell Taylor’s Report,” with jumpmaster reports, 101st AB Div, July 1, 1944, GCM Lib.

  The imaginary biffing turned: Lewis, Exercise Tiger, 20; Bradbeer, The Land Changed Its Face, 37–47; “A History of the United States Naval Bases in the United Kingdom,” 1944, NARA RG 498, HD, admin file #217; Fergusson, The Watery Maze, 324. All in ET: “Report of Enemy Navy Action,” Apr. 30, 1944, HQ, Sub Area V; “Exercise Tiger News Letter,” Jan. 1996; Arthur D. Clamp, “The American Assault Exercises at Slapton Sands, Devon, in 1944,” n.d., AR, Twelfth Fleet, May 3, 1944, including reports from LST-511, LST-496, LST-58, LST-499, LST-289, LST-531, LST-507, Task Force 125, H.M.S. Saladin; German E-boat logs; also, corr and transcripts. Also, “Notes on Utah Beach and the 1st Engineer Special Brigade,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #359a.

  Survivors on rafts: Lewis, Exercise Tiger, 104; L. R. Talbot, “Graves Registration in the European Theater of Operations,” 1955, chap. 26, PIR, MHI, II, 2–3 (embalmers); Joseph R. Darnall, “Powdered Eggs and Purple Hearts,” ts, 1946, MHUC, MHI, box 24, 90–91.

  Drowned men continued to wash ashore: The precise death toll remains uncertain. CCA, 270; John Connell, “Over Age in Grade,” ts, n.d., MHI; Ingersoll, Top Secret, 103–5; Hoyt, The Invasion Before Normandy, 155–61; MacDonald, “Slapton Sands: The ‘Cover-Up’ That Never Was,” Army 38, no. 6 (June 1988): 64+ (remained secret).

  Eisenhower grieved: CCA, 270 (LSTs); DDE to GCM, Apr. 29, 1944, GCM Lib, corr, box 67, folder 5.

  “the man who can do the average thing”: Eisenhower, General Ike, 219; AAAD, 286 (expected to be relieved); Chandler, 1898 (Hollywood); D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, 511 (“generous and lovable”); Chalmers, Full Cycle, 261 (“a very great man”); DOB, 310 (“best politician”).

  “When it comes to war”: D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 50n; Danchev, 546 (“No real director”); Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diairies, 111 (“They dislike to believe”).

  He needed sleep: Chandler, 1865, 1891, and vol. 5, chronology, 153; Williams, “Supreme Headquarters for D-Day,” AB, no. 84 (1994): 1+; “The U.S. Army Special Train Alive,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #16 (Monsters); Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890–1952, vol. 1, 294 (“the human soul”).

  By the tens of thousands: LSA, vol. 2, 231; Ross, 289 (four thousand in early 1942); Coakley, 370 (twenty now could be found); “An Army in Transit,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #241, 7–37 (more than 100,000).

  Down the gangplanks: Robert W. Coakley, “The Administrative and Logistical History of the ETO,” 1946, CMH, 8-3.1 AA2, vol. 3, 102–8; “Blankets,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #500; Amy, lecture, Apr. 8, 1944, NY Port of Embarkation, HIA, Henry J. Amy papers, box 2 (pillowcases).

  “You are something”: Randall Jarrell, “The Sick Nought,” 1914; Karl Cocke, “U.S. Army Replacement Policies, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam,” DA, 1990, MHI, chart (eleven thousand); Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 710 (average GI was twenty-six); Crosswell, Beetle, 789 (teenagers); “Activities and Organization of COMZ,” May 28, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #89, 57 (grade school education); “Army Life,” WD pamphlet 21-13, Aug. 10, 1944, NARA RG 407, AGO Cent File 1940–45, box 3638 ($50 a month).

  The typical soldier: Wiltse, ed., Physical Standards in World War II, 19–29, 37–42, 163, 193–94.

  But what of their souls?: Cawthon, “Pursuit: Normandy, 1944,” American Heritage (Feb. 1978): 80+ (“amateurs”); “Memorandum,” May 1944, NARA RG 330, E 94, Surveys of Attitudes of Soldiers, ETO, B-46 (April survey); corr, Charles L. Easter to Marion Page, Aug. 14, 1944, USMA Arch (“civilian at heart”).

  Skepticism and irony: Reynolds, Rich Relations, 324 (“Sums up my attitude”); Rottman, FUBAR: American Soldier Slang of World War II, 98, 152; Dickson, War Slang, 208; Richler, ed., Writers on World War II, 487 (“ambiguous farce”); Cawthon, Other Clay, 147 (“If it’s not ironic”); Yardley, “The Fight of Their Lives, and Not Just on the Battlefield,” WP, Mar. 6, 2009, C1 (“corrupt, inefficient”); Scannell, Argument of Kings, 122 (“madness”).

  “War is all foreground”: Reporting World War II, vol. 1, xxi; Simpson, Selected Prose, 120–21; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 400 (“quarrelsome continent”); Schrijvers, The Crash of Ruin, 258 (recent Army survey).

  Certainly they believed: Scannell, Argument of Kings, 112, 121 (“drab khaki world”); Steidl, Lost Battalions, 31 (“unseen powers of God”).

  And so four by four: “The Role Played by Communications Zone in the War Against Germany,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #479 (1,200 camps); VW, vol. 1, 34 (133 airfields); Eustis, War Letters of Morton Eustis to His Mother, 190 (“Thomas Hardy”); Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, 482 (“old steady manner”); Bernard Paget, OH, FCP, Feb. 18, 1947, MHI (Home Guard); “A Yank in Britain,” ts, n.d., Thor M. Smith Papers, MHI, 75 (road signs).

  Nearly 400,000 prefabricated huts: Botting, The Second Front, 66; “Construction in the United Kingdom,” Oct. 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #506 (20 million square feet); LSA, vol. 1, 255 (“Spamland”); “Marshalling [sic] for OVERLORD,” Dec. 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #547, 14 (School of Hygiene); Amy, lecture, Apr. 8, 1944, NY Port of Embarkation, HIA, Henry J. Amy papers, box 2; Robert W. Coakley, “The Administrative and Logistical History of the ETO,” 1946, CMH, 8-3.1 AA2, vol. 2, 189 (GLUE); H. H. Dunham, “U.S. Army Transportation in the ETO,” 1946, CMH 4-13.1 AA 29, 160–61 (“exposure to weather”); “A Yank in Britain,” ts, n.d., Thor M. Smith papers, MHI, 32 (red tape).

  No alliance in the war: “Britain,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #23 (“Redcoats”); Hastings, OVERLORD, 49; Wieviorka, Normandy, 111 (twice a month); Reynolds, Rich Relations, 298 (Goatland); Ross, 313 (shoe sizes); A Short Guide to Great Britain, 29; “Quartermaster Procurement in the United Kingdom, 1942–1944,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #154 (tent pegs); Thomas V. Barber, “Quartermaster Procurement,” n.d., chap 41, PIR, MHI, 4–5 (beer).

  The British displayed forbearance: Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex Library, MO, FR 2454, provided author by Prof. Donald L. Miller (“irritate me”); Meet the Americans, 1; Margaret Mead, “Army Talks: The Yank in Britain,” Mar. 15, 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #23; Reynolds, Rich Relations, ix (Orwell).

  Occasional bad beheavior: Schrijvers, The Crash of Ruin, 159 (royal swans); Francis L. Sampson, Look Out Below!, 1958, in CJR, box 97, folder 21 (grenades); Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 709 (haystacks); “Army Life,” WD, pamphlet 21-13, Aug. 10, 1944, NARA RG 407, AGO Cent File 1940–45, box 3638 (“men who refrain”); “Legal Questions Arising in the Theater of Operations,” NARA RG 407, E 427, AG WWII Operations Reports, no. 87, 31–32 (“bastardy proceedings”); Longmate, The G.I.’s, 285 (“drive carefully”).

  Both on the battlefield and in the rear: Lewis, Exercise Tiger, 48 (“delicate hothouse”); Hastings, OVERLORD, 293 (“the chaps that mattered”).

  The loading of invasion vessels: Bykofsky and Larson, The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas, 259; ONB, OH, 1975, Charles Hanson, MHI, IV-19 (Seven thousand kinds of combat necessities). This oral history with Bradley, conducted in fourteen sessions over ten months, had been closed to the public until made available to the author in January 2010.

  evocative of the Marx Brothers: Van Creveld, Supplying War, 210; William E. Depuy, SOOHP, 1979; Romie L. Brownlee and William J. Mullen III, MHI, 18 (Selfridges); Marshall, ed., Proud Americans, 138.

  In twenty-two British ports: Gilbert, D-Day, 108; H. H. Dunham, “U.S. Army Transportation in the ETO,” 1946, CMH, 4-13.1 AA 29, 120–23 (301,000 vehicles); “Ordnance Diary,” Dec. 1, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETOUSA HD, UD 602, box 1 (2,700 artillery pieces); “Historical Report, Office of the Chief Sign
al Officers,” vol. 1, Jan. 1945, NARA RG 498, ETOUSA HD, UD 602, box 1 (telephone poles); Waddell, United States Army Logistics, 41 (7 million tons); Frank A. Osmanski, “Critical Analysis of the Planning and Execution of the Logistic Support of the Normandy Invasion,” Dec. 1949, Armed Forces Staff College, MHI, 99 (41.298 pounds); LSA, vol. 1, 441 (500-ton bales); “Ports: How an Army Is Supplied,” Oct. 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #521, 1-3 (war flats); “The Reminiscences of Alan Goodrich Kirk,” 1962, John Mason, Col U OHRO, 302 (ferries); Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, 136.

  Armed guards from ten cartography depots: “Supply and Maintenance on the European Continent,” NARA RG 407, E 427, AG WWII Operations Reports, 97-USF5-0.3, #130, 26; Beck, 565 (210 million maps); IFG, 68 (charts); Wieviorka, Normandy, 178 (aerial photos); “Reconnaissance in a Tactical Air Command,” 10th Photo Group, Ninth AF, 1945, CARL, N-9395, 3–4; Allen, “Untold Stories of D-Day,” National Geographic (June 2002): 2+ (watercolors); Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs, 864–65 (“restraint and discipline”); Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 224 (Gone with the Wind); Field Order No. 35, 1st ID, Apr. 16, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427, 301-3.9 (Field Order No. 35); memo, XXX Corps, May 18, 1944, NARA RG 407, ML #753, box 19123 (Pink List).

  Day after night after day: Leppert, “Communication Plans and Lessons, Europe and Africa,” lecture, Oct. 30, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 199, L-7-44, 14 (radio crystals); Field Order No. 35, 1st ID, Apr. 16, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427, 301-3.9; Perret, There’s a War to Be Won, 475 (“marksmanship medal”); Beck, 308 (“Hagensen packs”); “The Administrative History of the Operations of the 21 Army Group,” Nov. 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 458, GB 21-AG AH, 29 (metal crosses); Ross, 683 (mattress covers).

  Four hospital ships made ready: Martha Gellhorn, “The First Hospital Ship,” in Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 151; Dowling, lecture, Feb. 28, 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 207; Cosmas and Cowdrey, Medical Service in the European Theater of Operations, 167, 245 (“dirty trap”); Frank Davis, OH, Nov. 24, 1944, 68th General Hospital, NARA RG 112, E 302, interview #109 (steam tables); Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, 413; MacKensie, Men Without Guns, 97; Nalty, Strength for the Fight, 181 (black and white donors); Robert R. Kelley, OH, Jan. 27, 1945, Office of the Chief Surgeon, NARA RG 112, E 302, interview #130; Paul R. Hawley, OH, John Boyd Coates, Jr., et al., 1962, MHUC, 56 (pallets).