The Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Eisenhower planned to go to his advance headquarters at Portsmouth on June 1. Just before he left, Ramsay, who was already there, telephoned. Ramsay said that the Prime Minister insisted that he go along on the invasion, and Ramsay wanted Eisenhower to stop him. Eisenhower talked to Churchill, but with no luck. The Supreme Commander complained that if the ship Churchill was on got hit, four or five ships would drop out of line to help it, whereas if the Prime Minister were not on board the battle would go on while the ship would look after itself as best it could. The argument made no impression. Eisenhower then said that Churchill’s presence would add to his worries. To this he got no response either. Finally Eisenhower simply became firm and said that as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force he was ordering Churchill not to go.

  The Prime Minister replied that, whereas Eisenhower was indeed the sole commander of the operation, he had no administrative control over the forces of His Majesty’s Government. “This being true,” he continued, “by shipping myself as a bona fide member of a ship’s complement it would be beyond your authority to prevent my going.” Eisenhower admitted defeat, but then help came along. The King, learning of the Prime Minister’s intention, said that if Churchill went he too would ship on at the head of his troops and participate in the invasion. The Prime Minister then backed down.44

  After Eisenhower arrived at Portsmouth he tried to concentrate on the weather, but there were other problems he could not avoid, the chief one being Charles de Gaulle. Favorable weather helped the Supreme Commander remain cheerful. On the morning of June 3 he listened to the weather report, which was good. Sea conditions were acceptable, and although from the air force viewpoint the forecasts were poor, “we have almost an even chance of having pretty fair conditions.” Eisenhower reported to Marshall that only a marked deterioration would disarrange the plans.45

  After sending off the report, Eisenhower went into his tent and, as he had done on the eve of TORCH, dictated a memorandum for the diary. It gave him a chance to occupy his time and allowed him to put his worries into perspective. At the top of his list was De Gaulle, and he dictated three paragraphs on the difficulties of dealing with the French. Next came weather: “The weather in this country is practically unpredictable,” he complained. If it turned worse, he knew he would be advised by at least some of his associates to call off the invasion and wait for better conditions. This might mean a delay of some weeks. “Probably no one that does not have to bear the specific and direct responsibility of making the final decision as to what to do,” he declared, “can understand the intensity of these burdens. The Supreme Commander, much more than any of his subordinates, is kept informed of the political issues involved, particularly the anticipated effect of delay upon the Russians.” Only the Supreme Commander could sort out conflicting weather reports and decide on which one to act. Only he could make the kind of judgment involved if, for example, the weather were suitable for all other plans, but unsuitable for the airborne operation. In that case should he risk the airborne movement anyway, or defer the whole operation in hopes of getting better weather?

  He discussed his worries over the German defenses. The mines would have to be swept away, the underwater obstacles removed. The combination of the two created a serious problem, “but we believe we have it whipped.” Turning to the Transportation Plan, Eisenhower wondered how effective it had been. Would the Germans be able to rush reinforcements to Normandy? Weather made a difference here, too, for the Transportation Plan would continue after D-Day, with the bombers trying to disrupt German movements. Good weather would greatly facilitate their task.

  Eisenhower, Butcher once noted, was always racing ahead in his thoughts, for it was in the nature of his job to look ahead, to anticipate, in a sense to operate in the future. He discounted success before it happened and worried about what was going to happen. Sitting in his tent in Portsmouth on the morning of June 3, with the greatest sea armada in the world’s history around him waiting for his word, for the decision that would make both OVERLORD and himself either monumental successes or tragic failures, Eisenhower’s thoughts turned to the future organization of the Allied armies in Europe. Once the Allies were established and moving out of their Normandy beachhead, he planned to bring in dozens of additional American and British divisions. Montgomery could not handle them all, so Eisenhower intended to make Bradley an army group commander, co-equal with Montgomery, and have himself take control of the land battle, with both Bradley and Montgomery taking their orders from him.

  But that was weeks, maybe even months in the future. Outside Eisenhower’s tent the wind was coming up and the sky darkening. He would soon have to make the final decision. “My tentative thought,” he recorded before going to meet with the weather men again, “is that the desirability for getting started on the next favorable tide is so great and the uncertainty of the weather is such that we could never anticipate really perfect weather coincident with proper tidal conditions, that we must go unless there is a real and very serious deterioration in the weather.”46

  * Years later, in looking over the diary entry, Brooke commented that he would repeat every word of it. Eisenhower was “a past-master in the handling of allies,” he said, “entirely impartial and consequently trusted by all. A charming personality and good co-ordinator. But no real commander.” Brooke thought it fortunate that Eisenhower had Smith to help him. Sir Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West (New York, 1959), p. 139.

  Part II

  THE INVASION

  [June 1944–September 1944]

  CERTAINLY it seems that the supreme direction of an Army (and the direction of every whole) must be greatly facilitated if there are only three or four subordinates to command, but the Commander-in-Chief must pay dearly for this convenience in a twofold manner. In the first place, an order loses in rapidity, force, and exactness if the gradation ladder down which it has to descend is long, and this must be the case if there are Corps-Commanders between the Division Leaders and the Chief; secondly, the Chief loses generally in his own proper power and efficiency the wider the spheres of action of his immediate subordinates become. A General commanding 100,000 men in eight Divisions exercises a power which is greater in intensity than if the 100,000 men were divided into only three Corps.… But on the other hand the number of parts must not be too great, otherwise disorder will ensue.… [Thus],

  1. If a whole has too few members it is unwieldy.

  2. If the parts of a whole body are too large, the power of the superior will is thereby weakened.

  Clausewitz, On War,

  Book 5, Chapter V

  CHAPTER 6

  The Sixth of June

  Everything that could be done had been done. The Supreme Commander, SHAEF, 21st Army Group, the Allied armies, navies, air forces, and governments of the United States and United Kingdom had made every effort to insure that the men who crossed the Channel would have the greatest chance of success at as low a cost and risk as possible.

  In mid-May Eisenhower had ordered a concentration of the assault force near the invasion ports in southern England. The enormous heaps of supplies that had been gathered and stored throughout the United Kingdom then began the final move, carried by unending convoys to the south. The supplies quickly filled all available warehouses; the overflow was stored alongside roads in carefully camouflaged positions. Hundreds of thousands of men meanwhile traveled to tented areas in the fields of Cornwall, Devon, and the southern counties, where they waited for their transfer to the landing craft floating in nearby coves and inlets. The craft, when loaded, would add to the great concentrations of ships at Portland, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, and the Isle of Wight.1

  Simple housekeeping for the invasion forces required 54,000 men. Just to cook their meals, more than 4500 new cooks had been trained since January. More than 3800 trucks and drivers were needed to haul their supplies. They were completely sealed off from the rest of the world, with barbed-wire fences stretching around their c
amps, keeping all the troops in and all non-authorized personnel out. Some 2000 Counter Intelligence Corps men guarded the area.2 Camouflage was everywhere, for this was the most tempting and profitable military target in the world, and the German Air Force, though weak, was still capable of launching damaging raids. In addition, the Allies knew that the Germans were almost ready to make their V-weapons operational. Fortunately, with one minor exception the Germans missed their chance to hit the gathering invasion force.

  Within the encampments, the men received their final briefings. They pored over foam rubber models of the beaches and detailed maps and charts of their landing areas, examined photographs of fortifications and obstacles, and in units as small as platoons and squads studied their particular assignments. Each man was told of his responsibility and his relation to other men in his platoon and the units on his flanks. He became familiar with landmarks, exits from the beach, probable locations of mine fields and machine gun nests. He was assured of overwhelming naval and air support. In the end, he was given the over-all picture, the target date of the attack and the broad outline of what SHAEF intended to do.

  By the end of May all was ready. The men had invasion money, gas masks (there was a last-minute scare that the Germans would use gas), vomit bags for the voyage across the Channel, cigarettes, toothbrushes, extra socks and food rations, and, most of all, additional rounds of ammunition. There was a brisk business in French phrase books.3 Some 800,000 pints of plasma, 600,000 doses of penicillin, 100,000 pounds of sulfa, and other medical supplies were loaded onto fifteen hospital ships, with 8000 doctors ready to help the wounded.4 By the first days of June, as loading began, there was almost unbearable tension. This was it. Everything that had gone before—TORCH, Sicily, Salerno—seemed unimportant, even insignificant. The Allies were about to come to grips with the Wehrmacht on the Continent.

  Eisenhower’s men were set to go, living on the edge of fearful anticipation. “The mighty host,” in Eisenhower’s words, “was tense as a coiled spring,” ready for “the moment when its energy should be released and it would vault the English Channel.…”5

  SHAEF had prepared for everything except the weather. It now became an obsession. It was the one thing for which no one could plan, and the one thing that no one could control. In the end, the most completely planned military operation in history was dependent on the caprice of winds and waves. Tides and moon conditions were predictable long in advance, but storms were not. From the beginning everyone had counted on at least acceptable weather. There had been no contingency planning, no preparation made to put the assault force ashore somewhere else if it was impossible to land at Normandy. No one even knew whether it would be possible to stop the forward motion of the invasion force once it started. If it were, and if it became necessary to call a halt because of adverse weather, the effects would be horrendous. Certainly there was at least one spy in all the thousands of troops who had been briefed, and clearly he would find a way to get word to Germany before mid-June, when tidal conditions would permit the invasion to go again.

  The troops had been so totally primed to go during the first week of June that canceling the invasion at the last minute would have destroyed their morale. Living in suspended animation for two weeks, waiting for the next usable tide, deflated, unable to communicate with the outside world, the troops would become—at the least—tense and irritable. June 19 was not a good time to go anyway, not only because it would cost two weeks in the decent campaigning season in France but because there would be no moon to facilitate the air drop. Waiting would give the Germans more time to get the V-weapons into operation and more time to spot the concentration of troops in the south of England.

  But if the Supreme Commander held to a rigid timetable and proceeded, ignoring the weather, the invasion might fail. Wind-tossed landing craft could flounder before reaching the shore, or the waves might throw them up on the beaches, making them easy targets for the German defenders. Seasick troops would not be able to fight effectively. The Allies would not be able to use their air superiority to cover the beaches. If OVERLORD failed, it would take months to plan and mount another operation, too late for 1944.

  On Saturday, June 3, Eisenhower cabled Marshall to say he thought everything would go on schedule. He then talked with Churchill and De Gaulle, who still refused to broadcast to the French people. The British Prime Minister, accompanied by his old friend Field Marshal Smuts, was traveling all over the invasion encampment. He hoped to see troops loading, but kept arriving at sites a little too late or too early and had had no luck. He finally decided to go to the tented area that was SHAEF’s advance command post and talk to Eisenhower. He had come down from London on a special train and had been met by a caravan of cars and a motorcycle escort, which he used for his touring. The entourage roared into Eisenhower’s camp, filled its gas tanks, and had a drink or two. Churchill made one last unsuccessful plea to be allowed to go along on the invasion, then roared off again.6

  That evening Eisenhower drove from his command post to Southwick House, Admiral Ramsay’s headquarters north of Portsmouth. There he met in the mess room with his commanders and Group Captain Stagg. The weather man had bad news. The high pressure system that had prevailed over England the past few weeks, bringing perfect weather with it, was moving out, and a low was coming in. The weather on June 5 would be overcast and stormy, with a cloud base of five hundred feet to zero and Force 5 winds. Worse, the situation was deteriorating so rapidly that forecasting more than twenty-four hours in advance was highly undependable. It was too early to make a final decision, but word had to go out to the American Navy carrying Bradley’s troops to Omaha and Utah beaches, since they had the farthest to travel. Eisenhower decided to let them start the voyage, subject to a possible last-minute cancellation. He would make the final decision at the regular weather conference the next morning.7

  At 4:30 A.M. on Sunday, June 4, Eisenhower, who had had a poor night’s sleep, met with his associates at Southwick House. Stagg said sea conditions would be slightly better than anticipated, but the overcast would not permit the use of the air force. The meteorologists added that the sea conditions, although improved, would still render naval gunfire support inefficient and might interfere with the handling of small boats. To Tedder’s amazement, Montgomery said he wanted to go ahead anyway. Tedder and Leigh-Mallory wanted a postponement. Ramsay said the navy could do its part of the job but remained neutral when asked whether or not the whole operation should go. Eisenhower remarked that OVERLORD was being launched with ground forces that were not overwhelmingly powerful. The operation was feasible only because of the Allied air superiority. If he could not have that advantage, the landings were too risky. He asked if anyone present disagreed, and when no one did he declared for a twenty-four-hour postponement.8 The word went out to the American fleet by prearranged signal. Displaying superb seamanship, the fleet drove through the incoming storm, regained its ports, refueled, and prepared to sail again the next day.

  That evening, June 4, Eisenhower ate at Southwick House. After dinner he moved into the mess room. Montgomery, Tedder, Smith, Ramsay, Leigh-Mallory, and various high-ranking staff officers were already there. The wind and the rain rattled the windowframes in staccato sounds. The mess room was large, with a heavy table at one end and easy chairs at the other. Three sides of the room were lined with bookcases, most of which were empty and forlorn. The officers lounged in easy chairs. Coffee was served and there was desultory conversation. Stagg came in about nine-thirty with the weather report. Eisenhower called his associates to order and they all sat up to listen intently.9

  Stagg reported a break. The rain that was then pouring down would stop in two or three hours, to be followed by thirty-six hours of more or less clear weather. Winds would moderate. The bombers and fighters ought to be able to operate on Monday night, June 5–6, although they would be hampered by clouds. Leigh-Mallory remarked that it seemed to be only a moderately good night for air power. The heavy bom
bers would have great difficulty in getting their markers down and doing anything useful. Tedder, his pipe clenched between his teeth and forcibly blowing out smoke, agreed that the operations of heavies and mediums were going to be “chancy.” Eisenhower countered by pointing out that the Allies could call on their large force of fighter-bombers.

  The temptation to postpone again and meet the following morning for another conference was strong and growing, but Ramsay put a stop to that idea by pointing out that Admiral Alan G. Kirk, commanding the American task force, “must be told within the next half hour if ‘Overlord’ is to take place on Tuesday [June 6]. If he is told it is on, and his forces sail and are then recalled, they will not be ready again for Wednesday morning. Therefore, a further postponement would be for forty-eight hours.”10 A two-day delay would put everything back to June 8, and by that time the tidal conditions would not be right, so in fact postponement now meant postponement until June 19.

  Still Eisenhower did not want to make the decision. He listened intently as someone asked Stagg, “What will the weather be on D-Day in the Channel and over the French coast?” Stagg hesitated for two dramatic minutes and finally said, “To answer that question would make me a guesser, not a meteorologist.”11