The Hidden Places of World War II by Jerome M. O'Connor

Author:Jerome M. O'Connor [O’Connor, Jerome M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2018-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Ike with Adm. Sir Bertram Ramsay outside Southwick House on June 5. National Archives

Ike paced and paced on the blue carpet and polished wood floor. He heard everyone’s best guess, and that’s all they were, guesses, and it was now time to decide from within himself in the loneliest and most isolated place any commander ever occupied. Make the right call and the “great crusade” would begin. Get it wrong and history would judge its outcome. Victory or defeat, life or death; it came down to one man in a driving storm.

He stopped pacing to turn and say to anyone and everyone: “If you don’t give the instructions now, you cannot do it on Tuesday.” The finality of the declaration seemed to suspend itself somewhere above the center of the room. Tedder then spoke an aside to Leigh-Mallory, perhaps to change his mind: “If the later forecast shows a deterioration earlier (Tuesday night), putting on the night bombers at an earlier hour might be considered.” Ike, irritably: “The alternatives are too chancy; the question is, just how long can you hang this operation on the end of a limb and let it hang there. The air will certainly be handicapped.” Leigh-Mallory, still in doubt: “Hell of a situation; if German night bombers can operate and our night fighters cannot get off. At Dieppe . . .” Eisenhower then firmly interrupted: “If you don’t give the instructions now, you cannot do it on Tuesday.” Silence and the finality of it all persisted in the cigarette-blue air for what some said were minutes, but that Ike said were seconds.

At 2130 hours on June 4, the supreme commander made a tentative decision: “Well, I’m quite positive that we must give the order; the only question is whether we should meet again in the morning. I don’t like it, but there it is . . . I don’t see how we can possibly do anything else.” After viewing the weather charts again with Stagg, he would have a final decision early the next morning, June 5. Making the call so near the deadline wouldn’t have been his preference, but the ships could still be returned to port if the weather stayed gloomy.

An unexpected advantage to the delay was that it allowed still more of the lumbering tank landing ships (LST), derided by the GIs as Large Slow Targets, to be with the invasion fleet. Successfully deployed in North Africa in 1942, the revolutionary flat-keeled, long, narrow vessels could bump directly on the beach with twenty medium tanks, up to four hundred fully equipped soldiers, or twenty-one hundred tons of materiel. With a stern-mounted kedge anchor and windlass, it could even claw itself away from the clutching sand. They would prove their worth soon enough.

That night alone in his trailer, the commander-in-chief of the greatest invasion force the world would know considered the prospect of comprehensive failure. He had only nine divisions to land on D-Day. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt waited with

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