Read Online The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson - Free Book Online Page B

battle” and mentally composing black notes for what he called his “Frog File.” One British wit observed that a staple of De Gaulle’s diet had long been the hand that fed him. “Remember that there is not a scrap of generosity about this man,” the prime minister would write to his Foreign Office. Eisenhower in his diary lamented the “rather sorry mess.” He had hoped De Gaulle would shed his “Joan of Arc complex,” but now he told his staff, “To hell with him and if he doesn’t come through, we’ll deal with someone else.”
    At 9:30 P.M. , the supreme commander again repaired with his lieutenants to the library, where a fire crackled in the hearth and momentous news from Stagg brightened the day’s gloom. “There have been some rapid and unexpected developments,” the meteorologist reported. H.M.S. Hoste, a weather frigate cruising seven hundred miles west of Ireland, reported in secret dispatches that atmospheric surface pressure was rising steadily. The offending Atlantic depressions, including the lugubrious L5, had moved quicker than expected, suggesting that a brief spell of better weather would arrive the following day and last into Tuesday. “I am quite confident that a fair interval will follow tonight’s front,” Stagg added.
    Eisenhower polled his subordinates once more. Further postponement would likely delay the invasion for nearly two weeks, when the tides next aligned properly. Leigh-Mallory remained skeptical. Bombing would be “chancy,” and spotting for naval gunfire difficult. Ramsay reported “no misgivings at all.” The SHAEF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith, said, “It’s a helluva gamble, but it’s the best possible gamble.” Eisenhower turned to Montgomery, alert and lean in corduroy trousers and thick sweater.
    “Do you see any reason for not going Tuesday?”
    Montgomery answered instantly. “I would say go.”
    For a long minute the room fell silent but for rain lashing the French doors. Eisenhower stared vacantly, rubbing his head. “The question is, how long can you hang this operation on the end of a limb and let it hang there?” The tension seemed to drain from his face. “I’m quite positive we must give the order,” he said. “I don’t like it, but there it is. I don’t see how we can possibly do anything else.” They would reconvene before dawn on Monday, June 5, to hear Stagg’s latest forecast, but the order would stand. “Okay,” Eisenhower declared. “We’ll go.”
    Outside the library, he turned to Stagg and said with a broad smile, “Don’t bring any more bad news.”
    *   *   *
    Across the fleet majestical the war cry sounded: “Up anchor!” In the murky, fretful dawn, from every English harbor and estuary spilled the great effluent of liberation, from Salcombe and Poole, Dartmouth and Weymouth, in tangled wakes from the Thames past the Black Deep and the Whalebone Marshes, all converging on the white-capped Channel: nearly 200,000 seamen and merchant mariners crewing 59 convoys carrying 130,000 soldiers, 2,000 tanks, and 12,000 vehicles. “Ships were heaving in the gray waves,” wrote Alan Moorehead. Monday’s early light revealed cutters, corvettes, frigates, freighters, ferries, trawlers, tankers, subchasers; ships for channel-marking, for cable-laying, for smoke-making; ships for refrigerating, towing, victualing. From the Irish Sea the bombardment squadrons rounded Land’s End in pugnacious columns of cruisers, battleships, destroyers, and even some dreadnoughts given a second life, like the U.S.S. Nevada, raised and remade after Pearl Harbor, and the ancient monitor H.M.S. Erebus, built to shell German fortifications in the Great War with two 15-inch guns of dubious reliability. From the Erebus mast flew the signal Nelson had hoisted at Trafalgar: “England expects every man to do his duty.” The heavy cruiser U.S.S. Tuscaloosa replied, “We are full of ginger,” and swabs on