D-Day: Every Man Was a Hero A Military Gamble that Shaped History

(9 of 13)
answered, "You don't think that my playing a little music is going to stop the invasion now, do you?"

By then, nothing was likely to do that. The Americans kept pouring in; by the end of July, more than 800,000 had landed. With them came an almost unimaginable flood of equipment. Each day the average G.I. used up to 30 Ibs. of food, ammo, gasoline and other supplies. More than 80,000 trucks and other vehicles landed in the first eleven days after Dday. Sixty million packs of K rations arrived in the first three weeks. Then came ice-cream machines, filing cabinets, blankets.

After the beaches had been secured on Dday, the first order of business was to organize a breakout. It had been an important part of Montgomery's strategy that British forces should thrust inland some 20 miles on D-day itself, well beyond Caen, a commercial crossroads. Partly out of caution, partly out of weariness, the vanguard of the British I Corps halted for the night about halfway there, some four miles north of the city. Compared with the victory on the beachhead, the failure to reach Caen that first day seemed a minor shortcoming. Montgomery even invited Churchill on June 10 to visit his forward headquarters in a lake-studded Norman chateau, and Churchill admired "the prosperity of the countryside ... full of lovely red and white cows basking or parading in the sunshine."

The conquest of Caen was considered essential for Allied armor to break out of the checkerboard hedgerows of Normandy and move on to the plains leading to Paris. But Montgomery's British forces could not manage to rout the two panzer divisions that had quickly established themselves on the outskirts of Caen. In the first week, the British tried a direct assault; toward the end of June, they tried two encircling attacks. Each time they failed. On the night of July 7, some 450 heavy bombers pounded Caen, and only then did the Germans begin to evacuate the rubble.

Montgomery's failure aroused severe criticism. "Montgomery went to great lengths explaining why the British had done nothing," General Patton wrote bitterly in his diary. There was talk of removing the temperamental Montgomery, and Churchill almost urged it. Other critics* have faulted not only Montgomery but some of his commanders and troops, who seemed to have become cautious, unimaginative, war-weary.

If so, it was painfully understandable, for the British alone had been fighting courageously against Hitler ever since the war began. While France collapsed and the Soviets stood as temporary allies of Germany, Churchill told his people that he had "nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat," and for five long years they had proudly pledged themselves to that offer.

On June 27, Major General J. Lawton Collins' VII Corps captured Cherbourg (after the besieged Germans had destroyed most of the port facilities), but the Americans remained just as penned in as the British. More than 1 million men now appeared stalemated on a front of no more than 100 miles, and while neither side could win a decisive advantage in the swampy and hedgerowed terrain, both suffered heavy losses. "We were stuck," said Corporal Bill Preston of the 743rd Tank Battalion. "Something dreadful seemed to have happened in terms of the overall plan."

It was Bradley, working away