D-Day: IKE'S INVASION

IKE'S INVASION "Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. . ." -- FROM EISENHOWER'S ORDER OF THE DAY UPON THE INVASION OF NORMANDY, JUNE 6, 1944

Only the Supreme Commander could give the order to attack. The vast power of an Allied army 2.5 million strong lay coiled in England, ready to spring across the Channel into German-occupied France. Some of the more than 5,000 ships accompanied by an additional 4,000 small craft of the invasion armada had already put to sea. On that June morning in 1944, screaming winds rattled the windows of the British naval headquarters near Portsmouth, where the D-day commanders were meeting. The rain, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower later recalled, lashed down in "horizontal streaks." A Royal Air Force meteorologist, however, cautiously predicted clearing skies for the next day, June 6. Eisenhower conferred with the generals and admirals gathered around him. He thought for less than a minute, then stood up. "O.K.," he said, "let's go."

Eisenhower stayed behind, alone, as his commanders rushed out to transmit the order that commenced Operation Overlord, the invasion of Western Europe. His own duty was done for the day. He went down to a pier in Portsmouth to watch British soldiers board their landing craft. The biggest fleet in history -- 59 convoys strung over 100 miles, led by six battleships, 22 cruisers and 93 destroyers -- set sail toward the beaches of Normandy between 60 and 100 miles away.

The general drove to nearby Newbury to say farewell to some of the 23,000 Allied paratroopers who would take off before midnight to drop behind the Germans' beach defenses. Operation Overlord's British air commander, Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, had warned him repeatedly that the troopers might suffer casualties as high as 75%. Eisenhower chatted with men of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, wished them luck and shook hands with their commander, Brigadier General Maxwell Taylor. As their C-47 transports roared off toward France, the Supreme Commander, who had envisioned this moment for more than two years, stood with his staff on the roof of a headquarters building and saluted them. When he turned away, he had tears in his eyes.

Fifty years later, veterans of the Allied forces who defeated Nazi Germany are invading Normandy again to gaze at the beaches they stormed, walk the sunken roads they fought over, mourn at the military cemeteries, but most of all, celebrate their triumph. On the next big anniversary 10 years hence, most of these old soldiers -- and many of those who lived through the cataclysm of World War II -- will be gone.