Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(26)
When he arrived back in London to take charge of the enormous planning, D-day was set for May 1, 1944, a mere three and a half months away.
The Germans knew it was coming. There were fifty-eight German divisions in France, all that could be taken from the east for what Hitler had told his generals would be the decisive battle of the war. If the Allies were defeated, they would never invade again, he pledged—the losses and the blow to morale would be devastating. The Germans could then transfer their entire strength to the grinding eastern front “to revolutionize the situation there.” The waters off the French coast were dense with steel piles, stakes armed with mines, iron barriers. There were over four million land mines laid along the beaches, wire, concrete gun emplacements. At Dieppe, at Tarawa, these defenses had proved murderous.
To England, convoy after convoy had brought the heaviest of all things: armies, with their vehicles, tanks, mountains of munitions, guns. D-day had finally been set for the fifth of June. On that morning tides, moon, everything would be right. But not, as it turned out, the weather. At the last moment the initial eight-division assault had to be postponed, and the following day, with only an uncertain pause in the winds and storm and the immense force leaning forward, as it were, Ike turned it over in his mind, pondered on destiny, and said at last, “Okay, let ’er rip.”
He stood at an airfield in the darkness saluting each paratroop plane as it took off. In his pocket was a folded message on which he had scribbled a brief statement to be used in the event of disaster: the landings had failed and the troops, having done all that bravery and devotion could do, had been withdrawn. “If there is any blame or fault attached to the attempt, it is mine alone.” These were the words, as historian John Keegan says, of a great soldier and a great man.
In France, dogs were barking in the windy darkness. Beneath the low clouds and the usual steady sound of aircraft crossing, the Germans were asleep, expecting a quiet night, when, at about two in the morning, into the country behind the beaches twenty-four thousand armed men came floating down. It was the airborne overture. The ships came at dawn, appearing out of the mist in numbers so great they could not be counted.
On the American beaches alone there were eight thousand casualties. Utah was not too bad, but Omaha was a bloodbath. The outcome was in doubt there for half the day. By that night, however, 150,000 Allied troops had gotten ashore. “Their road will be long and hard,” Roosevelt broadcast to the nation that night, leading it in prayer. “Give us faith in Thee, faith in our sons, faith in each other . . .”
The campaign that began that day lasted for eleven months and became the greatest Allied victory of the war. Eisenhower held big cards and he played them correctly. His armies and his generals by that time were battle-hardened, but there was also considerable finesse. He deceived the Germans by keeping Patton, whom they feared, in England for a long time in command of a phantom army. When the battle of Normandy was over, Rommel was writing to his wife, “We’re finished . . .”—even if the German High Command did not admit it, even though the life and death struggle went on. The Allies had more materiel, better intelligence, and, above all, command of the air, but the Germans were incomparable soldiers and for them there was no way out. Generals committed suicide and men by the tens of thousands died along the road.
That December saw the last great German offensive of the war. Massed in absolute secrecy, under the cover of bad weather, three German armies fell on the four weak divisions that were stretched out to cover eighty-five miles of front in the Ardennes. It was an attack that Hitler personally had conceived and von Rundstedt commanded. Almost simultaneously the first V-2s began to fall on England.
It was just before Christmas. Ike had only that day received his fifth star and was celebrating by drinking champagne and playing bridge when the word came of what would become the Battle of the Bulge. At first neither he nor Bradley could believe what was happening, but soon the scope of the breakthrough became apparent. “Calamity,” Alan Brooke admitted, “acted on Eisenhower like a restorative and brought out all the greatness in his character.” There were black headlines in the newspapers and grave meetings, but Ike had come of age. He committed his strategic reserves to hold the critical area around Bastogne at all costs, which they did. At the end of a week the weather broke and fighter-bombers swarmed over the front. From this time on, Bradley noted, Montgomery or not, Ike ran the war.
On May 7, 1945, with Eisenhower refusing to see the German emissaries who had come to sign the surrender as he had refused to meet captured generals throughout the war, the road at last came to an end. The thrust into Europe, the crusade, as he called it, was over. There had been 586,628 American casualties during the campaign.
Perhaps he was not a great general. He was not a heroic one. He cannot be imagined crying to his troops, “Forty centuries look down upon you!” or “God for Harry! England and Saint George!” He was a new invention, the military manager, and the army was made over in his image. Those who think of him only as president, an old crock with a putter, fail to see the man as he really was. He was tough, resilient, wise. In a sense, the war used him up. For years he gave it every hour, every thought, every breath. It discovered him, and he is entombed in it, together with our greatest victory. The rest is epilogue.
He died on March 28, 1969, twenty-four years after the surrender. He was in Walter Reed Hospital, an invalid, ruined by heart attacks. His last words were, “I want to go. God take me.”