In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division tried to ease the concerns of Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had just given the go order for the D-Day landings after one last bout of wrangling with the allies.
Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, now was out on the wharves and at the airfields to meet with the soldiers, airmen and sailors he was sending into battle.
The 101st Airborne troops could sense the stress he was under, and several piped up along the lines of “Quit worrying, general. We’ll take care of this thing for you,” Eisenhower recalled in a 1964 CBS special report: “D-Day Plus 20 Years, Gen. Eisenhower Returns to Normandy.”
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CBS correspondent Walter Cronkite pressed Eisenhower on a report that he had tears in his eyes when he left the paratroopers. “Well, I don’t know about that,” Eisenhower said, but “it could’ve been possible.”
The hours before a major battle is joined “are the most terrible time for a senior commander,” he said. “You know the losses are going to be bad,” and “Goodness knows, those fellas meant a lot to me.”
Earlier on June 4, in the “war room” of Southwick House, a Victorian mansion near the Royal Navy base at Portsmouth, Eisenhower had settled the ongoing debate with allied commanders on when to launch the invasion.
Eisenhower said he had picked June 5 as the best date, but…
