Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  61. Symonds, Neptune, p. 172; Finnegan, “General Eisenhower's Battle,” pp. 3–5; Tedder, With Prejudice, pp. 210–45; D'Este, Normandy, p. 53; Christopher Foxley Morris, “Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder,” in War Lords, ed. Michael Carver (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), p. 483–99.

  62. Quoted in Finnegan, “General Eisenhower's Battle,” p. 5.

  63. D. K. R. Crosswell, Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2010), p. 191–257, 287–355, 551–606, 667–734; Antony Beevor, “Eisenhower's Pit Bull,” review of Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith by D.K.R. Crosswell, Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2010; Terry Shoptaugh, “Ike's Hatchet Man Emerges from the Shadows,” Review of Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith by D.K.R. Crosswell, H-War, H-Net Reviews, May 2012, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=35756 (accessed April 4, 2017).

  64. Jim DeFelice, Omar Bradley (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2011), p. 19.

  65. DeFelice, Bradley, pp. 7–38; Forrest C. Pogue, Education of a General (New York: Viking, 1963), p. 258.

  66. Quoted in DeFelice, Bradley, p. 39.

  67. Ibid., 48; Blumenson, Generals, p. 32.

  68. Bradley, A Soldier's Story (New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 31.

  69. DeFelice, Bradley, p. 22.

  70. Quoted in Jordan, Brothers, p. 250.

  71. Ibid., p. 231.

  72. DeFelice, Bradley, p. 68–69; Blumenson, Generals, p. 31.

  73. DeFelice, Bradley, p. 152; Blumenson, Generals, pp. 33–34; Jordan, Brothers, p. 254; Bradley, Soldier's Story, p. 8.

  74. Bradley, Soldier's Story, p. 43.

  75. Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943, vol. 1, The Liberation Trilogy (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), p. 401.

  76. Alan Axelrod, Patton's Drive: The Making of America's Greatest General (Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2009), p. x.

  77. Harry Yeide, Fighting Patton (Minneapolis, MN: Zenith, 2011), pp. 1–28; Ladislas Farago, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph (New York: Dell, 1963), pp. 1–80.

  78. Quoted in Yeide, Patton, p. 29.

  79. Ibid., 45–47.

  80. Farago, Patton, pp. 120–22, 135.

  81. Quoted in Jordan, Brothers, p. 33.

  82. Zimmerman, “Dead Wood”; Paul G. Munch, General George C. Marshall and the Army Staff: A Study in Effective Staff Leadership (Washington, DC: National Defense University National War College Fort McNair, March 19, 1992), http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA437156 (accessed April 4, 2017); Jordan, Brothers, p. 32;

  83. Jordan, Brothers, pp. 41, 46–47; Farago, Patton, pp. 166–68.

  84. Jordan, Brothers, pp. 67, 70–73.

  85. Yeide, Patton, pp. 155–75.

  86. Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944, vol. 2, The Liberation Trilogy (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), pp. 123–70.

  87. Quoted in Jordan, Brothers, p. 176.

  88. Ibid.

  89. Atkinson, Day of Battle, pp. 170–72; Jordan, Brothers, pp. 234–65.

  90. Quoted in Jordan, Brothers, p. 234.

  91. Ibid., p. 240.

  92. DeFelice, Bradley, pp. 70, 152, 154–55, 162.

  93. Blumenson, Generals, pp. 33, 37–38; Jordan, Brothers, pp. 247–49; DeFelice, Bradley, pp. 70, 152, 154–55, 162; Farago, Patton, pp. 349, 351, 362; Martin Blumenson, “General George S. Patton,” in War Lords, pp. 554–61.

  94. “D-Day's Forgotten Commander,” University of Cambridge, March 5, 2014, http://www.cam.ac.uk/news/d-days-forgotten-commander (accessed April 4, 2017).

  95. Kennedy, Engineers of Victory, p. 251. W.S. Chalmers, Full Cycle: The Biography of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1959); Bertram Ramsay, Year of D-Day, eds. Robert W. Love, Jr. and John Mayor (Hull, UK: University of Hull Press, 1994), pp. xiv–vi.

  96. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, pp. xvi–xvii.

  97. Quoted in David Stafford, Ten Days to D-Day (New York: Little, Brown, 2003), p. 34.

  98. Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 143.

  99. Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Ramsay, Sir Bertram Home,” http:www.oxforddnb.com.

  100. Author interview with David Ramsay on the Backhouse relationship with his father Bertram Ramsay, July 14, 2015; Symonds, Neptune, pp. 174–75; Barnett, Engage, pp. 50, 142.

  101. Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory, p. 251; Barnett, Engage the Enemy, pp. 141–42, 146; Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 254, 447, 541; Chalmers, Full Cycle, pp. 12–54, 271.

  102. “D-Day's ‘Forgotten Man,’” University of Cambridge, June 6, 2014, http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/d-days-forgotten-man (accessed April 4, 2017).

  CHAPTER 4: THE OVERLORD GAMBLE

  1. John S.D. Eisenhower, Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day (Garden City, NY, 1982), pp. 439–40; William Weidner, Eisenhower and Montgomery at the Falaise Gap (New York: Xlibris Corp, 2010), pp. 22–25; D.K.R. Crosswell, Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky), p. 554.

  2. Quoted in Crosswell, Beetle, p. 569.

  3. Quoted in Carlo D'Este, Decision in Normandy (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1994), p. 55.

  4. Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 764; Alun Chalfont, Montgomery of Alamein (New York: Atheneum, 1976), p. 220; Martin

  Blumenson, The Battle of the Generals (New York: William Morrow, 1993), p. 74; Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring, vol. 5, The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), p. 444; Bernard Montgomery, “Diary, December 31, 1943–January 2, 1944,” in Montgomery and the Battle of Normandy, ed. Steven Brooks (Gloucestershire: History Press, 2008), p. 15.

  5. D'Este, Normandy, pp. 56–57; Blumenson, Generals, pp. 73–75.

  6. Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory (New York: Random House), p. 242.

  7. Crosswell, Beetle, p. 565.

  8. Barnett, Engage the Enemy, pp. 753–54; Andrew Gordon, “The Greatest Military Armada Ever Launched, Operation Neptune,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2010), p. 135; Editors Robert W. Love, Jr. and John Mayor's Biography of Admiral Ramsay in Bertram Ramsay, The Year of D-Day (Hull, UK: University of Hull Press, 1994), p. xxxv; B.B. Schofield, Operation Neptune (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 1974), pp. 28–44.

  9. Barnett, Engage the Enemy, p. 755.

  10. Quoted in Barnett, Engage the Enemy, p. 781.

  11. Ibid., p. 763.

  12. William Weidner, Eisenhower and Montgomery (New York: Xlibris, 2010), p. 26; Kenneth Edwards, Operation Neptune (London: Fonthill, 2013), p. 80.

  13. Kevin M. Arnwine, An Analysis of Operation Neptune: Lessons for Today's Naval Logistics Planners (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 1995), p. 8.

  14. Barnett, Engage the Enemy, pp. 796–97, 780; W.S. Chalmers, Full Cycle: the Biography of Admiral Sir Bertram Home Ramsay (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1959), pp. 196–205.

  15. Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light, vol. 3, The Liberation Trilogy (New York: Henry Holt, 2013), p. 28; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two-Ocean War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), p. 391; Gordon, “Armada,” p. 141.

  16. Williamson Murray, “A Visitor to Hell on the Beaches,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2010), p. 151.

  17. Quoted in Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 187–89.

  18. Symonds, Neptune, p. 189–91; Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1980), p. 453; Lewis E. Lehrman, Churchill, Roosevelt & Company (Guilford, CT: Stackpole Books, 2017), p. 164.

  19. Bernard Ferguson, The Watery Maze (London: Collins, 1961), pp. 321–22.

  20. Quoted in Barnett, Engage the Enemy, p. 770.

  21. Quoted i
n Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980), p. 465.

  22. Morison, Two-Ocean War, p. 390; Barnett, Engage the Enemy, pp. 771–72; Symonds, Neptune, p. 192–93; Ken Ford, Operation Neptune, 1944 (Oxford: Osprey, 2014), p. 19.

  23. Ferguson, Watery Maze, p. 312.

  24. Quoted in Barnett, Engage, p. 785; Ferguson, Watery Maze, p. 312.

  25. Barnett, Engage, p. 773.

  26. Crosswell, Beetle, p. 567; Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 33; D'Este, Normandy, p. 65.

  27. D'Este, Normandy, p. 65; Max Hastings, Overlord, p. 33; Jim DeFelice, Omar Bradley (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2011), p. 166; Alan Moorhead, Eclipse (London: Soho Press, 1988), p. 91–92; Alistair Horne and David Montgomery, Monty: The Lonely Leader 1944–1945 (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 77.

  28. Quoted in Hastings, Overlord, p. 33.

  29. D'Este, Normandy, p. 65.

  30. D'Este, Normandy, p. 65; Captain H.C. Butchez, “Diary, January 21, 1944,” in Voices from D-Day, ed. Jon E. Lewis (New York: Skyhorse, 2014), pp. 4–5; Hastings, Overlord, p. 33; Barnett, Engage the Enemy, p. 765; Morison, Two-Ocean War, p. 385; Symonds, Neptune, p. 178.

  31. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. 11.

  32. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory (New York: Viking, 1973), p. 334; Symonds, Neptune, pp. 182, 183, 191; Chalfont, Montgomery, p. 223.

  33. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. 48.

  34. Crosswell, Beetle, p. 567; Moorhead, Eclipse, p. 92; Collins, D-Day, pp. 8–11.

  35. Quoted in Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 192.

  36. Duncan Anderson, “Remember This Is an Invasion,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), pp. 38–39.

  37. Barnett, Engage, pp.761–63.

  38. Quoted in Ladislas Farago, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph (New York: Dell, 1963), p. 388.

  39. Ibid., p. 389.

  40. Michael Arnold, Hollow Heroes (Oxford: Casemate, 2015), pp. 61, 131.

  41. Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers, ed. B.H. Liddell Hart (London: Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1953), p. 329.

  42. Quoted in Farago, Patton, pp. 403–404.

  43. Ibid., pp.404–405.

  44. D'Este, Normandy, pp. 73–74.

  45. DeFelice, Bradley, pp. 166–67.

  46. Hastings, Overlord, p. 44.

  47. Arthur Tedder, With Prejudice (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), pp. 512–13; Eisenhower, Allies, 443–47; R.J. Overy, The Air War 1939–1945 (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), pp. 97–98.

  48. Williamson Murray, “In the Air, on the Ground and in the Factories,” in D-Day, Jane ed. Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), pp. 118–20; Glen Infield, Big Week! (Los Angeles: Pinnacle Books, 1974), pp. 199–209; Overy, Air War, pp. 98–99; Walter J. Boyne, Clash of Wings (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 337.

  49. Adolf Galland, The First and the Last (New York: Ballantine Books, 1957), p. 211.

  50. Quoted in Morison, Two-Ocean War, p. 387.

  51. Stephen A. Hart, “A Very Lofty Perch,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), pp. 85–86; Hastings, Overlord, p. 45.

  52. Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation under Arms (New York: Basic Books, 2015), p. 427; Nigel Cawthorne, Fighting Them on the Beaches (London: Capella, 2002), pp. 54–55.

  53. David Stafford, Ten Days to D-Day (New York: Little, Brown, 2003), p. 53–54; Harry Yeide, Fighting Patton (Minneapolis, MN: Zenith, 2011), pp. 218–20; Christina J. M. Goulter, “The Great Shadow Boxing Match,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), pp. 56–62; Farago, Patton, p. 400.

  54. Quoted in Joshua Levine, Operation Fortitude (London: Collins, 2012), p. 230.

  55. Cawthorne, Fighting, pp. 55–56; Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War (New York: Hodder Arnold, 2007), p. 153.

  56. Philip Warner, World War Two: The Untold Story (London: Cassell, 1988), p. 225.

  57. Cawthorne, Fighting, pp. 72–73.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Eisenhower, Allies, p. 46; Cawthorne, Fighting, pp. 72–73; Douglas Botting, The D-Day Invasion (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1978), p. 54; Harry C. Butcher, Three Years with Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), p. 505; Matthew Hickman, “How Military Operations Get Their Code Name,” Mental Floss, September 8, 2011, http://mentalfloss.com/article/28711/how-military-operations-get-their-code-names (accessed April 4, 2017).

  60. Williamson Murray, “A Visitor to Hell,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), pp. 151–52; Eisenhower, Allies, p. 455; R. Ernest Dupuy and Tremor N. Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), pp. 1209–10.

  61. D'Este, Normandy, p. 75 footnote. Bradley is quoted here in a 1946 interview with historian Forrest Pogue.

  62. Ibid., pp. 76–77.

  63. Blumenson, Generals, pp. 78–81; Hastings, Overlord, pp. 35–36; Nigel Hamilton, Montgomery: D-Day Commander (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2006), pp. 46–49.

  64. Symonds, Neptune, pp. 123–26.

  65. Hastings, Overlord, pp. 34–35.

  66. Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 379; Hastings, Overlord, p. 34.

  67. Quoted in Atkinson, Last Light, p. 111; Botting, D-Day, p. 58; DeFelice, Bradley, p. 214–15.

  68. Quoted in Atkinson, Last Light, p. 111; Frederick Morgan, Overture to Overlord (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1950), pp. 157–58, Blumenson, Generals, 72, 79; Stephen E. Ambrose, D-Day June 6, 1944 (London: Pocket Books, 1994), p 78.

  69. Barnett, Engage, p. 798; Symonds, Neptune, pp. 210–11.

  70. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. 60.

  71. Edwin P. Hoyt, The Invasion before Normandy: The Secret Battle of Slapton Sands (Lanham, MD: Scarborough House, 1999), pp. 99–138.

  72. Denise Goolsby, “Vet Part of Exercise That Claimed 600 Lives,” Desert Sun, April 24, 2010, p. B3.

  73. Hoyt, Invasion before Normandy, p. 9.

  74. Hoyt, Invasion before Normandy, pp. 99–138; Symonds, Neptune, pp. 210–17, 219, 221; Morison, Two-Ocean War, p. 391; Barnett, Engage the Enemy, p. 798.

  75. Atkinson, Last Light, p. 3.

  76. D'Este, Normandy, p. 82; Atkinson, Last Light, p. 6; Symonds, Neptune, p. 221.

  77. Quoted in Atkinson, Last Light, p. 6.

  78. D'Este, Normandy, p. 83.

  79. Carlo D'Este, “A Lingering Controversy: Eisenhower's ‘Broad Front’ Strategy,” Armchair General, October 7, 2009, http:www.armchairgeneral.com/a-lingering-controversy-eisenhowers-broad-front-strategy.htm (accessed April 4, 2017).

  80. “Montgomery's Notes for Address on 15 May 1944: Brief Presentation of Plans before the King,” in Stephen Brooks, ed., Montgomery and the Battle of Normandy (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2008), p. 103.

  81. Quoted in Weidner, Eisenhower and Montgomery, p. 262.

  82. Alan Brooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), p. 546.

  83. D'Este, Normandy, pp. 82–104; Atkinson, Last Light, pp. 3–12; Farago, Patton, pp. 401–402; William B. Breuer, Feuding Allies (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), p. 174; Anthony Kemp, The Unknown Battle: Metz, 1944 (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), pp. 4–5.

  84. Martin Hill, “The Imposter General: Bernard Montgomery's D-Day Body Double,” Decoded Past, June 15, 2013, http://decodedpast.com/the-imposter-general-bernard-montgomerys-d-day-body-double/1332 (accessed April 4, 2017).

  85. Levine, Fortitude, pp. 263–66; Hill, “Imposter General”; Ben Macintyre, “Monty's Boozy Aussie Double Fooled Nazi Spy,” Australian, March 13, 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/d-day-montgomery-spy/story-e6frg650-1225839889393 (accessed May 29, 2017).

  86. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. 76 footnote notes specific new Allied intelligence on German Twenty-First Panzer Division and Ninety-First Infantry Division.

  87. Quoted in Symonds, Neptune, p. 221; Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. 77.

  88. Quoted in Stafford, Ten Days, p. 74.


  89. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. 78. Footnote explains airdrop controversy; John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), pp. 71, 73; Stafford, Ten Days, pp. 73–75; DeFelice, Bradley, pp. 168–69; Allan R. Millett, “Blood upon the Risers,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), pp. 169–72.

  90. Stafford, Ten Days, pp. 86–87.

  91. Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 619.

  92. Quoted in Stafford, Ten Days, p. 147.

  93. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, pp. 79–80; Barnett, Engage, p. 806.

  94. Letter from HRH George VI to Winston S. Churchill, June 2, 1944 (Cambridge, England: Churchill Archives, Churchill College); Letter from Winston S. Churchill to HRH George VI, June 3, 1944 (Cambridge, England: Churchill Archives, Churchill College).

  95. Ramsay, Year of D-Day, p. 80; Eisenhower, Allies, p. 465–66.

  96. Quoted in Jonathan W. Jordan, Brothers, Rivals, Victors (New York: Caliber, 2011), p. 315.

  97. Atkinson, Last Light, pp. 28–29.

  98. Lewis, ed., Voices from D-Day, p. 1.

  99. Quoted in Cawthorne, Beaches, p. 73; Geoffrey C. Ward, The War: An Intimate History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 189.

  100. Stafford, Ten Days, pp. 232–33.

  101. Ibid., pp. 50–51.

  102. Symonds, Neptune, p. 236.

  103. Quoted in Stafford, Ten Days, p. 234.

  104. Quoted in Chalfont, Montgomery, p. 238.

  105. Ibid., p. 233.

  106. Symonds, Neptune, p. 237.

  107. Stafford, Ten Days, p. 209.

  108. Quoted in Stafford, Ten Days, p. 260.

  109. Ibid.

  110. Ibid., p. 263.

  111. Stephen A. Hart, “A Very Lofty Perch,” in D-Day, p. 83.

  112. Samuel J. Newland, “The Great Crusade,” in D-Day, ed. Jane Penrose (Oxford: Osprey, 2006), p. 27.

  113. Deborah Cadbury, Princes at War (London: Bloomburg, 2015), p. 301; Gordon, “Armada,” p. 141; Stafford, D-Day, p. 277; Richard Holmes, The Story of D-Day (New York: Metro Books, 2014), p. 42; Ford, Operation Neptune, p. 20; Kenneth Edwards, Operation Neptune (Sabon, UK: Foothill, 1946), p. 37. The exact number of ships that were part of NEPTUNE or the D-Day fleet has been estimated in the range of four thousand to seven thousand vessels. The figures at the high end tend to include all of the landing craft and supporting ships for supply or transport of logistical materials that supported the invasion.